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What Is The Value Of A Young Man’s Lost Eye?

Prior to the accident, my client David was your typical fourteen year old boy who spent his time playing baseball, basketball, soccer, computer games and hanging out with his friends.  His family had recently moved to Oxford, Chester County, Pennsylvania from Texas.  Although he was new to the area, he made friends quickly and settled into his new school almost immediately.  David had been doing very well, both academically and socially in his new Chester County home until the day of the car crash.  

On  a fall day, several years ago, my client David was riding to his Kennett Square, Pennsylvania Middle School with his older brother.  He was in the front passenger seat stopped at a stop sign when a pickup truck traveling from the other road, cut the corner too sharply striking the left front bumper of David’s vehicle causing both airbags to deploy.  David was struck in the face by the airbag forcing his right eye to actually dislodge from its socket.        

David was rush to Southern Chester County Medical Center’s emergency room where an examination revealed that the globe of his right eye had ruptured.  The cornea (the focusing surface of the eye) and sclera (white portion) were both lacerated, and his retina (which converts images into electrical impulses that are sent to the brain for processing) was severely damaged and totally detached.  David was rushed to surgery, where a specialist unsuccessfully tried to repair the damage.  Eight days post surgery, while still in the hospital, David was returned to the operating room where the eye surgeon discovered during the second surgery that the eye lacerations extended far deeper than had been originally thought.  The damage to David’s right eye was so severe that nothing more could be done to save David’s vision.  At the age of 14, David lost the use of his right eye.

When David returned to school two months later, he was embarrassed and very self conscious.  He had been fitted with a prosthetic sclera shell to make what remained of his natural eye appear more normal.  The device fit over the eye like a contact lens to hide the deformities and scarring.  Unfortunately, even with the prosthesis in place, it was still obvious that David’s right eye was much different than his left.  David would wear the prosthesis while at school and on social occasions, but it was very uncomfortable and irritating.  He would remove the shell as soon as his social obligations were over for the day.  Without the shell, his eye was substantially deformed, a condition that he would only permit his family to see.  He was so embarrassed by the disfigurement  that he never dated during the remainder of high school.  He sat out every dance and was even too embarrassed to attend his prom.  His disfigurement and partial blindness kept him from experiencing the social activities that can make high school fulfilling and memorable.

The insurance company representing  the truck driver as well as the insurance company for the passenger vehicle in which David was riding both refused to consider the seriousness of David’s injuries.   Both defendants first attempted to defend the case by claiming that David’s vehicle was stopped in a dangerous position because it was in front of the stop sign.  However, the police accident reconstruction investigator testified that the vehicle was stopped in a safe position well behind the stop sign.  In addition, David was not the driver.  The  defense attorneys  for David’s vehicle argued that the airbags deployed properly and that this was a proper deployment for this type of accident despite the fact that the speed of the glancing impact with the bumper was only five miles per hour. 

Other experts stated that due to the low speed and glancing tap to the front left bumper causing nothing more than scrape marks, the air bags should never have deployed.  They stated that it was a defect in the manufacture and design of the airbag deployment system which caused them to deploy.

After three years of litigation and as the case drew closer to trial in the Chester County Court, both defendants realized that they were not making traction blaming David’s brother for the accident.  They then turned on each other.  The defendants spent many thousands of dollars in legal and expert fees blaming my client’s brother and then each other.  Finally, when the jury was actually being picked, the defendants finally offered a fair and reasonable settlement – something that could have been avoided  years before had they only paid attention to the fact that, through no fault of his own, David’s life was changed forever.  They wound up paying significantly more than was originally demanded prior to trial preparation.                          Peter J. Hart, Esquire