Paralyzed Forklift Operator's $17.34 Million Warehouse Racking Judgment Survives Appeal

On September 18, 2001, Leroy Rice was operating a forklift inside a frozen food warehouse at 2701 Red Lion Road in Philadelphia when the forklift bumped one of the storage racking columns lining the aisle. The racking shifted and tilted but held. Minutes later, as Rice got down from the forklift to go warn his supervisor, the structure gave way completely and sent roughly a ton of frozen food, stored in boxes weighing around 90 pounds apiece, down onto him. He suffered crush injuries to his spine. The trial court later described him as a permanently disabled paraplegic who is totally unemployable and will need personal assistance for the rest of his life. He gets around now with braces and a wheelchair.

The racking system had been manufactured by Interlake Material Handling Inc. in the 1970s. Stokes Equipment Company bought it from Interlake for the warehouse operation, and Walter A. Schmidt Co. installed it as Stokes's subcontractor in 1979. Rice sued Interlake in strict liability and brought negligence claims against the warehouse's owner, 2701 Red Lion Road Associates, along with Stokes, Schmidt, and Warehouse Technologies Inc., which had serviced the racking. Rice's side told the press at the time that the system had never been properly secured, that it was not fixed to the wall and that the stabilizing floor bolts meant to anchor it had sheared off. Every defendant except Interlake settled before the first trial.

The case went to trial twice. A Philadelphia jury heard it first in 2006 before Judge Eugene E.J. Maier, found that Interlake's racking system was a defective product and that the defect caused Rice's injuries, and awarded $10.6 million, which the trial court molded to about $12.3 million for delay damages. Interlake appealed. On June 26, 2009, the Pennsylvania Superior Court reversed and remanded, holding that the trial judge should have let Interlake put on evidence supporting its cross-claims that the settled co-defendants were negligent. The first jury's finding that the product was defective was not disturbed.

The second trial took place in February 2010 before Judge Joseph A. Dych of the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas, limited to damages and to Interlake's cross-claims. Interlake called no live witnesses and no experts of its own on those cross-claims, and Judge Dych entered a nonsuit against it, leaving the jury only the question of damages. On February 23, 2010, the jury awarded Rice $12,400,000. The judge denied Interlake's post-trial motions, rejected its request for a remittitur, and molded the verdict to $17,339,797.30 to account for delay damages under Pennsylvania's civil procedure rules, which compensate a plaintiff for the time a case spends in litigation.

Interlake and three codefendants appealed the molded judgment a second time. According to a February 29, 2012 report in the legal press, a three-judge Superior Court panel, Judge John L. Musmanno writing for Judge Jacqueline O. Shogan and Senior Judge James J. Fitzgerald III, affirmed the judgment in a memorandum decision dated February 22, 2012, rejecting Interlake's argument that it had been entitled to a complete new trial rather than one confined to damages. Thomas J. Duffy Jr., who is named as counsel for Rice in the trial court's opinion and who carried the case through both trials and both appeals, said afterward that the result showed the value of never giving up, and that the downside of a case running this long is that a client who needs treatment does not get it while the paper keeps moving. Interlake's counsel, Teresa Ficken Sachs, said the defense was disappointed that it still had not gotten the trial the first Superior Court panel ordered. No further appellate decision in the case has been found.