Stratton Faxon, Connecticut’s firm for trial law, helped to procure justice for a woman victimized by a defective tripod that had been manufactured by a Chinese company.
It happened at a restaurant called Knickerbocker’s in Middletown, Connecticut, in December 2003. A disc jockey was setting up a lighting display for a show. An 80-pound lighting fixture on an adjustable tripod came out of its socket and landed on Angela Wilson’s head. She was briefly knocked unconscious, and was treated by emergency medical technicians at the scene.
Shortly after the incident, Wilson began experiencing memory loss, headaches, gait disturbance and unexplained tremors in her leg. In time, a diagnosis of traumatic brain injury was applied to her situation, and she filed a civil action with the help of Connecticut’s firm for trial law, Stratton Faxon, based in New Haven. “Establishing liability and proving damages proved difficult in this case,” said Joel Faxon, “Special challenges existed.”
Faxon explained further. “They never found the Chinese company [that made the tripod]. We knew who it was, and brought a third-party action, but they never appeared,” Faxon said. The defendant was a Bronx importer called Visual Effects Inc., which sold the device.
The tripod was adjustable, but had no internal stop mechanism to keep sections from separating. Stratton Faxon retained engineer John R. Manning, of San Francisco, to analyze the tripod, which he deemed defective in its design.
Unlike ordinary negligence cases, products liability cases allow introduction of evidence that the defect was subsequently repaired or improved in a later design. “That provision of the Connecticut products liability statute was valuable in proving our case,” Faxon asserted. In subsequent versions of the tripod, a safety stop was built in.
The case was mediated by Superior Court Judge Theodore Tyma, in Derby, Connecticut, and the parties agreed to a settlement of $1.35 million.
The most controversial part of the case was proving that Wilson was actually injured, Faxon said. Because the objective tests of brain damage yielded no proof, the defense contended that she was simply malingering, and that the debilitating medical symptoms she claimed were simply faked.
Faxon retained psychologist Robert A. Novelly, of Branford, Connecticut, who testified that Wilson had suffered impairment of “executive functions” making it impossible for her to work or to function fully as a homemaker and mother. Novelly was recently disciplined by state licensing officials, but according to Faxon his firm was happy to rely on Novelly’s testimony, and would do so again.
“We are aware that Mr. Novelly has had disciplinary action in the past related to his delay in providing written reports to lawyers concerning his patients,” Faxon acknowledged. The disciplinary probation, which ended January 1, 2009, “has no impact on his qualifications as an expert, his quality as a persuasive witness or his ability to be a resource for his patients,” Faxon concluded.
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