Effingham Forklift Operator Wins $13 Million After Retrial Over Amputated Leg

Adelaida Anderson was operating a stand-up forklift at a FedEx warehouse in Effingham, Illinois in July 2017 when she hit a bump and lost her footing. The forklift's rear entry had no door or guard to keep her inside the compartment, and she fell out onto the floor. The machine kept moving and ran over her leg. The injuries required amputation of her left leg below the knee.

Anderson later developed a neuroma, a nerve growth that made using a prosthetic leg painful, and she was unable to return to work. Her home is a split-level with stairs on every floor, which made getting around difficult. She sued the forklift's manufacturer, The Raymond Corporation, arguing the machine was negligently designed because Raymond offered an enclosing door as an option on its stand-up forklifts but did not fit one as standard equipment.

The case first went to trial in 2021 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois. Anderson's expert, Dr. John Meyer, was prepared to testify that a door would have kept her from falling into the forklift's path, but the district court excluded that opinion under the standard for expert testimony set out in Federal Rule of Evidence 702. Without it, the jury found the forklift was not defectively designed and ruled for Raymond.

Anderson appealed, and on February 1, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit reversed. The court held that Meyer's door opinion met the reliability and relevance requirements of Rule 702, and that excluding Anderson's only expert on an alternative design could well have changed the jury's verdict. The panel sent the case back to the same trial judge, Stephen McGlynn, for a new trial.

The retrial ran eight days of testimony before a jury returned a verdict for Anderson in January 2024. Jurors found the forklift was unreasonably dangerous when it left Raymond's control and that the defect caused her injury. They awarded a total of $13,045,776: $2 million each for disfigurement, loss of normal life, risk of future harm, pain, and emotional distress, for $10 million combined, plus $870,776 for past medical expenses, $675,000 for past and future wage loss, and $1,300,000 for future medical expenses and household services. Jurors also awarded $200,000 to the estate of Anderson's late husband, Jeffrey Lee Anderson, for loss of consortium. Michael Warshauer represented Anderson at trial.

Raymond Corporation asked the court to throw out the verdict, filing a renewed motion for judgment as a matter of law and for a new trial under Rule 50. Judge McGlynn heard argument on July 11, 2024 and denied the motion the next day, holding that the evidence in the record could properly support the jury's verdict, that the jury had been properly instructed on increased future harm, and that nothing about the trial warranted a do-over. The court had already ruled in March 2024 that Anderson was entitled to prejudgment interest on the award under the Illinois personal injury interest statute.