Injury Lawsuit Settled for $11.85 million

Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.

WASHINGTONVILLE, NY – A Washingtonville man left quadriplegic in a 1996 truck accident will get an $11.85 million settlement from General Electric Canada Inc.; GE Canada doing business as GE Hydro; Location Lomont Inc; Transport CLT Inc.; and truck driver Marc Attard. Keith R. Nelson, 32, now lives in a Suffern nursing home.

He gets around in a wheelchair, which he controls by sipping and puffing air through straw-like devices, said his lawyer, Elliot Tetenbaum. Nelson was driving a cement truck for Tetz & Sons Inc. of the Town of Wallkill, about 4:30 p.m. October 30, 1996, on Route 17 in Tuxedo. A 30-ton electric turbine being transported from Montreal to Elizabeth, N.J., broke free from its moorings on a truck ahead of Nelson. The turbine slammed into Nelson’s truck, forcing him into a spin that took the truck through a guard rail and down a 35-foot ravine.

An eyewitness to the crash, Timothy Mellinger, then of Harriman, testified that he had to drive into oncoming traffic to avoid the turbine. He and another witness told Tetenbaum the chains holding the turbine to the flatbed truck looked loose.

Tetenbaum said proper precautions and better care securing the turbine would have prevented the accident. “Mr. Nelson’s life has been irrevocably altered,” Tetenbaum said.

He added that Nelson will put the money toward medical care, and hopes to get a specially equipped home and van.

* Reprinted with permission of The Times Herald-Record