Welp it’s all done here boys no more trial we ended it after 13 hours of Deliberation today. What a day today was haha. I’'ll just give you a run down on the case because there are just way too many details to put down, and this is all off the top of my head as I have no notes or anything that was used in the case. The case was Beth Duffy Parker (Plantiff) VS AAA Standard Services Inc (Deffendant). Beth is a 59 year old woman who works as assistant head of HR at a former, very old High School (Burnham). Which is now used as an Administrative building for a local school district. AAA Standard Services Inc is a company that specializes in all areas of disaster cleanup operations, such as flood cleanup, fire dammage, sewage cleanup ect ect. This company wore a light blue shirt with a AAA logo on the front, and navy blue pants in 2005.
The initial incident happened on Monday August 15th 2005 at around the time of 12:00 pm. It all began on Friday August 12th when the town had been experiencing severe thunder storms. At the time the Burnham building was having some roofing work done by an independant contractor, and was not fully completed. The heavy rains came through the roof on the 12th directly over the Human Resource Department (Beths Office). The HR dept. suffered the bulk of the flood damage, and the Superintendant of the building arrived that day and seen all of this damage. The Super. then called AAA, and contracted their services for cleanup. AAA came that very day to clean up the mess. They cleaned up the mess and went on their way. Saturday the 13th there were more storms, along with another flooding, and the company was called back in to clean the mess up on Sunday the 15th of August. Yet again there were more thunder storms sunday night after the building had been cleaned up for a second time.
Monday August 15th the day of the incident. At 6:00 am that morning Beth arrived at the Burnham building to go to work. The only other person at the building when she arrived was a school maintnance employee. The first 20ft or so of the hallway is carpeted (HR dept) the rest of the hallway of the hallway, after the carpet is a hard surfaced marble like floor (about 65 ft). Beth entered the west end of the building on the carpeted floor. The first thing she had noticed was a stack of chairmatts ( a matt about 3’x5’ that sits under a desk) on the left hand side of the carpet. Beth also noticed several chairs, trash cans, and filing cabinenets cluttered throughout the carpeted hallway. Later that morning at 7:30 am several other school employees entered the west end of the building and noticed everything Beth had. At 8:00am that morning AAA arrived to cleanup the damage from Sundays storms. Several school employees noticed two men in AAA uniforms cleaning and dragging said plastic chairmatts up and down the marble like hallway. At 9:00am Beth noticed a single matt flat on the floor near the wall outside of the Staff Lounge door, when she made a trip to the restroom. Several other school employees noticed that same matt in the same location. At around the time of 12:00 noon Beth made a trip east to the Staff Lounge to make some copies (take note that she had knowledge where that single matt was). As she walked down the hallway she passed her co worker Patt who was standing outside of her office about 35 ft west of the Staff Lounge. Beth then entered the lounge, washed her hands, dried them, and took approximately 4 steps to the copy machine to make copies. Beth then grabbed the copies rushed out of the door way to talk to Patt, and when exiting the door she made an immediate right and slipped on the matt. Beth hit the ground hard and snapped her Pelvis upon impact.
She was awarded the origonal medical expsepenses ‘’ well so the deffendants lawyer says’’ was 150 thousand for the initial injury as a result of the fall (broekn pelvis). Her lawyer stated that she should be owed 650 thousand for medical exspenses, but there were other injuries involved in that figure that we believed were not a direct result of the fall. So we wanted to stay in between the 150 and 650 thousand figure. She got more than the deffendant pleaded too for one like you said present and future mental anguish, present and future pain, any future medical exspenses, she was not awarded for lost wages because she was on workmans comp. This womans health was so messed up even before the fall though dude. She has the health of a 70-75 year old woman. She’s a brain cancer survivor, needs to be on oxygen supply to sustain life, has a feeding tube in her throat and can never eat again, limited mobility in her neck, and a paralyzed left vocal cord/ left side of tounge. The need for a feeding tube and oxygen supply happened when she was in the hospital two days after her fall. Aside from that we decided that the fall was not a direct result of the other injuries, because after looking over the evidence of testimonies from two doctors she would have needed all of that stuff in the future anyways without the fall. That is how they got the figure of 3 million, which it was really hard to give her that low of an ammount as far as sympathy for her is concerned. But we couldn’t add that in because the evidence proved other wise. I do feel very bad for her though.
Keep in mind this is just a short summary, and there are many details left out but you can get an idea here of what went on in this case. It’s pretty clear that even aside from the fact of AAA being neglegant the school should also be at fault for even allowing employees in the building at that time when water is being cleaned up. In conclusion the Jurys verdict was in the favor of the Plantiff 6-2 for the neglegance of AAA Standards Inc. The proximate cause of injury was on the part of AAAs neglegance. Both parties were found neglegant of 50/50 percent. Beth Duffy Parker was awarded $355,000 concluding the case. The initial demand of the Plantiff was 3 million ( too complicated to explain the amount wanted is irrelevant anyways as Beth was only awarded for the proximate cause of injury ( broken pelvis).
Well that was basically my entire week lol. I gotta say it was fun as hell being the Jury Foreman. We had alot of heated debates in that tiny little room. In the end though this is a sad case, because Beth will probally pass away not long in the distant future due to her many other health conditions. My hat goes off to her though so in the end she is a trooper to say the least.