Four years ago, Gabrielle Smith’s father was crushed to death by the street sweeper he was driving in a work accident in Gwinnett County.
A state jury this week awarded Smith $4.25 million after she won a lawsuit against the manufacturer that designed the street sweeper.
But attorneys who represented the company said the net payout will be far less than that because jurors found her father was partly at fault in the fatal accident.
“We considered this a good result for the defense given that (Smith) asked for $25 million and sought punitive damages, and the jury apportioned 49% fault to the decedent, which resulted in a net verdict of $2,167,500 and no punitive damages,” said Atlanta attorney Brannon Arnold.
The verdict, according to Gwinnett County court records, came in Monday after Smith’s legal team argued that the designer “failed to ensure that the heavy-duty mechanical broom sweeper was in safe operating condition and free of defects,” said a news release from attorneys who helped litigate his case.
It followed a five-day trial and jurors spent more than a day deliberating.
A team of attorneys from the Beasley Allen law firm in Atlanta and The Cooper Firm, based in Marietta, partnered to argue the wrongful death suit on Smith’s behalf.
Orlando Hall, a 47-year-old Dallas man, was working as a subcontractor for E.R. Snell on the morning of Sept. 7, 2017, according to the news release. He was driving one of the Snellville construction company’s M6 Avalanche street sweepers when it began smoking in Duluth.
Hall pulled into a QuikTrip parking lot along Pleasant Hill Road at Club Drive to inspect the equipment issue. Attorneys said he was trying to loosen debris when he got pinned between the hydraulic arm and the truck’s hopper after his leg inadvertently activated controls on the side of the street sweeper.
Smith’s attorneys convinced jurors that the controls “were negligently placed in close proximity to a crushing hazard” and should have been guarded to prevent such accidents from happening.
“Our evidence showed the defendants negligently placed faulty equipment in the stream of commerce, which ultimately led to Mr. Hall’s tragic and gruesome death,” Kendall Dunson, one of the family’s attorneys, said in the news release.
Court records show Smith filed her complaint in Gwinnett State Court in July 2018. The lawsuit claimed Schwarze Industries, the Alabama-based manufacturing company that designed the M6 Avalanche street sweeper, used equipment that was defective and unsafe for operators like Hall. It also alleged that the unguarded controls and toggle switches on the sweeper’s exterior were prone to “unintended activation” that put operators at risk.
Schwarze was represented by attorneys from Weinberg, Wheeler, Hudgins, Gunn and Dial. According to a statement from the Atlanta law firm, Hall “left the engine running, climbed the side of the street sweeper, (and) wedged himself into a narrow compartment not meant for access behind a lockable door” moments before he was crushed to death.
Smith’s legal team pointed to a fatal workplace accident in Mesa, Arizona, that happened three years after Hall’s death. A mechanic named Jason Oswald was crushed the same way by the M6 Avalanche. Following Oswald’s death, Schwarze and parent company the Alamo Group redesigned the street sweeper and added guards to its outer control box.
“Because of this litigation, no one else using an M6 Avalanche street sweeper will suffer the same gruesome fate suffered by Orlando Hall and Jason Oswald,” attorneys said in their release.
Hall’s employer, E.R. Snell, was originally named as a defendant, but attorneys said they weren’t part of this week’s judgment.
About the Author
