Family of Man Killed by Turnpike Guardrail Settles Claims for $9.75 Million
After trial: The $9.75 million settlement was reached with four defendants (the contractor and the Turnpike Authority, the limousine company, and the two engineering firms), all institutional or insured parties, and is treated as paid. It was a negotiated settlement, not a verdict, so no cap or remittitur applies. A separate claim in the same case against guardrail-end manufacturer Trinity Highway Industries had been dismissed before trial. Citing a Texas whistleblower case that accused Trinity of concealing a 2005 design change to the same end-terminal product, Nagel Rice moved in Bergen County to reopen that dismissed claim for fraudulent concealment; available reporting differs on whether that motion was filed in 2014 or 2015, so no year is asserted here. No independent source found confirms what happened to the motion, and it does not affect the $9.75 million settlement with the other four defendants reported here.
Won by Nagel Rice, LLP.
Patrick Sweeney, a 34-year-old computer salesman, was killed in August 2006 when the car service driving him to Newark Liberty International Airport lost control on the New Jersey Turnpike near the Route 80 interchange in Bergen County and struck a guardrail that pierced the passenger compartment. His widow, Kristin Sweeney, sued the contractor that built the guardrail, the engineering firms involved in its design and oversight, and the limousine company, arguing the guardrail had not been built to the specifications required by its design. Attorney Bruce Nagel represented the family. After a three-year fight the case settled in 2009 for a combined $9.75 million paid by four defendants, $4 million of it in a settlement with the contractor and the New Jersey Turnpike Authority. A separate, previously dismissed claim against the guardrail's end-terminal manufacturer, Trinity Highway Industries, was not part of the settlement.
What happened
In August 2006, Patrick Sweeney, a 34-year-old computer salesman from Pearl River, New York, was riding in a black car service toward Newark Liberty International Airport for a business trip. Heading south on the New Jersey Turnpike near the Route 80 interchange in Bergen County, the driver lost control of the car, which left the roadway and struck a guardrail. Instead of redirecting the vehicle, the guardrail perforated and punctured the passenger compartment and killed Sweeney.
Sweeney's widow, Kristin Sweeney, sued the parties responsible for the guardrail's design, construction and oversight, along with Air Brook Limousine, the company that employed the driver. The guardrail had not been built to the specifications in its design plans: those plans called for it to sit six feet farther from the roadway, but it had instead been installed flush with a raised curb because of the terrain. Bruce Nagel, who represented the family, argued that the guardrail was installed too close to the road, that it should never have been built on top of such a high curb, and that Sweeney would have survived if it had been built as designed.
After a three-year fight, the case settled in October 2009 for a combined $9.75 million. The family reached a $4 million settlement with J. Fletcher Creamer & Son, the Hackensack contractor that built the guardrail, and the New Jersey Turnpike Authority. Air Brook Limousine paid $2.9 million. Maitra Associates, the engineering firm the state hired in connection with the guardrail work, paid $2.25 million, and DMJM Harris, the design engineer, paid $600,000.
The Turnpike Authority declined to comment on the case when the settlement was reported, citing pending litigation. Nagel said the guardrail had been a safety hazard from the day it was built, that his side had proved it should have been fixed, and that three years later it still had not been. According to Nagel, photographs his office took that year, three years after the crash, showed no change had been made to the placement of the guardrail.
A separate claim in the case, against Trinity Highway Industries, the manufacturer of the guardrail's impact-absorbing end terminal, had been dismissed before trial and was not part of the $9.75 million settlement with the other four defendants. After a whistleblower case in Texas accused Trinity of concealing a 2005 design change to that same end-terminal product, Nagel Rice asked a Bergen County judge to reopen the dismissed claim, arguing Trinity had fraudulently concealed information relevant to the case. No independent source confirms how that motion was resolved.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.NBC New York, Oct. 20, 2009: reports the $9.75 million wrongful-death settlement over the August 2006 guardrail crash that killed 34-year-old Patrick Sweeney on the Turnpike near Route 80 in Ridgefield, identifies Bruce Nagel as the Sweeney family's attorney, reports the $4 million settlement with the contractor and the New Jersey Turnpike Authority plus millions more from other parties, quotes Nagel that the guardrail was a hazard when built and still had not been fixed three years later, and notes the Turnpike Authority declined to comment citing pending litigation
- 2.The Legal Examiner, Nov. 2009 (blog, added detail only, not independent attribution; the page now returns HTTP 403): itemizes the $9.75 million settlement by defendant (J. Fletcher Creamer & Son $4M, Air Brook Limousine $2.9M, Maitra Associates $2.25M, DMJM Harris $600,000) and reports that the design called for the guardrail to sit six feet farther from the roadway
- 3.Federal Highway Administration guardrail-safety task force file (R42_Sweeny.pdf): a scanned copy of the Legal Examiner page above, filed in the federal guardrail-safety record; confirms the page existed but is an image scan whose text could not be read directly
- 4.Nagel Rice, LLP (firm)
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