School Not at Fault for Car Accident Blamed on Lack of Security Cameras

School Not at Fault
For Single Car Accident

Chen v. Hopkins School, Inc.,  AC 35164 (2014)

At 354 years old, the Hopkins School in New Haven, Connecticut, is the 3rd oldest private high school in the country.  It’s motto is Quod Felix Faustumque Sit, which in Latin means, “May It Bring You Happiness And Good Fortune.”  For one of its students, November 6, 2008, brought not happiness but a personal injury in a car accident caused by her tire blowing out, and no good fortune came from the attempt by her lawyers to blame the school for the accident.

            Connie Chen had driven about 1/2 mile from the school when her tire blew and she had her accident. It appeared that the sidewall of her tire had been cut by a knife or other sharp object while her car was parked at the school parking lot. The lawyers whom she hired to represent her for the accident sued the school, claiming that the accident happened because the school did not “use surveillance technology as a disincentive to criminal activity and as an aid to apprehending offenders.”

            To prove her personal injury case, Ms. Chen’s lawyers hired an expert on security who said that the school was responsible for the accident because it should have had a security camera in the parking lot. When her lawyers told the court that they had no other evidence to prove that the school should be liable for the accident, the school’s lawyers asked the court to throw out the case, which the court did.

            Ms. Chen’s lawyers appealed to the Connecticut Appellant Court, which ruled that the trial court was right in dismissing her personal injury case. The Appellate Court stated that even if the expert’s opinion was believed,

it doesn’t help the court know whether this purported vandal or criminal who purportedly inserted some object into the tire would have known that there was a security camera there because there was nothing testified to about signage, whether a lack of knowledge would have deterred this activity from taking place, whether the camera would be monitored twenty-four hours a day, whether if someone saw this person doing what he or she did, it would have stopped what ultimately transpired. None of this is being offered by this expert, neither is there any statistical or empirical evidence presented by this gentleman to indicate that the ultimate incident would not have occurred because there were security cameras in the parking lot.

 

            Although the school was not found responsible for this personal injury case, perhaps it has now installed security cameras in the parking lots to help protect the students and staff.  Hopefully, Ms. Chen has recovered from the injuries she suffered in this accident.  And hopefully, from the education she obtained at this venerable Connecticut private school, happiness and good fortune come her way.

Connecticut's Workers' Compensation Law: 100 Years of Irony

Hartford's Bond Hotel
Responsible for Fatal
Workers' Comp Accident

Powers v. Hotel Bond Co., 93 A. 245, 89 Conn. 245 (1915)

The Connecticut Workers' Compensation Act was passed in 1913.  Before the act was passed, the only way for someone injured at work to recover compensation was to file a personal injury law suit against the employer.

Filing a personal injury lawsuit in court to be compensated for a job accident was very problematic.  Legally, it was necessary to prove that the employer, through some act of carelessness or negligence, was at fault for the accident.  In a personal injury case, that the employer could raise as a defense that the accident happened because the injured worker was careless or not paying attention.  Another common defense claimed by employers was that the injured employee assumed the risk of getting injured by taking the job.

            In 1913,  the industrial revolution was steaming along (pun quite intended, as steam engines, with their inherent dangers of exploding or causing burns, where quite common).  Factories were dimly lit labyrinths of crowded machinery with uncovered gears, flywheels, belts and mechanized cutting tools whirring along inches from workers hands and feet.

To alleviate the suffering visited upon injured workers, many states, including Connecticut, began to pass workers’ compensation laws that removed questions of fault, contributory negligence and assumption of risk from the determination of when and how a worker who was hurt on the job could be compensated.  These laws were based on the idea that the contract between an employer and worker automatically included a provision that the employer would compensate an injured worker for an accident at work provided that the injury did not arise through the employer’s intentional or willful misconduct.

In 1913, to support himself and help support his mother, John J. Powers worked at Hartford’s five-star Hotel Bond, a brand new, state-of-the-art facility that featured a magnificent ballroom on its top floor.  Mr. Powers, tragically, suffered a fatal accident at work.

