David M. Paris, Managing Partner

Verdicts & Settlements

• $1 Million Paid by Trucking Company in Central Ohio Collision

Amount:	$1,000,000
Court:	USDC, Southern Dist. of Ohio
Date:	February 23, 2011
Plaintiff's Counsel:	David M. Paris
Description: Truck A 58 year old gentleman, on disability, and his wife were driving from New York to Cincinnati, Ohio when a semi tractor trailer went left of center striking them head on. The wife was not injured. He sustained a mild TBI and multiple othopedic injuries, all of which healed except for his left upper extremity. He did not lose any earnings. The primary dispute was whether the cap on damages for pain and suffering applied or whether the 27 cm surgical scar on his upper arm constituted a "permanent and substantial deformity" which rendered the caps inapplicable.
David M. Paris

• Court Approves $31 Million Class Action Settlement Against State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company

Amount:	$31,000,000
Court:	Summit County Court of Common Pleas
Date:	October 2006
Plaintiff's Counsel:	David M. Paris, Kathleen J. St. John
Description: Class Action The Summit County Court of Common Pleas recently approved a $31 million class action settlement between State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company and its policyholders in Ohio. The case was filed in 1995 and was litigated by David M. Paris and Kathleen J. St. John for 11 years with multiple appeals, 35 depositions, and the production of more than 13,000 pages of documents before the parties were able to reach a resolution. The claim of the policyholders arose from a 1994 Ohio Supreme Court decision, Martin v. Midwestern, which declared the "other owned vehicle" exclusion to be invalid. Before that decision, this exclusion required that State Farm policyholders buy uninsured motorist coverage (U coverage) on all household vehicles in order for the policyholder and resident relatives to be fully protected. After the Martin decision, the continued purchase of U coverage on household cars beyond car No. 1 provided no additional benefits to policyholders or their resident relatives and, essentially, became coverage for "guests" who occupied a policyholder's household car. Our client lost his son in a motor vehicle collision and attempted to stack the uninsured motorist coverages on all 5 of his household policies. He was prevented from doing so because State Farm had a valid "anti-stacking" clause in the policy. It became apparent that no additional benefit was provided to our client or his resident relatives for paying U coverage premiums on the rest of the household cars. Our client had not been informed by State Farm either orally or in writing how Martin changed his policy. He further expressed the view that he didn't want to insure any and all guests who rode in his cars but was only interested in insuring himself and his family members who lived under his roof. The effects of Martin lasted approximately 35 months, until the Ohio Legislature passed a law that reversed that decision. For that 35 month period (1994-1997), the U coverage that State Farm sold its policyholders on household cars beyond car No. 1 was really "guest coverage" which was different in nature, scope, and application after the Martin decision than before. And, because it was different, the policyholders claimed that State Farm had a duty to inform its policyholders of this fact so that they had the opportunity to make an informed choice about whether to buy "guest coverage" on household cars No. 2, No. 3, etc. The opportunity to make an informed choice was important because some people wanted to purchase "guest coverage" in order to afford anyone and everyone who rode in their cars this protection, not just resident relatives of the household. Thus, the primary goal of the litigation was to require that State Farm return to its policyholders the opportunity to make that choice. The policyholders also claimed that State Farm made active misrepresentations to its policyholders in the renewal notices by failing to indicate that U coverage on household cars No. 2 and 3 was different in nature, scope, and application after Martin than before Martin. In addition, the policyholders advanced the novel theory that State Farm owed its policyholders a fiduciary duty in the sale of auto insurance and that duty included providing written disclosures about how Martin changed their policies. State Farm denied these allegations claiming that it did not owe any fiduciary duties to policyholders in this context and that, in any event, its 770 agents across Ohio did provide verbal disclosures to its policyholders about the effects of the Martin decision. Initially, State Farm asked the Trial Court to dismiss the case claiming that it was under no legal duty to provide this kind of notification and disclosure to its policyholders. The Trial Court overruled that request in 1998. In addition, in 1996, the policyholders asked the Court to certify this matter as a class action because State Farm had uniformly failed to make the written disclosures to all of its Ohio policyholders. The Court agreed and explained that the most efficient way to deal with all of these claims on a uniform basis was to certify it as a class since common questions of fact and law existed amongst all of the policyholders. State Farm appealed that decision but, in May, 2000, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled in favor of the policyholders and agreed that this matter should be certified as a class action. Following that ruling, discovery began in earnest in which State Farm produced over 13,000 pages of documents regarding its practices and procedures in marketing automobile insurance, etc. Depositions of 35 State Farm executives, agents, informational technology specialists, and plaintiffs took place throughout Ohio as well as California, Illinois, Colorado, and Louisiana. Policyholders in more than 660,000 households throughout the State of Ohio were identified and State Farm created an electronic data base to help determine the probable composition of policyholders and resident relatives living within a given household from October, 1994, through September, 1997, as well as the means to perform the calculation of any alleged household overpayment of premium for the U coverage in dispute. In 2003, State Farm, again, requested the Trial Court to dismiss the case and this time the Court did so. The policyholders appealed that decision and on December 30, 2005, the 9th District Court of Appeals reinstated the case ruling that a jury should make the determination whether or not State Farm owed its policyholders a fiduciary duty to provide a written disclosure about the Martin decision and, if so, whether the failure to do so was a breach of that duty. The Court also agreed with the policyholders that a jury should be permitted to decide whether State Farm had actively misrepresented the nature of the "guest coverage" to its policyholders after the Martin decision. State Farm appealed that decision. During the appeal, the class representatives and State Farm agreed to the settlement, after which the Ohio Supreme Court accepted the appeal. The attorneys at Nurenberg Paris are very proud that, after 11 years of litigation, State Farm agreed to the initial demand of the class representatives; to return to them the opportunity to tell State Farm whether they wanted "guest coverage" during that 35 month period or not; and if not, to obtain a partial refund of that premium.
David M. Paris	Kathleen J. St. John

