The cash-strapped MTA could be sued for $90 million in damages after a train driver ran over a drunk man who fell onto the subway tracks without stopping, severing his leg, hip and most of his arm. There is.
Lamont Powell, who will never be able to work again, won a huge award late last month in a Brooklyn lawsuit over a 2018 incident, one of the largest ever against the MTA. .
A 56-year-old Brooklyn man pays a huge amount of compensation because the train driver had enough time to avoid the collision despite the fact that he brought spills onto the tracks due to the accident. His lawyer told the Post that he deserved it.
“This is a public safety issue,” said attorney Ira Newman. “If the train driver had seen people alerting someone on the tracks and applied the emergency brake in a timely manner, per the MTA's own regulations, this accident would never have occurred.”
Mr. Powell fell onto the train tracks on June 30, 2018, after a night of drinking at the Broadway Junction subway station in eastern New York.
Newman said he fell on the edge of the tracks, away from where the train was entering, and the driver needed hundreds of feet to stop the train before it hit him.
Newman said the driver held up a straphanger on the platform and frantically waved for the train to stop as it slowly pulled into the station.
One of the witnesses who took to the stage was on vacation from Brazil at the time and returned to the Big Apple to testify about how he tried to stop the slowly unfolding nightmare.
A former MTA engineer also told jurors that a train traveling at 16 miles per hour needed about 110 feet to stop, and the driver had to stop about 360 feet before hitting Powell. .
“The train driver confirmed that he saw people waving frantically,” Newman said. “That's what he thought [Powell] It was a garbage bag. ”
Mr Newman said the driver admitted at trial that he should have pulled the brakes on even a large garbage bag, much less a human being.
As a result, Mr. Powell has no family and has previously made a living through construction work and odd jobs, but due to leg and hip injuries that make it impossible for him to wear a prosthetic leg, he will spend the rest of his days in an assisted living facility. That's what happened, Newman said. .
“If you lose your hip, you have nothing,” he said.
Mr Newman acknowledged Mr Powell had been drinking, but said he fell onto the tracks in the same way that “someone would fall if they were pushed, passed out or had a seizure”.
“If the train driver had applied the emergency brake in a timely manner, this would never have happened,” Newman said.
Powell filed a lawsuit against the MTA nearly a year after the horrific disfigurement.
Mr. Newman, of Sanocki, Newman & Tullett, said Mr. Powell “had tears in his eyes” when he learned of the verdict.
Trial experts estimate that his lifetime medical costs alone could reach $17 million, said Newman, who litigated the case with partner Ed Sanocchi.
The verdict is one of the jury's largest awards for the MTA, and jurors told the Post they are still considering their verdict.
In March, a jury awarded a $72.5 million verdict to a cancer patient who was hit by an MTA bus.
And in 2019, a young man who was paralyzed by a falling sleeper won an astonishing $110 million verdict.