This tragic accident would give the Connecticut Supreme Court its first opportunity to review the Workers’ Compensation Act.  In its decision, the court set forth the fundamental principles that 100 years later still underpin Connecticut’s law for compensating employees who are hurt at work.  The court also explained the goals behind the Act.  Unfortunately, given how the workers’ compensation system actually works today, these goals are awash with irony.

First, The Case

After Mr. Powers’s death at his job, his mother filed a workers’ compensation case to be compensated for the loss of the financial support which he had been providing her.  She won the case and the workers’ compensation commissioner awarded her $5 per week for 6 years.

The Hotel Bond Company appealed the workers’ compensation case to the Connecticut Superior Court, which upheld the award.  Hotel Bond then appealed to the Connecticut Supreme Court, arguing that the Superior Court should have tried the case all over again, that Mr. Powers’s mother should not get workers’ compensation because she was not his dependent, and that it was wrong for the commissioner to have awarded her the $5 per week.

The Supreme Court upheld the workers’ compensation commissioner’s decision.  In doing so, the justices found that the 6 years of $5 weekly payments was reasonable, noting that the Workers’ Compensation Act stated that the compensation to be paid to the dependents of a worker killed on the job was a minimum of $5 and a maximum of $10 per week.

The justices also ruled that it would make no sense for there to be a whole new trial of the facts during an appeal to the Superior Court; instead, the point of the appeal was to see if the workers’ compensation commissioner had followed the Act and if there were sufficient facts in the case for the commissioner reasonably to have ruled as he did.  The Supreme Court also found that Mr. Powers’s mother could be considered a dependent under the Workers’ Compensation Act.

Now The Irony

The words of the justices:

 The act by eliminating the proof of negligence, by minimizing the delay in the award, and by making it reasonably certain, seeks to avoid the great waste of the tort action, and to promote better feeling between workman and employer, and accepts, as an inevitable condition of industry, the happening of accident, and charges its cost to the industry.

The reality:

Workers’ Compensation cases in Connecticut can and often do go on for years.  It usually takes several weeks to schedule a hearing.  Most hearings are “informal,” meaning that they are simply a negotiating session supervised by the workers’ compensation commissioner.  The parties often follow the recommendations of the commissioner at these informal hearings, but they are not required to do so.

To decide a workers’ compensation case, a commissioner has to take evidence at a “formal” hearing.  These are scheduled infrequently and far into the future.  The reason:  Connecticut has about 1.8 million persons in the labor force and there are only 16 commissioners to handle all the cases of persons who are hurt on the job.

The workers’ compensation system hardly fosters good feelings between a worker and employer.  Insurance rates go up when persons are hurt on the job so employers often try to keep injured workers from making claims.  Even if a employer is sympathetic to an employee hurt on the job, it is not the employer who usually controls the compensation process but the insurance company.  (Some larger employers are self-insured for workers’ compensation claims, but they are usually very difficult to deal with because every dollar paid on a claim is a dollar off the bottom line.)

            Economists would argue that industry bears cost of work accidents.  Companies simply pass on their premium costs onto the consumer.  Companies also join together to lobby the state legislature to reduce the benefits paid to injured workers.  During the last significant reform of the Connecticut Workers’ Compensation Act, which took place in the 1990’s, the amount paid to workers for permanent disability was reduced by approximately one-third.  That reform also limited the commissioners’ power to award benefits after injured workers are paid for permanent disability.

The words of the justices:

[The Workers’ Compensation Act’s] procedure contemplates a speedy investigation and hearing by a commissioner without the formalities of a court and without, as a general rule, the employment of an attorney. It attempts to improve the condition of the workman under modern methods of industry by giving him partial recompense for an injury, with a result more certain and speedy and less expensive than under the former method in tort litigation.

The reality:

            Investigations of a workers’ compensation case are hardly speedy, especially, as if often the case, a workers has previously been hurt in a car accident or other personal injury case or has a prior or subsequent job accident.  Investigation often involves sending workers to a series of doctors for opinions as to what accident caused the employee’s injury or disability.  Oftentimes, these doctor’s visits have nothing to do with making the injured worker better but only serve to push around the finger of blame for the injury.

