Attorney(s): Managing Partner Andrew Finkelstein, Partner Ray Futerfas and Trial Attorney Antonio Grillo.
Settlement: $3,500,000 Settlement
A New Jersey construction company needed to get a job finished. A laborer works from 6:00 am to 3 pm. The same laborer returns for another shift that day. The construction company works him straight from 9 pm through the night to 7 am the next day. The exhausted laborer was driving home and fell asleep while driving on the Meadowlands Parkway in Secaucus. He crossed over the center median and hit our client who was on his way to work traveling in the opposite direction. The crash spun our client’s car and his head hit the interior compartment of his van. Dazed and confused, our client was able to get out of the car at the scene before the police arrived. The police performed an accident reconstruction and confirmed the laborer fell asleep. The police also thought our client may not have been wearing his seat belt. We hired a biomechanical expert to calculate the forces of the crash and determine if a seat belt would have changed whether or not our client would have still sustained the traumatic brain injury. The expert confirmed the forces of the brain striking the inside of the skull would have been the same with or without the seat belt. We then created an animation to demonstrate that whether our client was wearing a seat belt or not was of no consequence. Our 52-year-old client is unable to work due to his brain injury. The case was settled for $3,500,000 prior to trial.
The case was handled by Managing Partner Andrew Finkelstein, Partner Ray Futerfas and Trial Attorney Antonio Grillo.
In order to effectively tell our client’s story we often use case animations. These customized, lifelike depictions of the events that lead to our client’s injuries allow opposing council, and in some cases jury members/judges, to walk in our client’s shoes and gain a better understanding of how the ordeal unfolded.