• $940,000 Settlement For Industrial Injury

Amount:	$940,000
Plaintiff's Counsel:	David M. Paris
Description: Work Injury David M. Paris represented a 41-year-old single male who was injured at work on April 7, 2004. Our client worked at a garbage transfer station and was operating an excavator equipped with a boom. Two hydraulic cylinders on either side of the boom allow it to articulate upward and downward. While loading garbage onto a dump truck, he heard a pop and saw that one of the boom cylinders had become detached and was hanging down from the boom. At that time, the boom and bucket were not resting on the ground. The plaintiff applied the brake and shut down the equipment. In order to prevent further damage, he kept the boom in that position and contacted the repair company. The chief mechanic from the repair company spoke with the plaintiff and understood exactly what had happened to the cylinder. He provided certain instructions to our client about what to do until he arrived to make the repairs. When the mechanic arrived, he directed the plaintiff to raise the boom to its most upright position leaving the bucket approximately eight feet off the ground. The mechanic then retrieved a rope from his truck and directed another of plaintiff's co-employees to use the rope to pull the 300-lb. cylinder up so that it would line up with the screw holes from which it had become displaced. The chief mechanic then directed the plaintiff to climb onto the roof of the cab of the excavator to closely watch the cylinder line up with the pin holes from which it became detached. At that point, the chief mechanic began working at the ground level of the excavator out of the line of vision of the plaintiff and his co-worker. In that position, the chief mechanic drained one of the hydraulic lines from the cylinder. This resulted in the boom crashing to the floor causing the plaintiff to lose his balance and fall 14 feet from the roof of the cab. OSHA investigated this case and was critical of the conduct of the chief mechanic. In addition, the plaintiff retained the services of a safety consultant who expressed the opinion that the chief mechanic was obligated to bring sufficient staff to make the repairs without endangering the plaintiff and other co-employees since this was clearly not a one-man job. Moreover, the safe and proper procedure for performing this task was to first place the boom/bucket on the ground or otherwise support the bucket with another object as a means of "lock out/tag out." This is important because, while the boom is off the ground under hydraulic pressure, there is a possibility that the release of that pressure will cause the boom to move. This information was part of the chief mechanic's safety manual and, most importantly, was part of the safety manual of the excavator. In deposition, the chief mechanic reluctantly conceded that had he brought sufficient helpers our client would not have been injured in the fashion in which he was on that day; that if he had not bled the hydraulic line, our client would not have been injured; and had he supported the boom on the ground or propped something under it, our client would not have been injured. Essentially, he testified that he just wasn't thinking when he bled the hydraulic line. As a result of falling from the top of the cab, our client sustained a fracture of his L3 vertebrae and complex comminuted fractures to his right heel and left heel requiring surgeries to fixate the fractures and, subsequently, fusions of each ankle. He has been left with severe residuals from his injuries that will result in a permanent restriction in his ability to walk. He will be required to work in a sedentary capacity and will need to find a job with a sitting and standing option. While the defendants conceded that the chief mechanic failed to exercise reasonable care under the circumstances, it was their position that the plaintiff should not have placed himself in that position of danger and that his future economic loss was substantially less than what was claimed.
David M. Paris