            While it is not necessary to have an attorney for a workers compensation case, it also is not necessary to go to the dentist to deal with a toothache.  Which might be more painful  —  to pull your own tooth or to handle your own workers’ compensation case  —  is an open question.  The Act is several hundred pages long.  The workers’ compensation law has deadlines that if missed can mean the end of a case for the injured worker.  The Act itself is complex and this is compounded by the fact that decisions from the appellate courts and the Connecticut Workers’ Compensation Review Board often significantly alter the law.

            Although far from perfect, the Connecticut Workers’ Compensation Act often does provide injured workers with the ability to recover financially, at least in part, from their injuries.  The best course of action:  stay alert and work safely to lessen your chance of getting hurt at work.

Finding Fault in a Personal Injury Rear-End Accident Without Direct Evidence of Carelessness

Proving Fault in Rear End Auto
Accident Personal Injury Case

Rawls v. Progressive Northern Ins. Co., ___ A.3rd ___, 310 Conn. 768 (2014)

In a car accident case where there was no evidence as to what the defendant driver was doing when he crashed into the plaintiff’s car from behind, the Connecticut Supreme Court looked back to a 1932 case involving a team of horses to rule that a jury could find that the driver was careless because the accident occurred in broad daylight on a straight road.

            It was 5 pm on June 14, 1929.  Edward Stevens was driving his father’s car on the road from Hartford to Middletown.  Up ahead, he saw a slow moving line of traffic following a team of horses pulling a baker wagon, which was probably returning home after distributing the bread and pastries that had been baked that morning.  Edward told the jury he signaled and slowed down.

            Behind Edward, William J. Ghent, Jr. was a passenger in a car driven by Thomas Hellyer.  Thomas hit Edward’s car from behind and the impact tragically threw William from the car onto the pavement, killing him.  (Seatbelts were not available in cars until the Nash  automobile company made them an option in 1949.)

            Thomas told the jury that he drove into Edward’s car because Edward tried to pass the line of cars but suddenly swerved back due to an oncoming car .  Edward denied doing this.  The jury believed Edward, not Thomas, and said that Edward was not responsible for this fatal accident.

            Thomas appealed to the Connecticut Supreme Court.  The Court concluded that there was “abundant evidence” to support the jury’s decision, stating, “from our examination of the evidence, it would appear that the jury might reasonably have concluded that the sole cause of the accident was the negligence of the operator of the car in which [William] was riding” because it “was broad daylight on a clear day,” the “road was straight,” and Thomas “had a full view of the [Edward’s] car and of the traffic ahead, and had abundant opportunity either to have stopped his car if under reasonable control or to have turned out to the right and avoided the accident.”

            Fast forward to a red traffic light in Bridgeport, Connecticut, at 11:30 pm on March 27, 2006.  Ronald Rawls stops at the light and about 15 seconds later hears a “loud noise” and is “hit from behind real hard” by a car driven by Zabian Bailey.  Ronald tells the jury that he “did not see Bailey’s car prior to the collision, did not know where Bailey was looking when the accident occurred, was not aware of Bailey’s speed, and could not state whether Bailey had applied his brakes or swerved prior to the collision.”

            The jury decided that Zabian was responsible for this rear end accident and gave Ronald money for his medical bills and personal injuries.  (Zabian did not have insurance, so Ronald’s lawyer filed a claim against Ronald’s own insurance company, Progressive Northern, which was responsible for the accident under the uninsured motorist part of Ronald’s policy.)

            Progressive appealed to the Connecticut Appellate Court, which threw out the jury’s verdict, noting that Ronald’s recollection of a loud noise did not prove negligence and he did not have any eyewitness to prove that Zabian had been negligent.  Unhappy that he would not get anything for his personal injury case, Ronald had his lawyer appeal to the Connecticut Supreme Court.

