STAMFORD, CONNECTICUT: LIMOUSINE PASSENGER SUFFERS BROKEN NECK
In our Stamford, Connecticut personal injury law firm, we frequently see serious motor vecicle accidents involving limousines. At the time of the accident, our client, "Jordan," was a forty-year-old investment executive, husband and father and in excellent health. Jordan was on his way home after returning from a business trip to London. After he arrived at JFK International Airport at approximately 9:30 PM he called the telephone number on his limousine “Car Pass” card and informed the limousine company that he needed transportation from the airport to his home in Connecticut. Ten minutes later the limousine picked him up at the terminal. Jordan, weary from his flight, read and dozed on the passenger side of the back seat, noting the light rain that was falling and also the fact that the limousine was traveling between sixty-five and seventy miles per hour as it travelled along Interstate 95 and crossed the border into Connecticut. He was not wearing a seat belt.
Earlier that day, after running out of gas, the driver of a white Ford utility van proceeding north on I-95, pulled his vehicle over onto the shoulder of the median divider approximately three tenths of a mile west of exit 7 in Stamford, engaged his emergency flashers and, hours later he called his uncle for assistance. The two proceeded in the uncle's pickup truck to a service station to fill up a gasoline can. Thereafter they drove onto I-95 and arrived at the point where van was parked. By this time the flashers had drained the vehicle’s battery, and so they usedtruck to push the van to a point where the shoulder was wider so that the vehicles could be parked next to each other to facilitate jump-starting the van. Unfortunately, the shoulder was not wide enough to accommodate both vehicles, leaving the right portion of the van protruding into the adjacent passing lane. After this maneuver was accomplished, and while the uncle remained at the wheel of his truck with his flashers on, the driver of the van poured the contents of the can into the it's gas tank. He then moved to the front of the vehicles and began attaching the jumper cables.
At this point, the limousine carrying Jordan was speeding north in the left lane, approaching the location of the parked vehicles. Although the limousine's headlights were on, and the pickup's flashers were activated, the limousine driver saw nothing ahead of him until he was twenty-five feet from the van. He applied his brakes and attempted to steer the limousine to the right, but it was too late. The front of Jordan's limousine slammed into the rear of the van, after which it was struck by another limousine.
The tremendous force of the collisions propelled Jordan’s inert body from the rear seat of the limousine through the space between the front seats, and head first into the windshield. When the vehicle came to a halt, facing in the opposite direction to that in which it had been traveling, Jordan found himself lying face down between the front passenger and driver seats, with the left side of his forehead on the dashboard. As he pushed himself up and out of this contorted position, he saw the driver next to him in the driver’s seat, staring blankly at him. He asked the driver what had happened, but driver said nothing.
Dazed and numb, Jordan exited the vehicle to a vision from hell, as he wandered the darkened highway among the smoldering wreckage of the his limousine, the distorted hulk of the van, the pickup truck and the other limousine. With blood covering the left side of his face from the laceration to his forehead, he called his wife on his cell phone. Surveying the scene, he began to appreciate that he had somehow survived this spectacular crash.
Jordan’s injuries were treated at Stamford Hospital for the next three days. He was diagnosed with a fracture of the lateral aspect and transverse process of the right C-7 vertebral body, fracture of the fourth metacarpal of the left hand, and a mid-ulnar fracture of the left forearm. A Miami-J collar was prescribed for his neck, an air cast for his left ankle, and splinters of glass were extracted from his forehead.
Two weeks after his discharge he was again admitted to Stamford Hospital for open reduction and internal fixation of his displaced left ulna fracture. Three months later, orthopedist Michael Baumgaertner, M.D. at Yale New Haven Hospital, found a non-union of the ulnar fracture and performed a second open reduction and internal fixation, this time with iliac bone grafting to assure proper healing. But when Jordan awoke from the anesthesia, he found a sign on his hospital room door warning that the area was under quarantine. His doctors explained that a staphylococcus infection had been found in tissue at the site of the fracture, turning a routine surgical procedure into a nightmare. Jordan remained in the hospital for six days while his doctors fought the infection. He spent the rest of the summer with a PICC line in his body, serving as the conduit of the powerful antibiotic required to eliminate the infection.
Five months after the accident, the fractured arm had healed, the infection had abated, but the pain and stiffness in Jordan's neck and the numbness in the fingers of his right hand grew worse. Greenwich neurosurgeon Paul Apostolides diagnosed C6 and C7cervical spondylosis with radiculopathy and on January 22, 2003, nearly two years after the accident, Dr. Apostolides, with orthopedist Mark Camel assisting, performed a C5 – C7 anterior fusion with cervical plating and right iliac crest bone graft harvest. The surgery at Greenwich Hospital lasted four hours, and after two days Jordan was released to recuperate from his third surgery.
This active husband and father, with a life expectancy of thirty-five years, has been left with an eighteen percent permanent physical impairment of the cervical spine and a five percent permanent physical impair of the left (non-dominant) arm. He also bears the scars of three surgeries upon each of his hips, his left arm, and his neck. He lives each day with pain and soreness at the fracture sites, at the sites of bone harvesting, and on cold damp days where he carries the metal plates and screws.
Just before jury selection, this case, in which the limousine passenger broke his neck, the insurance companies for both limousines, the pickup truck and the van, as well as the client's underinsured motorist carrier, met our demands and the case was settled.
