LIT client received judgment for over $6.5 million after U.S. Supreme Court Rejects Defendants’ Appeal

Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.

Ending a six-year legal battle, the United States Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal by barge company Reinauer Transportation Companies, LLC of Staten Island from a judgment of the Supreme Court, Ulster County that awarded in excess of $5.2 million to a resident of Ulster County, for injuries he suffered as a result of an accident that occurred on a Reinauer barge in the Long Island Sound on July 21, 2003. With interest the judgment exceeded $6.5 million. The Ulster County man, a barge captain employed by Reinauer for 30 years, fell to the deck of the barge while descending a fixed ladder from the roof of the wheelhouse when a TV antenna holder used by the crew as a de facto handrail at the top of the ladder broke off in his hand. He fractured his right femur close to his hip and his right elbow and went on to suffer from reflex sympathetic dystrophy, also known as complex regional pain syndrome. He tried to return to work, but was physically unable to continue. Thereafter, the man, by his attorneys Larkin Ingrassia, PLLC (LIT) of Newburgh, sued Reinauer in 2005 under the Jones Act, a federal law that provides maritime workers with the right to sue their employers for negligent acts or omissions that cause personal injuries. After a three week trial in Kingston an Ulster County jury awarded the man nearly $5.3 million damages in July 2008. Over the next three years LIT successfully defended appeal after appeal all the way up to the Supreme Court of the United States. The defendants appealed to the Appellate Division, Third Department, which unanimously affirmed the judgment in September 2009. The defendants then asked for leave to appeal to the New York Court of Appeals, which was denied by that Court in April 2010, setting the stage for the defendants’ unsuccessful request to the United States Supreme Court to hear their appeal.