Broken JFK Escalator Traps Boy's Foot, Jury Returns $1.25 Million Verdict
After trial: Judge Weinfeld declined to set aside the jury's $1,200,000 pain and suffering award as excessive, so the $1,250,000 verdict stood in full. On the claim tried to the court under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, judgment was entered for the plaintiff against Lufthansa in the sum of $125,000, a tenth of the total, reflecting that airline's smaller share of the fault. No appellate decision in the case turned up in searches. Aer Lingus, Lufthansa, and Westinghouse Elevator Company were institutionally backed defendants, two national air carriers and a division of a major manufacturer, and nothing in the record indicates any difficulty collecting.
Won by Hess & Leibowitz, PLLC.
On October 11, 1985, a nine-year-old boy's foot was trapped where broken comb sections left a gap at the top of an escalator in the Aer Lingus and Lufthansa arrivals area at John F. Kennedy Airport. The escalator kept running after his sneaker caught, and by the time the power was cut and he was freed, his right foot was crushed and permanently damaged. A federal jury found Aer Lingus Irish Airlines and Westinghouse Elevator Company, which maintained the escalator, responsible and returned a $1,250,000 verdict, $1,200,000 for pain and suffering and $50,000 for medical expenses; the claim against Lufthansa German Airlines was tried to the judge, who found that airline negligent as well. The court refused to set the pain and suffering award aside as excessive. Alan B. Leibowitz of the firm's predecessor, Simonson Hess & Leibowitz, P.C., was of counsel for the plaintiff.
What happened
On October 11, 1985, a nine-year-old boy was riding an escalator in the international arrivals building at John F. Kennedy Airport, in an area shared by Aer Lingus Irish Airlines and Lufthansa German Airlines. As his step reached the top platform, his sneaker caught in a gap left by broken or missing comb sections, the teeth meant to guide a rider's foot safely off the moving stairs. His right foot was pulled into the mechanism, and the escalator kept running. Only after a delay was the power cut and the boy freed.
A registered nurse who saw the injury described it in later testimony as 'the most painful looking sight I have ever seen,' with 'massive torn flesh' and the bones of the child's foot visible through the wound. The boy's foot healed with lasting damage: a half-inch shortening that doctors expected to grow to an inch and a half as he aged, a three-shoe-size difference between his two feet, and atrophy of the calf muscle on the injured side.
His mother, Juliana Williams, sued on his behalf in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. She named Aer Lingus and Lufthansa as the airlines that jointly leased and controlled the escalator area, and Westinghouse Elevator Company, which held the contract to maintain the escalator after installing it in 1971. The claim against the airlines was that they failed to keep the escalator and its comb plates in safe condition for passengers; the claim against Westinghouse was that it failed to maintain equipment it had agreed to keep safe. Because Lufthansa is a German state-owned carrier and qualified as a foreign state under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, the case against it was tried to the court rather than the jury, with the jury's findings serving only an advisory role; the claims against Aer Lingus and Westinghouse went to the jury directly.
The jury returned a special verdict of $1,250,000: $1,200,000 for past, present, and future pain and suffering, and $50,000 for past, present, and future medical expenses. U.S. District Judge Edward Weinfeld refused to set the pain and suffering award aside as excessive, so the full $1,250,000 stood. On the claim tried to him, the judge found that Lufthansa, Aer Lingus, and Westinghouse had each failed in their duty to passengers using the escalator, but he apportioned Lufthansa the smaller share of the fault between the two airlines: Aer Lingus had taken on responsibility for maintaining the shared facility, its representative had actual notice from early September 1985 that the escalator was out of alignment and losing comb teeth, and Lufthansa was entitled to rely on Aer Lingus to have Westinghouse make the repairs. Judgment was entered for the plaintiff against Lufthansa in the sum of $125,000, a tenth of the total.
Alan B. Leibowitz of Simonson Hess & Leibowitz, P.C., a predecessor firm to Hess & Leibowitz, PLLC, served as of counsel for the plaintiff. No appellate decision in the case turned up in searches, and later S.D.N.Y. opinions still cite the $1,200,000 pain and suffering award as one the court upheld.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.CourtListener, opinion: Williams v. Aer Lingus Irish Airlines, 655 F. Supp. 425 (S.D.N.Y. 1987), Judge Edward Weinfeld: establishes the $1,250,000 jury verdict ($1,200,000 pain and suffering, $50,000 medical expenses), the escalator entrapment facts and the boy's permanent foot injuries, the $125,000 apportionment against Lufthansa, and Simonson Hess & Leibowitz, P.C. (Alan B. Leibowitz, of counsel) as plaintiff's counsel
- 2.Justia mirror of the same S.D.N.Y. opinion, Williams v. Aer Lingus Irish Airlines, 655 F. Supp. 425, confirming the verdict amount, the injury facts, and the case posture
- 3.Fuentes v. Consolidated Rail Corp., 789 F. Supp. 638 (S.D.N.Y. 1992): a later S.D.N.Y. opinion citing Williams v. Aer Lingus, 655 F. Supp. 425, 426, for the proposition that Judge Weinfeld upheld the $1,200,000 pain and suffering award to the nine-year-old whose foot was caught in the escalator, confirming independently that the award was not disturbed
More proven verdicts from Hess & Leibowitz, PLLC
All Hess & Leibowitz, PLLC proven verdicts →On February 13, 2004, a Bronx jury awarded $86,735,134 to Frank Miraglia, a 45 year old construction laborer who fell into a trench when an unsecured plank collapsed under him and was impaled on a steel rebar that severed his spinal cord, leaving him a paraplegic. Steven L. Hess, then of Simonson, Hess & Leibowitz, P.C., was trial counsel; the firm continues today as Hess & Leibowitz, PLLC. The honest frame: the trial judge reduced the award to $25,030,134, and in January 2007 the Appellate Division, First Department trimmed it further, sustaining $5 million for past pain and suffering, conditioning the future pain and suffering award on a reduction from $10 million to $5 million (a reduction Miraglia accepted by stipulation), and cutting future medical expenses to $8,056,222, which left the judgment at just under $20 million.
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