Articles Posted in Fatal Spinal Injury

One Sunday, plaintiff, then twenty-seven years of age, was returning home from church services with her two children, a daughter then, 3 1/2 years of age and son, then 2 1/2 years of age, accompanied by her mother, then 62 years of age. The group proceeded along Buhrem Avenue in Bronx County and came abreast of defendants’ one-story taxpayer building. At this point, the infant daughter walked ahead, necessitating her mother’s ‘catching up’ to ensure that she did not go near the street. On the top of defendant’s building was a brick parapet approximately seven feet in height and one hundred feet long. This parapet had been observed to be leaning outward toward the sidewalk for a period of at least six months prior to the accident. The falling of this parapet wall occasioned the accident.

A doctor said that, plaintiff testified that she turned around to see how far her mother and son were behind, and heard her son asking for a cookie. Her mother stopped and reached into her bag to get him a cookie. Then plaintiff turned back to her daughter and heard a loud roar. When she turned around, she saw bricks were falling and hit the side of her body. She ran over and saw her mother and son under the bricks. A bystander rushed to aid plaintiff and the fallen victims and through his intervention plaintiff was able to remove her son, who was moaning, from the debris. He took plaintiff and her son to the hospital. Plaintiff, holding her injured son on her lap in the back seat of the vehicle, had for the first time a chance to look at his body. She testified that ‘his legs were hanging off at the sides. He had a little sun suit on, so it was very clear to me what I saw. I went to push his legs back on but I was afraid they would fall off. And as I did so I grabbed his shoes and saw that his ankles were the same way his thighs were’. Plaintiff’s son died on the evening of the same day from cardiac arrest following surgery necessitated by the previous personal injuries he sustained. The personal injuries sustained by plaintiff’s mother were severe, including comminuted compound fractures of the legs, pelvis, and ribs, a severe avulsion laceration of the scalp, and a spinal cord trans-section at about the middle of her back which paralyzed her from that point down. She was conscious with some intermittent periods of unconsciousness, and underwent two operations not under anesthesia. Plaintiff’s mother died as a consequence of her spinal injuries on May 19, 1970.

A Lawyer said that, after trial the jury returned a verdict in favor of plaintiff’s son’s father as administrator of the deceased infant in the amount of $150,000 for wrongful death and $25,000 for conscious pain and suffering. The trial court reduced the award for wrongful death to $40,000 and for conscious pain and suffering to $5,000. The jury verdict in favor of plaintiff’s father, the surviving spouse o plaintiff’s mother, in his capacity as administrator of her estate in the amount of $75,000 for wrongful death and $25,000 for conscious pain and suffering was not disturbed.

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Modern medicine has experienced many advancements over the past 100 years. Many of these advancements have come from technology and pharmacological discoveries, while others have come to pass by scientific research and clinical trials. However, as one doctor has learned, many of these discoveries are a result of wartime experiences.

Contrary to many beliefs, both ancient and modern, there is nothing glorious about warfare. The grim truth of the matter is that there are at least two absolute facts about war: #1 In war young men and women die, and #2 There is nothing that anyone can do to change number one except stop the war. For some reason our species seems to have an overwhelming desire to destroy itself. There is however, some good that has come from our experiences in the battlefield. Many new methods to treat fatal spinal cord injuries have been learned by our battlefield experiences and have been transferred over to the civilian world.

One such example of learning such techniques occurred during WWII when many pilots were severely burned. Many of these pilots volunteered to be test subjects for a doctor by the name of Archibald McIndoe who pioneered the use of plastic and reconstructive surgery techniques that are still in use today. A study claims that another such example is that with beginning with the Iraq war and continuing into Afghanistan, the use of improvised explosives devices (IED) are in widespread use and have caused almost countless numbers of head and spinal injuries. Many of the techniques that battlefield doctors and nurses have learned in order to save the lives and limbs of these soldiers are making their way into the civilian medical community.

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