Case Histories

STATE TO PAY $8.5 MILLION IN CRASH KILLING FOUR

The State has been ordered to pay $8.5 million to the three surviving children of an Amherst couple killed with their two children in a crash on the Thruway in Lancaster. A New York State Supreme Court Judge found the New York State Thruway's failure to inspect and maintain a portion of the toll road near Lancaster to be 100% responsible. The judge ruled that officials knew about and failed to repair the roadway. The accident claimed the mother, father, and two of the four children traveling in the car.

FAMILIES OF VICTIMS IN CHASE GET $5.1 MILLION

Jurors awarded $5.1 million to the survivors of two people killed in an accident in Portville following a high-speed chase by state police.

The State Supreme Court jury deliberated for three hours before returning a wrongful death award of $4.7 million for the family of the driver of the car, a mother of three, killed in the accident, and $390,000 to the family of her male passenger.

The female victim was driving west on Route 417 when a pickup truck crashed head-on into her auto. The pickup truck, at the time of collision, was being pursued by the state police at a high rate of speed from Weston Mills until shortly before the crash. The driver and passenger of the auto were pronounced dead on arrival at Olean General Hospital.

WIDOW SETTLES SUIT FOR $2.6 MILLION
OHIO MAN KILLED BY LUMBER FALLING FROM TRUCK

The widow of an Ohio man fatally injured when lumber fell from a truck and smashed into his car near Olean will receive $2.6 million, according to an out-of-court settlement.

Insurance carriers for Frontier Lumber Co.Inc. of Buffalo, Wood Treaters of Buffalo, Inc. and the driver and passenger of the truck, both of Little Valley, agreed to the cash deal after 11 weeks of an Olean jury trial in State Supreme Court.

The award goes to the widow, 51, of Solon, Ohio, whose husband died of multiple head injuries more than a year after the crash. That crash also killed the driver of another car.

According to attorney Francis M. Letro, the victim, 53, a schoolteacher, was driving home with his wife from a New England vacation trip and had stopped in Olean to eat. The crash occurred on Route 417, about five miles west of Olean, when an eastbound flatbed truck overturned. The driver had his truck driver's license for less than three months at the time of the accident and was driving down the side of a hill when his truck overturned at a curve in the road and his load of landscaping timbers fell off and hit the westbound victim's car.

"Doctors said every bone in the victim's skull was fractured" when the lumber crushed the driver's side of the vehicle. The victim died 14 months later in a nursing home after being a patient at three hospitals, Letro said.

MOTORCYCLE/POLICE VEHICLE COLLISION / BUFFALO POLICE DEPARTMENT FOUND 100% NEGLIGENT. AWAITING TRIAL IN WRONGFUL DEATH DAMAGES FOR SURVINGING FAMILY

An off-duty Buffalo firefighter and his passenger were killed in a spectacular collision on Route 33/Kensington Expressway when an off-duty Buffalo police officer wrongfully pulled into the path of the victim's motorcycle. The jury found the Buffalo police department 100% negligent in the accident.