            A lot was riding on the Supreme Court’s decision.  Think about it.  The most common car accident personal injury case is a rear end accident.  Many times, if not most of the time, the driver and passengers in the car that gets hit do not see the car that hits them before the crash.  They are looking forward, the driver waiting for the light to change, the passengers seated normally, eyes forward. There are often no witnesses to an accident or the witnesses often leave before the police arrive.

            If the Appellate Court’s decision became the law, no one could recover money for a rear end personal injury car accident case unless they were looking backwards or had witnesses to prove that the other driver was not paying attention.  The case was so important that the Connecticut Trial Lawyers Association asked permission to file a brief (written argument) with the Supreme Court.

            Fortunately for Ronald  — and for anyone that gets hurt in Connecticut when a careless driver hits them from behind  — the Supreme Court overturned the Appellate Court and gave Ronald the money that the jury had awarded him for his personal injury case.  Looking back to Edward Stevens and the slow moving team of horses, the Supreme Court stated, “The present case is similar to Ghent v. Stevens … in which this court found that there was sufficient evidence to support findings of negligence and causation based on the facts that there was a rear-end collision in ‘broad daylight,’ on a ‘clear day,’ and on a straight road with a ‘full view’ of the traffic ahead.”

            In reinstating the jury verdict, the Supreme Court stated:

First, the jury could have considered the fact that the plaintiff was stopped at a red traffic light and that traffic lights are normally highly visible to drivers. The jury also could have considered that, because the weather was clear and the road was flat and straight, the traffic light and the two stopped cars at that light probably would have been visible from a great distance. In addition, the jury could have inferred from the fact that the plaintiff was stopped for fifteen seconds prior to the collision that the traffic light was red for at least fifteen seconds, if not

longer …. Bailey thus would have had ample opportunity to react and avoid the collision if he had been acting with reasonable

care.”

 

            Summing up:  Have car insurance.  Watch out for traffic ahead of you.  Wear your seatbelt.  And if you are hit from behind and suffer personal injury in Connecticut, get a lawyer who can remind the court about those horses pulling the baker’s carriage back to Middletown.

A Personal Injury Case Gets Lost When Notice of an Injury Does Not Get Noticed

Connecticut
Personal Injury Law

Walker v. Housing Authority of the City of Bridgeport, AC 34096 (March 11, 2014)

            When Delores Walker got hurt on property belonging to the Housing Authority of the City of Bridgeport, she probably was thinking that she needed a lawyer and probably not thinking about how our legal system in Connecticut comes from the days of the kings in England.  Ultimately, the fact that our law goes back to the English common law cost her the chance to recover for her personal injury.

            In olde England, the King was not just the ruler, the King was the law.  If you got hurt because the royal carriage knocked you down, you could not sue the King because that would be like saying the law was wrong.  You could only sue the King if the King let you.  And today, you can only sue the government, including the Housing Authority of Bridgeport, if the government lets you.

            The government does let you sue for personal injuries caused by the carelessness of government employees, but you have to do it in exactly the way the government lets you.  If you want to sue a government housing authority in Connecticut, you have to follow General Statutes § 8-67.  This statute says that any person injured on housing authority property must send a notice of the injury within 6 months to the chairman or secretary of the housing authority.

            Through her attorney, Ms. Walker sent a notice addressed to “Bridgeport Housing Authority” with the salutation “To Whom It May Concern.”  The notice followed the requirements of the statute in that it identified Ms. Walker as the injured person, stated when and where she was injured, and stated that she intended to sue for her personal injuries.  However, because the notice was not specifically addressed to either the secretary or chairman of the housing authority, neither of them noticed it.

 

            Unfortunately for Ms. Walker, she and her lawyer were never able to tell a jury about her personal injury case because the lawyer for the housing authority noticed that the notice was never noticed by who the law said needed to notice it.  Her case was knocked out of court by summary judgment.  It’s good to be the king.

