When Lena and her five friends got to the roof top deck, they played beer pong on the ping pong table supplied by the building owner, and all but one was drinking. Around midnight, the group went over near the railing and were socializing. As Lena stood next to a railing, a friend of hers bumped into her and she then bumped into the roof top railing. The railing immediately gave away, and Lena fell three stories onto a rockery below, getting seriously injured orthopedically and also sustained a mild brain injury.
Lena retained another law firm who filed suit against five different parties, including the building owner, the maintenance company, the general contractor who remodeled the deck, the subcontractor, and the railing manufacturer. and later asked BILS to take over the case. BILS immediately started to work the case and investigate how this catastrophic failure occurred. After extensive investigation, it was determined that the railing subcontractor failed to install screws in the railing to secure the connecting hinge where the railing gave way. The railing subcontractor tried to blame the railing manufacturer for failing to tell it how to properly install the rail system. The general contractor who was responsible for the job safety also failed to do any inspection of the rails at the end of the job, and also tried to deflect blame to the subcontractor and even blamed the plaintiff herself for having been drinking that night, as if that had anything to do with the railing failure. Finally, the building owner and the maintenance company both blamed the contractors and claimed they knew nothing about the faulty railing until this happened.
BILS investigated and learned from construction experts, engineers’ property maintenance experts that all parties were at fault. The railing manufacturer’s instructions were faulty, the railing subcontractor’s work was sloppy and done in a hurry, the general contractor chose the cheapest railing system if could find to save money and rushed the subcontractor to finish so that it could get ongoing construction payments from the bank. And despite the building owner and the maintenance company both claiming ignorance about the railing, BILS interviewed dozens of prior tenants and learned that in fact many tenants had noticed the railing being loose and claimed that the maintenance company never fixed anything on time, much less maintained the railing at all.
Meanwhile, Lena had made a very good recovery from her various orthopedic and internal injuries and continued to have orthopedic limitations as well as limitations from her mild brain injury. She was 22 years old when this incident occurred and not able to work a full-time job likely for the rest of her life. Nor was she able to work in the field she went to college for and was one quarter away from receiving her degree for at the time of the fall.
After a failed mediation, the railing manufacturer wanted to do the right thing and settled out with plaintiff, leaving the remaining four defendants to fight over who was most responsible. That settlement was confidential in its amount. After several more months of litigation, the remaining defendants at a second mediation finally saw that they were in serious jeopardy, and collectively paid an additional $8,625,000 to Lena for what they had taken from her.
Lena will now not have to worry about how she will live without being able to work full time, and obtain the help she needs to deal with her permanent injuries.
