Some who work in the agricultural field in Oregon know that many of the jobs have an element of danger. It can only take a small move to make a person suffer a severe personal injury. This was the case for one young man who recently won a lawsuit against the manufacturer of the machine that maimed him.
The man, who was 23 years old when he was paralyzed from the waist down, was awarded a large sum after jurors found that he had suffered personal injury while using heavy machinery on-the-job. The man was working with a hay-bale cutting machine when he was crushed into a space that was only an inch wide. Doctors say that the incident caused his body to be essentially cut in half.
Sadly, personal injuries occur all too frequently in Oregon agricultural facilities. In fact, similar multiple personal injury incidents, including ones that resulted in mangled arms of one employee and another where a worker lost his fingers had occurred in the past. In this most recent personal injury case, the victim has been told that he will never walk again.
When a person in Oregon suffers personal injury as a result of the action — or inaction — of another, they sometimes seek to make a claim against those that were deemed responsible. This is the case here, where the machine manufacturer is the subject of the claim. Presumably, workers’ compensation benefits were separately provided as a result of his employment, which likely barred the man from suing his employer directly. In many cases, victims are able to use any money they are awarded in a third-party personal injury lawsuit to recover some of the financial losses suffered at the hands of a negligent party.
Source: oregonlive.com, “Oregon agricultural worker gets $6 million for hay bale machine accident that left him paralyzed,” Aimee Green, June 21, 2013