$250,000 Settlement – Drive-Thru Worker Suffers Fracture and Undergoes Multiple Back Surgeries When Car Crashes Through Wall

Our 41-year-old client was working at the drive-thru window of a local hot dog restaurant when a negligent driver stepped on the accelerator and crashed through the wall of the restaurant, pinning our client between counters. The entire incident was caught on a graphic video, showing the car smashing through the wall and our client’s panicked reaction as she was pinned.

At the emergency room, our client was diagnosed with a fracture to her left big toe. She also suffered from back pain and neck pain, which persisted for a long period of time despite our client attempting several different kinds of treatment. Additionally, she experienced traumatic flashbacks of the incident and developed a fear of cars hitting buildings close to the road, including her own apartment building. Neurosurgeons eventually determined that when she was crushed between the wall and the counter, our client’s prior spinal fusion hardware was damaged, causing her tremendous pain. She required an additional surgery to remove the old hardware, along with spinal decompression and further fusion with multiple screws placed in her spine. Following surgery, she suffered a wound at the surgical area and had to undergo a further procedure to clean the wound and reposition one of the screws. Unfortunately, complications continued. It was determined that the fusion surgery had failed, and our client had repeated issues with fluid retention. Her pain continues to this day, and she missed a tremendous amount of work as a result of her injury, surgeries, and ongoing complications.

Our client had another attorney before she found our office but was unhappy with his work because of a lack of communication. In addition to representing her for the injury claim, our attorneys were also able to represent this woman on a workers’ compensation claim because she was working at the time she was injured. This allowed us to help our client get all her medical bills paid, along with reimbursement for her lost wages. We plan on obtaining a workers’ compensation permanent partial disability award for her in the future, for pain and suffering, along with a lump sum workers’ compensation settlement to resolve the entire claim. We were also able to negotiate a personal injury settlement of $250,000 – the policy limits for the at-fault driver. After settlement, we worked with the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation to dramatically reduce the amount it was claiming out of settlement, allowing us to maximize recovery to our injured client. Although our client continues to deal with the pain caused by the at-fault driver crashing through the drive-thru wall into her, she was happy to make the best of the situation and to have our attorneys by her side making sure the insurance company did not take advantage of her.