$2.76 Million Verdict for Widow and Estate After Defective Axle Killed Ohio Motorcyclist
Won by Elk & Elk Co Ltd.
A Fulton County jury awarded $2,761,228 to the widow and estate of James Worman after a fabricated axle shaft sold by Hart's Machine Service fractured beneath the couple's 1973 Honda trike, killing James and severely injuring his wife Pamela.
What happened
On the evening of May 8, 2011, James Worman, 63, and his wife Pamela were riding his self-assembled 1973 Honda trike east on State Route 18 near Cecil, Ohio. The right rear axle shaft fractured without warning. The tire pulled free, the trike careened into a roadside ditch, and both riders were thrown from the vehicle.
James suffered catastrophic spinal injuries that left him paralyzed from the chest down. He never fully recovered and died of his injuries on June 17, 2012. Pamela sustained fractures to her legs, arms, and ribs and required five surgeries.
The axle shaft had come from Hart's Machine Service, Inc., a Cecil-area shop. When James ordered the part, Hart's did not stock it. Instead of sourcing it from a recognized manufacturer, Hart's had the part fabricated by an individual who owed the company money. That fabricator, Michael Jarzembski, produced an axle that was never heat-treated or induction-hardened, two standard processes that give steel axle shafts the strength and fatigue resistance required for road use. The part went out the door and into service with no testing and no disclosure that it fell short of industry standards.
Gary Cowan and Kimberly Young of Elk and Elk Co., Ltd. tried the case on behalf of Pamela Worman and Carl Wright, as personal representative of James Worman's estate. Cowan presented metallurgical evidence showing that the axle lacked the hardening properties any competent supplier should have verified before selling the part as road-worthy. The theory of liability was breach of implied warranty under the Ohio Products Liability Act: Hart's, as a supplier, warranted the axle fit for its intended purpose, and the unfinished fabrication it provided was not.
On May 6, 2015, the jury returned a verdict of $2,761,228.15. The jury awarded Pamela Worman $1.33 million in compensatory damages for her own injuries and allocated $1.42 million to James Worman's survivorship and wrongful death claims. The award was reported as the largest jury verdict in Fulton County history at the time.
Hart's appealed. On June 30, 2016, a unanimous three-judge panel of the Ohio Sixth District Court of Appeals affirmed the verdict in full. Hart's then sought review by the Ohio Supreme Court, which declined the appeal in February 2017, leaving the $2.76 million judgment intact.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
More proven verdicts from Elk & Elk Co Ltd
All Elk & Elk Co Ltd proven verdicts →A Cuyahoga County jury awarded $39 million to the widow of a highway paving inspector struck and killed on Interstate 271 after the paving contractor failed to follow its court-approved safety plan.
A Hamilton County, Ohio, jury awarded $2,063,255.51 to the family of Judy Helen Collins, 73, who died in November 2019 after complications of a hiatal hernia repair. Jurors found surgeon Robert Bradley, MD, liable for medical malpractice and wrongful death after he did not obtain a CT scan a radiologist had recommended and did not recognize signs of re-herniation. The same jury cleared the radiologist and his imaging group. The verdict came on Oct. 24, 2024, after a two-week trial.
Related product liability verdicts
Sullivan Papain was among the firms representing New York State against Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds, Brown & Williamson, and Lorillard, securing a $25 billion recovery through the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement.
C. Steven Yerrid, the youngest of Florida's 11-lawyer 'Dream Team,' added racketeering and conspiracy charges that tripled the damages ceiling, helping the state secure what was then the largest civil settlement in American history against the tobacco industry.
As co-lead counsel in the federal Roundup multidistrict litigation and the first firm to sue Monsanto in 2015, Weitz and Luxenberg helped negotiate a $10.9 billion settlement resolving approximately 125,000 non-Hodgkin lymphoma claims against Bayer-owned Monsanto.
After fifteen years of litigation and three failed bankruptcy maneuvers by Johnson and Johnson subsidiaries, Ashcraft and Gerel attorneys R. Bryant McCulley and Michelle Parfitt helped negotiate a global, uncapped settlement of at least $5.5 billion covering approximately 76,000 ovarian-cancer claims.