$21.3 Million Verdict for Electrician Paralyzed by Garage Door Serviced Days Earlier
After trial: The $21.3 million is the $30.5 million jury award after the 70 percent fault finding against the garage door company. We found no appellate decision or post-trial ruling and could not confirm whether the judgment was paid.
Won by Christie Bell & Marshall.
Electrician Ralph Parker was paralyzed from the chest down in April 2006 when an overhead garage door at an Indianapolis warehouse activated and pinned him against a beam. A Marion County jury found Professional Garage Door Systems 70 percent at fault for servicing the door a week earlier. The jury's awards of $26 million to Parker and $4.5 million to his wife were reduced by his share of fault, leaving $21.3 million.
What happened
On April 6, 2006, Ralph Parker was working as an electrician at a building at 6990 West Washington Street in Indianapolis, hired to inspect and upgrade the wiring. He stood on an extension ladder above one of the overhead garage doors and moved a signal wire. The door activated and drove into him, crushing him against a beam.
Parker was trapped for about 34 minutes, until the opener's electric motor failed and the pressure let go. When the door released him he fell roughly 14 feet. He broke his neck and was paralyzed from the chest down, an injury that left him permanently disabled.
Professional Garage Door Systems, Inc., of Plainfield, Indiana, had sold, installed and serviced the doors at the building, and a technician had worked on this one a week before the accident. Investigators found that an inexperienced technician had over-tightened the clutch spring on the door opener, which disabled the clutch itself. With the clutch defeated, the opener had no way to slip when the door met resistance. Parker's lawsuit, filed in Marion County in 2007, alleged negligent inspection, service and repair of the opener.
The case went to a six-day jury trial in Marion Circuit Court in 2014, eight years after the accident, with roughly ten hours of deliberation. Lee Christie of Cline Farrell Christie & Lee tried it for Parker and his wife, Cheryl Proper. The jury valued Parker's damages at $26 million and awarded Proper $4.5 million for loss of consortium, a gross total of $30.5 million. By then Parker had lived with the paralysis for eight years.
Indiana applies comparative fault, and the jury put 70 percent of the responsibility on the garage door company and 30 percent on Parker. His award came down to $18.2 million and his wife's to $3.1 million, together $21.3 million. Meils, Thompson, Dietz & Beris of Indianapolis defended the company. The Indianapolis Business Journal reported the combined figure in October 2014, and The Indiana Lawyer later listed the electrician's verdict among the largest personal injury awards in the state.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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