$125 Million Settlement for Lawyer Paralyzed by Falling Utility Pole at a Union City Bus Stop
After trial: This was a pre-trial settlement, not a jury verdict. Verizon agreed to pay $125 million total, $118,275,000 to Maria Meister and $7 million to her husband, before the case went to trial, and an Essex County Superior Court judge approved it at a friendly hearing in May 2020.
Won by Mazie Slater Katz & Freeman, LLC.
A 43-year-old utility pole that Verizon had been told to remove in 1999 snapped and fell on attorney Maria Moser Meister at a Union City bus stop in 2017, leaving her with a severe brain injury and paralysis. In May 2020 a New Jersey judge approved a $125 million settlement, reported as the largest personal injury settlement in state history.
What happened
Maria Moser Meister was a lawyer, a wife, and a mother. On January 23, 2017, she was waiting for a bus in Union City, New Jersey, on her commute into New York, when a wooden utility pole snapped and came down on top of her. The pole was 43 years old and rotted. It crushed her head and body where she stood.
She survived, but the injuries ended the life she had known. Meister suffered a severe brain injury, multiple fractures in her spine, and broken ribs. She was left paralyzed from the chest down, with limited use of her left arm and impaired vision. Her husband, Peter Meister, was appointed her legal guardian, and it was Peter who carried the lawsuit forward, both on her behalf and for his own losses.
The suit, filed in the Superior Court of New Jersey in Essex County, named Verizon New Jersey, PSEG Services Corporation, Altice USA, and NJ Transit among the defendants. The record the plaintiffs assembled described years of neglect. The pole was jointly owned by Verizon and PSE&G. In 1999, PSE&G determined the pole should come down, removed its own equipment, and directed Verizon to remove its equipment and the pole itself. Verizon never did. According to the suit, the company had not inspected the pole since 1989. It stood for another 18 years, until the day it fell on Meister.
In May 2020, a state judge in Essex County signed an order approving a $125 million settlement, a step required by the court because Meister was under guardianship. Verizon paid nearly the entire amount. PSE&G, the pole's co-owner, contributed $250,000. Under the reported terms, $118,275,000 was designated for Maria Meister and $7 million for her husband. David Mazie of Mazie Slater Katz & Freeman, who represented the family, said afterward that "because of their egregious actions, coupled with the catastrophic injuries to Maria, Verizon came to the table."
Because the case resolved by settlement rather than verdict, there was no appeal to wait out and no risk of the recovery being cut down by a higher court. The agreement made the funds available for the around-the-clock care that Meister's injuries require, and it closed the case for good.
The New Jersey Law Journal reported the deal as the largest personal injury settlement in New Jersey history. The previous mark, set in 2005, was $46 million. This one was more than two and a half times larger.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.New Jersey Law Journal: Verizon Paying $125 Million to Lawyer Paralyzed by Falling Utility Pole·Archived copy
- 2.NBC New York (AP): Woman Struck by Telephone Pole to Receive $125M From Verizon·Archived copy
- 3.Superior Court of New Jersey, Essex Vicinage: Meister v. Verizon New Jersey Inc. et al.
- 4.Mazie Slater Katz & Freeman, LLC (firm)·Archived copy
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