$3.1 Million Settlement for Family of Wheelchair-Bound Woman Killed in Medical Transport Van Crash
Won by Rafi Law Firm.
Mike Rafi secured a $3.1 million settlement for the estate of Cynthia Louise Feijoo, a 61-year-old Albany, Georgia woman who died after her wheelchair was not properly secured in a medical transport van, with discovery exposing the transport company's false claim that she had been properly restrained.
What happened
On June 1, 2020, Cynthia Louise Feijoo, 61, of Albany, Georgia, was being driven to a cancer treatment appointment by Resource Management Systems in a 2017 Ford Econoline E350 van. The driver, Tom Wilkes, had not properly secured her wheelchair restraint. When the van was involved in a crash, Feijoo was thrown inside the vehicle. She died as a result of injuries from the wreck.
Before any lawsuit was filed, the transport company's representatives told Rafi that Feijoo had been properly seatbelted and that his case would fail. For a grieving family, that kind of early denial can be devastating, particularly when the defendant controls the vehicle, the logs, and the driver's account.
Rafi pushed into discovery. What he found contradicted the company's position. Evidence gathered during the litigation process showed that Feijoo's restraint had not been properly secured, directly undermining the defendant's version of events. Rafi described the pre-suit denial as 'extremely frustrating' but said that discovery was the key to proving what actually happened inside that van.
The case resolved before trial for $3.1 million. Because the settlement was reached without a jury verdict, no public court record exists memorializing the terms, but the outcome was reported by the Daily Report, a Georgia legal trade publication.
The case illustrates the vulnerability of wheelchair-bound passengers in non-emergency medical transport. Federal and state regulations require that wheelchair occupants be secured with both a wheelchair tie-down system and an occupant restraint, but compliance and enforcement vary widely. When a transport company denies a deficiency before discovery, the burden falls on the injured family's attorney to compel production of vehicle inspection logs, driver training records, and any onboard footage.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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