• $950,000 Settlement to Heavy Equipment Operator for Near-Amputation Injury

Amount:	$950,000
Court:	Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas
Date:	December 2005
Plaintiff's Counsel:	David M. Paris, Ellen M. McCarthy
Description: Work Injury Our client was a 29-year-old heavy equipment operator who suffered a near-amputation of his foot. The settling defendants were the worker's employer and the equipment maintenance company. The incident occurred when the front fork of a large tow motor, on which the parking brake had been set, rolled into plaintiff's ankle. Our client's claims were based on the defectiveness of the parking brake and the failure to repair it despite knowledge of its defective condition. Our client's job duties required him to operate the tow motor to move heavy pots filled with molten metal. During this process, the plaintiff would set down a full pot in the yard and apply the parking brake before exiting the cab. On this particular day, he applied the brake, exited the cab, and was tightening the lid on a pot, when the tow motor suddenly rolled forward. One of the forks speared his leg just above the ankle, severing it part way through the bone. Immediately afterward, the plant manager verified that the parking brake was set and took written statements from an employee who heard the parking brake engage and saw the tow motor roll forward. Prior to this incident, the tow motor operator on a prior shift notified the employer that, during the week before the plaintiff's injury, the parking brake was not holding. Nevertheless, the vehicle was not taken out of service, nor did management call anyone to inspect or repair it. The employer's plant manager testified that if management had been notified that the parking brake was not holding the tow motor in place after it was engaged, it was mandatory that the tow motor be removed from service. He also testified that leaving it in service after such notification created a dangerous condition where injury was substantially certain to occur. The tow motor was maintained by an outside contractor. This co-defendant determined several months before the accident that the tow motor's brake system was full of oil sludge and needed to be flushed. It also determined that the parking brake's spring brake chamber needed to be replaced. The co-defendant's mechanic testified that, if the spring brake chamber had sludge in it, the parking brake would not hold the tow motor in place. There was, however, no evidence in the maintenance records kept by this co-defendant that the entire brake system was ever flushed; and the spring brake chamber was not replaced until after the accident. Plaintiff's engineering expert testified that the spring brake chamber was contaminated with sludge, causing the brake shoes not to fully engage, thus allowing the tow motor to move after the parking brake was applied. Plaintiff's expert also testified that the vehicle should have been removed from service immediately after the malfunction had been reported, and that it should not have been put back into service until they could either explain the episodic failure or fix it. The treating physician testified that the plaintiff sustained a near amputation injury, which makes it impossible for him to return to this type of work, and that he is now relegated to sedentary or light duty jobs. The employer's experts opined that the plaintiff's engineering expert's theory was impossible and there was no real explanation for the accident. The maintenance company hired an expert who opined that the parking brake must not have been applied by the plaintiff when he exited the cab. The orthopaedic surgeon retained by the employer to examine the plaintiff opined that his near-amputation injury was caused by him tripping and falling over the fork rather than by the fork rolling into him. That surgeon did concede, however, that in his 40 years of trauma surgery he never saw this type of injury caused by a trip and fall, nor had he heard or read of such an occurrence in medical literature.
David M. Paris	Ellen M. McCarthy

• Court Approves $10 Million Class Action Settlement Against Spitzer Auto Dealer

Amount:	$10,000,000
Court:	Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas
Date:	June 2005
Plaintiff's Counsel:	David M. Paris, Brenda M. Johnson
Description: Class Action A $10 million settlement was approved by Judge David Matia in the Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court on June 2, 2005, on behalf of 74,000 Ohio consumers. This brings to an end five years of litigation involving a $97.50 fee Spitzer inserted, as a pre-printed line item, into its Buyers Agreement. The Class of consumers were represented by David M. Paris of the Nurenberg, Plevin Law Firm and Ronald I. Frederick. Spitzer had been inserting a $97.50 fee in its Buyers Agreements since, at least, the early 1980s. In 1989, the Ohio Attorney General called this practice deceptive and forced Spitzer to stop charging this fee for what it described in its contracts as "delivery and handling." However, Spitzer continued the practice by changing the description of the fee to "dealer overhead." In 2000, Lisa Washington and Carol Violand filed suit against the Spitzer Dealerships claiming that this fee violated the Ohio Consumer Sales Practices Act because it was deceptive, made consumers believe that it was non-negotiable and, in effect, was an add-on item which raised the sales price of vehicles to be in excess of the advertised price. 120,000 consumer transactions were reviewed for the time period between August, 1998, and December, 2004. It was determined that consumers were charged and paid this fee in approximately 74,000 instances. The settlement requires that Spitzer pay damages to each customer in the amount of $134.20, which is comprised of a combination of cash and coupon. In addition, the settlement requires that Spitzer remove this pre-printed fee from its Buyers Agreements. Spitzer denied that charging this fee was a violation of the Consumer Protection statutes and argued that in 1989, then Ohio Attorney General, Anthony Celebrezze, gave it permission to insert the charge in its Buyer Agreements.
David M. Paris	Brenda M. Johnson

