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$750,000 for Workplace Product
Liability--
August
4, 1997
Rega v. Terminal
Construction, et al.: A commercial painter who severely injured
his wrist when he fell 13 feet off a faulty ladder reached a $750,000 settlement
last Wednesday with the ladder’s manufacturer.
The settlement came two days after
summations in a bench trial before Bergen County Superior Court Judge
Lawrence Smith.
According to the plaintiff’s lawyer,
David Mazie, a partner with a Livingston law firm, the accident occurred on June
20, 1991, when Joseph Rega and two co-workers were painting the inside of a
concrete holding tank at the Morristown Sewage Treatment Plant. The only access
in and out of the tank was by way of a ladder made by Terminal Construction Co.
At the end of the day, Rega was
climbing out of the tank with a can of paint when the ladder slipped out from
under him, sending him 13 feet to the bottom of the tank. He severely fractured
his left wrist and hand from the fall. His injuries required eight surgeries.
The hand and wrist had to be fused together, according to Mazie.
Mazie argued Terminal was negligent
because the ladder did not have either the slip-resistant safety devices or the
tie-off rope required by ASHI and OSHA guidelines. James Horan, a partner with
West Orange’s Minichino & Mautone who represented Terminal for its carrier,
USF&G, contended that Rega was comparatively negligent.
Mazie says Smith probably could not
have considered comparative negligence, in view of the state Supreme Court’s
holding in Super v. San Antonio Foundry & Machine Co., 81 N.J. 151 (1979). That
case drastically limited comparative negligence in product liability suits by
employees injured in the workplace.
During the trial, Rega’s employer,
Goya Construction, agreed to pay 37.5 percent of the settlement.
-- By Matt Ackermann
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