$18.5 Million Settlement Reached in I-5 Motorcycle Crash Lawsuit
Category: Motorcycle Accidents
More Info: Personal Injury Loans
A Rochester motorcyclist was awarded an $18.5 million settlement in Lewis County Superior Court Wednesday in a lawsuit filed after he was critically injured in an April 2015 motorcycle crash in a construction zone on Interstate 5 in Centralia.
The settlement is likely the largest settlement of its kind from the Washington State Department of Transportation in Lewis County’s history, said attorney Kirk Bernard, of Bernard Law Group, PLLC in Seattle, representing Scott Bliss.
“It’s an extraordinary amount of money,” said Superior Court Judge James Lawler Wednesday, before he approved the settlement. “Of course, there were extraordinary injuries and that makes sense.”
The lawsuit, filed in June 2015, also named WSDOT’s contractor, Scarsella Bros. Inc, and the dump truck driver, Wesley Snelson.
Bernard spoke about what he characterized as the “hotly disputed case” after Lawler approved the settlement, saying Bliss was grateful for all of the support he’s received since his injury and is now hoping to move on with his life. He has been home for about a month, after more than a year spent in hospitals and other medical facilities, Bernard said.
Bliss, in a motorized wheelchair, attended the hearing Wednesday but did not speak.
“He’s appreciative of all the community support he’s gotten,” Bernard said.
At about 5:20 a.m. April 17, 2015, Bliss, 46, was riding his motorcycle on the Interstate 5 onramp off Harrison Avenue in Centralia where crews were doing construction for the I-5 Mellen Street to Blakeslee Junction project.
Bliss’s motorcycle collided with a dump truck driven by Wesley Snelson, an employee of Scarsella Bros. Inc., the contractor on the project, as it made an illegal u-turn, blocking the ramp, according to the lawsuit.
The truck should have used a gravel access road to turn around, but was allowed to make a u-turn in the on-ramp in the dark without a flagger to alert oncoming traffic, according to the lawsuit.
Bliss received critical injuries, including brain damage, and spent much of the next year in and out of hospitals and rehabilitation facilities.
Bliss’s partner and legal guardian, Cheryl Aton, filed the multi-million dollar lawsuits against the Washington State Department of Transportation, Scarsella Bros. Inc and Snelson in June. The cases were later consolidated into a single suit.
The case was previously scheduled to go to trial in October. Bliss and Aton were originally asking for a jury to award $30 million in economic damages along with an undetermined amount of general damages.
Continue reading...
See the full, original post here: https://www.chronline.com/stories/185-million-settlement-reached-in-interstate-5-motorcycle-crash-lawsuit,44793
About TriMark Legal Funding
TriMark Legal Funding was established in 2003 and is one of the oldest lawsuit funding providers in the nation. TriMark provides pre-settlement funding and post-settlement funding, sometimes referred to as 'lawsuit loans', to injured plaintiffs. We cover hundreds of different types of personal injury lawsuit loans and cash advances on PI cases, employment litigation, work injury accidents, mass tort litigation, multidistrict litigation and more.
| Personal Injury Loans | Mass Torts |
Click here to see the original article.