• Amtrak City of New Orleans Passenger Train Cases Resolved for More Than $21 Million Dollars

Amount:	More Than $21,000,000
Court:	United States District Court, Chicago, Illinois
Date:	May 2004
Plaintiff's Counsel:	David M. Paris, Jamie R. Lebovitz
Description: Passenger Train On March 15, 1999, an Amtrak passenger train left Chicago, Illinois, heading southbound with a final destination of New Orleans, Louisiana. This train, known as the "City of New Orleans," carried 206 passengers and 23 crew members. It consisted of two locomotives pulling 14 cars, and was operating on tracks owned and maintained by the Illinois Central Railroad Company. At around 9:46 p.m., the City of New Orleans entered the village of Bourbonnais, Illinois. Around the time the City of New Orleans was entering the village of Bourbonnais, a tractor-trailer truck, owned and operated by Melco Transfer, Inc., was leaving the Birmingham Steel plant. The truck, driven by John Stokes, was carrying close to 400 steel reinforcing ("rebar") bars. These 60-foot long rods overhung seven feet from the rear of the trailer. As the truck began to traverse the crossing, the City of New Orleans, was approaching the crossing at 79 mph. Just as the tractor-trailer was part way through the crossing, the Amtrak train violently struck it, hitting the trailer's rearmost axle on the left side. Many of their victims and their survivors filed lawsuits agianst Amtrak, Illinois Central, and Melco Transfer in both state and federal courts in Chicago, Illiniois. As with all mass disaster litigation, the lawsuits were consolidated before a single judge in both the Cook County State Court and the Federal Court. Judge Matthew Kennely presided over the consolidated actions in federal court and Judge Evans presided over the consolidated actions in state court. Attorneys Jamie R. Lebovitz and David M. Paris were two of just a handful of lawyers from around the United States appointed by Judges Evans and Kennelly as members of the Steering Committee to conduct the litigation on behalf of the victims and their families.
David M. Paris	Jamie R. Lebovitz

• $1.1 Million Settlement Against Emergency Room and Physicians

Amount:	$1,075,000
Court:	Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas
Date:	November 1997
Plaintiff's Counsel:	David M. Paris
Description: Automobile Accident and Medical Malpractice Plaintiff was out with his daughter delivering Girl Scout cookies. He saw a disabled car on` the side of the road and walked over to assist. While there, plaintiff was struck in the knee by a bumper of an errant vehicle. The emergency room doctor failed to appreciate a knee dislocation and vascular injury resulting in prolonged ischemia. Subsequent vascular surgeon failed to perform prophylactic fasciotomy and introduced a redundant arterial graft which kinked, resulting in further vascular insufficiency. Plaintiff sustained right leg amputation at the knee. The defendants contended that there was no evidence of a knee dislocation in the ER and the vascular surgeon contended that by the time he saw the patient it was too late to save the leg.
David M. Paris

• Physician Failing to Diagnose Impending Heart Attack Pays $507,000

Amount:	$507,000
Court:	Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas
Date:	October 1997
Plaintiff's Counsel:	David M. Paris
Description: Medical Malpractice/Wrongful Death On June 6, decedent complained to her family doctor of severe chest pain. Despite multiple risk factors for coronary artery disease, he misdiagnosed it as heartburn. She died on June 19 of myocardial infarction.
David M. Paris

• Recovery from Deadly Construction Accident

Amount:	$950,000
Court:	Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas
Date:	December 1998
Plaintiff's Counsel:	David M. Paris
Description: Construction Accident Decedent was working as a flagman at a construction site on the Ohio Turnpike. At that time, he was pinned between a dump truck being backed up by defendant and a shuttle buggy used to repave the highway. Defendant contended that plaintiff negligently placed himself in between two moving pieces of equipment and failed to heed the back up alarm on defendant's dump truck.
David M. Paris