$109 million personal-injury award in Western Pennsylvania offers insight into tort system
Click to skip ad »
Show Thumbnails
When Carrie Goretzka's two young girls ran out onto the porch of their suburban home 30 miles east of Pittsburgh in the late afternoon on June 2, 2009, what they saw was a scene of unrelenting horror.
»Read story: $109 million personal-injury award in Western Pennsylvania offers insight into tort system
»Read story: $109 million personal-injury award in Western Pennsylvania offers insight into tort system
Comments (100)
The company is at fault and this family definitely deserves alot of money, like 1-2 million. 109 million is insane. How many business' will be put out of business with one lawsuit? How many jobs will be lost? This is a rightful case, 9 times out of 10 it's somebody looking to get rich, and they do.— neddyflanders- Until you lose a loved one due to someone else's negligence and work, just shut up. The family deserves every penny they can get from this company.— kd45music
- What so many of you don't understand is that this is not a REWARD for the family, it's PUNISHMENT for the company. That's why the damages are so high--so that the corporation feels the financial pain and the effect is significant enough for them to change their culture of carelessness and mismanagement.
If your two kids had to watch your wife burn to death while they were helpless to stop it, you'd realize that a billion dollars doesn't fix that; it's straight-up malfeasance on the part of a corporate entity that displays a demonstrative history of price-gouging, improper conduct, and lack of public stewardship.— SteveFappig - I believe this award is appropriate, as it will probably cause the company to be sold and new management brought in. The costs will be borne by the stockholders, who previously profited from the poor maintenance.
However, the bigger point is that the law should be changed to pay the punitive damages to the public and not to the plaintiff.— phillyguy36 - Don't forget that juries know that up to 40% of whatever they award is going to the lawyers and they sometimes try to compensate for that by giving an inflated damage award.— intelliwoman
- who walks out towards a down electric line ?— BYEPHILLY
- This is why we should have power lines under ground like most other countries. 100 Million seems more or less fair given the thing fell 3 times. All the corp respond to is money.. if the damages are too low nothing will change.— Gradhospital
- I don't think it's enough, each of the girls will have nightmares the rest of a their lives, they should get equal amounts of 100 mil each. The power company execs who approved the splicing policy should go to jail. The managers and supervisor who oversee the splicing of these wires should go to jail and the union that didn't refuse to use this flawed repair policy should also be sued. This wasn't an accident , this was negligence by the power company from top to bottom. They should pay much more and the union should be ashamed of themselves for following this policy of splicing 7500 k wires.— krautmef1
- and personal responsibility continues to die in the this country. For all the morons who think that "soaking" a corporation is the appropriate response, I guess you don't realize that all that will do is raise rates for their customers. BTW here's a handy tip. Don't go anywhere near downed power lines.— Larry Cheswald
- You don't often read stories in the paper about people who get unfairly low compensation from large corporations in court.
It seems obvious that the company was negligent. Why were there so many improper spliced wires? If there was adequate government inspection, this woman would be alive.
BTW, 30% is standard in this type of cases. If you lose, you get zero. Pretty common knowledge.— pachysandra - Should there be an award. Yes, of course. However, as long as you have juries decide the monetary damages this is to be expected. It's not thier money. At least not directly. All customers will be paying for it indirectly.— TheOnionPeeler
- You see a downed power line always assume it's live and...BAAACK AWAAAAYYY!!! You don't go check it out! You go back in the house and You call 9-1-1 or the power company. The death is tragic but not worth $109 million of which 1/3 goes to the lawyer.— Kolitz
- Take it in a lump sum. Don't go the annuity route or you'll be calling JG Wentworth in no time.— jevans
- Just a few quick points here: 1. Most people do not have landline phones anymore; and, if they are like me, their reception in the house sucks. 2. When a wire goes down, it should blow a fuse up the line, hence why there are so few people electrocuted anymore. When a line goes to ground, all the electrons in the system rush to that point. As they rush along, they create heat which, like in your home, blows fuses. Not only was the power company culpable because that line had fallen; but, the fact that the fail safe fuses (on transformers, reclosures, sectionalizers, and the big fuse in the substation) did not work. There is no way that the distribution controllers in their control room did not see this happening. They let it go on for 20minutes. They could have opened the fuse in the substation to make it stop. It looks like to me, they did not do this probably because it would have meant dropping everyone on that circuit (usually around 1000 people). The company was completely at fault, and if you ask me, callous in their decision making.— Master Dreamz
- This article was shocking, however I did get a charge out of it, soon it will amp up more law suits. If wires are down don't be around. I learnedit in elementary school. Award is way to much money.Way to much.There are positive and negative things to be learned about this incident.It will be over turned on appeal.— TimmyDay
Classifieds:
Site Services:
Partners: