The personal injury attorneys at Peter Higgins Law recently represented a 50-year-old deliveryman, L. N., who was making a delivery through an alley into the back door of a Chinese Restaurant in Chicago. L.N. was pushing a 2-wheel dolly with product loaded on it and had to maneuver it around a broken sewer cap. As he pushed the dolly past the sewer cap, his foot slipped in some grease around the edge of the sewer cap and caused the sewer cap to flip up, which caused our client to fall to his left side onto his left shoulder and wrist. L.N. sustained a torn rotator cuff, a herniated disc in his neck and later suffered from some nerve damage down his left arm, into his elbow and left hand. He had surgery to repair the torn rotator cuff and for the carpal tunnel nerve injury to his left wrist. One of his doctors gave a deposition that he would ultimately require surgery for the herniated disc in his neck as well.
Due to his injuries, L.N. claimed that he was unable to return to his former job as a deliveryman. Peter Higgins Law then retained the services of two expert witnesses, a vocational rehabilitation specialist and an economist, in order to prove that our client was not likely to ever return to the workforce and that his future wage losses, if he were to continue working until retirement, would be in the range of $1,000,000.00. The present cash value of this sum, if paid all at once, today, amounted to several hundred thousand dollars.
After an all-day mediation about one month before trial, the case settled for $930,000.00. In addition, a settlement was reached with the insurance company for the workers’ compensation case so that L.N. did not have to pay back a workers’ compensation lien of over $300,000.00, plus an additional Medicare set aside of $147,000.00.