Firm News Richard Jurewicz Obtains Record Recovery in Berks County

Senior Partner Richard Jurewicz Obtains Record Recovery in Berks County

Galfand Berger Senior Partner, Richard Jurewicz, recently obtained the third highest recovery ever recorded in Berks County, Pennsylvania.  Mr. Jurewicz obtained a $2.2 million settlement for a fifty-one year old factory worker severely injured on a coil stacker machine.  The worker’s  torso was trapped and part of his digestive system cut when the loading bar of the machine pinned him to the machine’s frame.  As a result, the worker suffered severe internal injuries which required several surgeries and a nearly three month hospital stay.

Mr. Jurewicz filed suit against the machine’s foreign manufacturer claiming it was liable for the worker’s injuries as a result of its poorly designed and built machine. The manufacturer built the coil stacker machine involved in the worker’s accident as a replacement for an older machine that the worker’s employer had used since the mid-1970s.  Mr. Jurewicz argued that the manufacturer should have built the new machine with guards at the entrance where the coils enter the machine.  Without such guards, the machine’s loading bar created a “pinch point” hazard, which entrapped the worker.  Mr. Jurewicz also argued that the machine’s control panel should have had an option to move the coils in jog or reverse modes when they got stuck.  Again, this basic safety feature was missing in the manufacturer’s flawed design.

Notably, in 2007, Mr. Jurewicz also obtained the second highest recovery in Berks County: a $2.5 million settlement on behalf of a fifty-five year old truck driver who fell twelve feet while helping a South Jersey refinery employee guide an asphalt-loading pipe into his tanker.  The unclogging of a blockage caused the pipe to jump up and knock the truck driver down twelve feet onto the concrete floor below and to suffer permanently disabling injuries.  Mr. Jurewicz argued that the refinery’s lax safety precautions had caused the truck driver’s fall.

Galfand Berger has been representing catastrophically injured clients for over 65 years and has a long history of raising the bar for obtaining verdicts and settlements in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. If you or someone you know has been injured, please call Galfand Berger toll free at 1-800-222-USWA (8792) to speak with Mr. Jurewicz or one of our other attorneys about your legal rights