A Rolls Royce on the Hartford - New London Turnpike Gets Connecticut's Accident Law Rolling

Car Accident Law 
From the Roaring 20's

Mahoney v. Beatman, 147 A. 762, 110 Conn. 184 (1929)

    It was July 1926, the Great Gatsby era, the height of the Roaring 20’s.  Edward Mahoney was speeding towards the Connecticut shore on the Hartford – New London Turnpike (nowadays you would take Route 2) in his brand new Rolls Royce, his chauffeur at the wheel, the speedometer marking 60 miles per hour.  Joseph Beatman was coming the other way driving his Nash (made in Wisconsin, the Nash automobile company merged with Hudson to form American Motors Corporation, whose best known car was the Rambler and which was bought out by Chrysler in 1987  — ask your grandfather).

    Proving that you do not need to be texting on a cell phone to drive distracted and cause a car accident, Joe was turned toward the back seat as he drove, presumably having a conversation with his passengers, perhaps about whether Babe Ruth would again slam 50 homers that year.

    Joe’s Nash crossed over the center of the road.  Ed’s chauffeur tried to avoid the crash by driving off the concrete highway onto the gravel shoulder.  The Nash struck the hub caps of the Rolls Royce’s left front wheel, the spare wheel on the running board, and the fender.  The Rolls Royce went diagonal for 125 feet, crossed the road, hit a tree, knocked down a 2 1/2 foot stone wall and rolled over onto its side.  The chauffeur never braked after the collision.

    Fortunately, Ed and his chauffeur were okay.  Ed’s Rolls Royce, however, was not.  To repair the damage caused by the accident would cost $5850, a stupendous auto body shop bill equal to $77,000 today.

 

    Ed hired a lawyer and sued.  Joe’s lawyer argued that if the chauffer had not been racing along at 60 mph, he would have been able to maintain control after the impact and the damage to the Rolls Royce would have been much less.

    The case was tried to a judge.  Concluding that the accident was wholly caused by Joe driving onto the wrong side of the road, but agreeing with Joe’s lawyer that the chauffeur’s unreasonable speed caused him to lose control of the car after the collision, the judge gave Ed only $200 for the accident.  A very unhappy Ed appealed to the Connecticut Supreme Court.

    In deciding the case, the Supreme Court’s ruling established a fundamental principle still used today by Connecticut’s courts to determine when a negligent driver (or his insurance company) must pay for damage caused by his carelessness.  This rule applies to all tort, negligence, and personal injury cases, not just to car accident cases.

    The Supreme Court’s decision came out on November 7, 1929, nine days after Black Tuesday, when the stock market crashed, the roaring twenties hushed up, and the Great Depression started.  Given that he had a Rolls Royce and a chauffeur to drive it, Ed undoubtedly was a member of that gilded age’s millionaire club and he probably took a beating when the market collapsed.  The Court’s decision must have given him a ray of sunshine during those dark times.  Reasoning that because the chauffeur’s speed had nothing to do with bringing about the accident, the Court ruled that Joe’s crossing the center of the road was the “proximate cause” of all of Ed’s damages and ordered the trial court to make Joe responsible for the full $5850 repair bill to the Rolls.

    The Supreme Court stated that a careless or negligent person is responsible for all natural and probable consequences of the careless or negligent act.  If the negligent person’s act is a substantial factor in producing the damages, then he or she must pay for the damage, unless an independent and unexpected force intervenes to produce the damage.

    Applying this rule to the facts of the case, the Court held that the chauffeur’s speed was not a new and independent event that caused the damage.  All of the damage arose because Joe crossed the line.  Whether the Rolls was traveling below, at or above the speed limit had nothing to do with causing the accident.  The 60 mph speed of the Rolls therefore was not a proximate cause of the damage.

 

    Whether Ed ever collected the $5850 from Joe or Joe’s insurance company for this accident is a different story.  And even if he got paid, perhaps as a result of the stock market crash he ultimately had to give up his Rolls Royce and his chauffeur.

 

    Ed’s name lives on, however, linked to the most famous ruling in Connecticut tort and personal injury law, Mahoney v. Beatman, that if you case an accident because of your negligence or carelessness, do not complain that the damages would have been less if the other driver had managed to better control her car after the crash, or had been wearing a seat belt (why not a crash helmet?), or was more physically fit, or had been driving a Hummer  — none of those things have anything to do with causing the accident itself.