Paralyzed Tree Cutter Wins $3.5 Million From Insurers After Employee Status Ruling
After trial: The case was argued at the N.C. Court of Appeals in March 2015 and settled on May 18, 2015, before an opinion issued, with AmGUARD paying $2.5 million and AIG $1 million.
Won by Hardison & Cochran.
A tree cutter was paralyzed from the waist down in 2008 when a tree held up only by vines fell on him near Mebane, North Carolina. Every insurer denied workers' compensation coverage, but the Industrial Commission found he was an employee. The case settled for $3.5 million while at the Court of Appeals, with AmGUARD paying $2.5 million and AIG paying $1 million.
What happened
In 2008, T. Brice was working for Mike McCoy, who ran MCI Landscape & Tree Care, on a job clearing trees near Mebane, North Carolina, to make way for a Norfolk Southern railroad. Brice had done labor jobs for McCoy before, including work in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and he thought of McCoy as his boss. He had been on the Mebane job about a week.
The accident happened while he was cutting a supporting tree in a cluster of leaning trees. All but one of them came down. Brice did not know the last tree was being held up only by vines. When the vines gave way, the tree fell and struck him in the back. The blow caused a severe spinal injury and left him paralyzed from the waist down. A veteran, he was treated at the VA hospital in Richmond, Virginia, which has a spine center. Recurring bed sores kept him admitted there for most of the three or four years before the case settled.
Paying for that care was the problem. Every insurer involved in the project denied his workers' compensation claim. McCoy maintained that Brice was an independent contractor, which would have put him outside the workers' compensation system. The coverage picture was also tangled. McCoy had given the subcontractor, Adams Construction, a certificate of insurance showing workers' compensation coverage through AmGUARD Insurance Co. for another of his businesses, My Heating & Air Guy. That policy was cancelled at some point, and AmGUARD argued that McCoy and his tree care company were uninsured on the day Brice was hurt. Court records show Adams Construction had questioned why a heating and air company was clearing land, yet did not take McCoy off the job while it waited for a proper certificate.
A previous attorney had told Brice he had no case. That lawyer never filed against two of the defendants, including AIG, the insurer for Adams Construction, and dismissed AmGUARD without prejudice. J. Jackson Hardison of Hardison & Cochran in Raleigh took it on, added AmGUARD back and filed against the other two.
The North Carolina Industrial Commission then found that Brice was an employee, not an independent contractor. Hardison said factors that may have weighed in that decision included the substantial control McCoy exercised over his work and the fact that McCoy had listed Brice as an employee with one of his insurers. The case went to the North Carolina Court of Appeals and was argued there in March 2015. It settled on May 18, 2015, before the court issued an opinion.
The settlement totaled $3.5 million. AmGUARD paid $2.5 million and AIG paid $1 million. Horner Services, the general contractor, paid nothing. Opposing the claim were Trula Mitchell, Susan Burkhart, John Tomei and Sharon Scudder, who represented the various defendants and insurers. North Carolina Lawyers Weekly reported the result in September 2015.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
More proven verdicts from Hardison & Cochran
All Hardison & Cochran proven verdicts →A Johnston County jury awarded $3 million to commercial truck driver Keave Bayes after a log fell on him at a logging deck, and John Paul Godwin of Hardison and Cochran, with co-counsel Sanford Thompson, secured the full verdict.
A 4-3 North Carolina Supreme Court decision held that state employees cannot invoke sovereign immunity to block individual-capacity wrongful death claims, arising from the death of an NCSU maintenance worker killed by a pressurized refrigerant flange.
Related workplace injury verdicts
After nearly 30 years of litigation, Markovits Stock and DeMarco secured a $742 million-plus-interest settlement for approximately 23,000 Navistar retirees whose healthcare and life insurance benefits had been repeatedly reduced.
Paul Napoli served as court-appointed co-liaison counsel for nearly 10,000 firefighters, police officers, and construction workers who developed respiratory diseases after working at Ground Zero, securing a settlement worth up to $712.5 million against the city and its contractors.
Jose Valdivia, 25, was building scaffolding at the Phillips 66 refinery in Lake Charles when a co-worker above him lost his grip on a steel scaffold bar. It struck him on the head and spine through a hard hat and full protective equipment. He is in a wheelchair with limited speech. Brock never reported the accident to OSHA.
On September 7, 2019, Ulysses Cruz, a 48-year-old United Airlines ramp worker serving as a wing walker at George Bush Intercontinental Airport, was struck from behind by an Allied Aviation Fueling Company of Houston van whose driver said the morning sun was in his eyes. Cruz was paralyzed from the chest down and suffered a stroke two days later that cost him the use of his dominant right arm. After a two-week trial before Judge Ravi Sandill, a Harris County jury on October 25, 2021 found Allied 70 percent and driver Reginald Willis 30 percent at fault and awarded Cruz, his wife and their two children $352.7 million in compensatory damages. Judge Sandill conditioned denial of a new trial on a $117.5 million remittitur of noneconomic damages, which the family accepted, and an amended judgment of about $235.3 million was signed February 7, 2022. Allied appealed, the parties reached a confidential mediated settlement, and on July 18, 2023 the First Court of Appeals vacated the judgment and dismissed the case at the parties' joint request.