$28 Million Settlement for Electrician Burned Over 60 Percent of His Body in Newark Panel Explosion
After trial: A court-approved settlement, so there is no appeal and no post-trial reduction. The agreement was reached in 2022 and approved in Essex County in February 2023.
Won by Davis Saperstein & Salomon.
Carlos Gomez was burned over 60 percent of his body when an electrical panel exploded while he worked in a Newark office building in 2019. His suit against IDT Corp. and other defendants settled for $28 million, approved by the Essex County Superior Court in February 2023 and ranked by the New Jersey Law Journal as the largest reported New Jersey personal injury settlement of the court's 2022-2023 term.
What happened
In 2019, electrician Carlos Gomez was standing on a six-foot ladder inside a closet that housed an electrical panel in a Newark, New Jersey office building. He was working on the building's electrical system when energized high-voltage components inside the panel exploded. The blast threw him off the ladder and set him on fire. The flames covered his body from his knees to his head.
Gomez survived with burns over 60 percent of his body. Doctors placed him in an induced coma for six weeks. In the years that followed he underwent more than 160 surgical procedures, including skin grafts and laser treatments, with the prospect of roughly 20 more operations still ahead of him. He was left with permanent, disfiguring scars, post-traumatic stress disorder, and a need for lifelong care.
Samuel Davis of Davis, Saperstein & Salomon, P.C. brought suit on his behalf in the Superior Court of New Jersey in Essex County, with Christopher T. Karounos of Karounos & Associates, LLC as co-counsel. The case, captioned Gomez v. IDT Corp., et al., named the telecommunications company IDT Corp. along with other defendants connected to the building and the electrical work. According to the New Jersey Law Journal's account, no settlement offer was made before mediation; the parties reached agreement only after three mediation sessions.
The result was a $28 million settlement, listed by TopVerdict as the single largest personal injury settlement in New Jersey for 2022. The Essex County court approved the settlement in February 2023, which made the recovery final. Because the case resolved by agreement rather than verdict, there is no judgment for the defendants to appeal and no risk of the amount being reduced by a higher court.
The New Jersey Law Journal's Personal Injury Top Awards survey, published August 7, 2023, ranked the Gomez settlement as the largest reported New Jersey personal injury settlement of the court's 2022-2023 term. For Davis, Saperstein & Salomon, a Teaneck firm that has handled burn and workplace injury cases for decades, the case stands among its largest recoveries.
The $28 million compensated Gomez for his pain and suffering, his disfiguring scars, his emotional injuries including post-traumatic stress disorder, and the financial losses from a working life cut short at the scene of a single panel explosion. The money funds the surgeries he still faces and the daily care his burns will require for the rest of his life.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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