Editor’s Choice: Jury Awards Edition

A woman who was diagnosed with breast cancer more than a year after telling her doctor about a lump in her breast won a jury verdict of $15 million against her doctor for malpractice.

Stephanie Tesorioro saw Dr. Paul Fisher of the Carol Baldwin Breast Cancer Center in New York complaining about a marble-sized lump in her breast in 2002. Although a mammography was taken, Dr. Fisher failed to see anything abnormal and sent her home telling her everything was ok for now and that she should get a regular screening in one year.

Attorney Robert Fallarino

Sixteen months later, the 50 year-old mother of three young children, found out the lump had grown to the size of a golf ball, and has since spread to her lymph nodes and bones.

During the two-week trial, Tesorioro’s attorney, Robert V. Fallarino, argued that the doctor should have performed a sonograph in the area where Tesorioro felt the lump. An oncology expert testified how the cancer spread throughout Tesorioro’s body and the impact of the missed early diagnosis.

“There was something there, something she felt, and it needed to be evaluated and if it had been, we would not be here now,” said Fallarino.

After a mastectomy, chemotherapy and radiation treatment, the cancer went into remission, but later returned, requiring Tesorioro to undergo chemotherapy about every week for the rest of her life.

A jury of six women returned a unanimous verdict awarding Teorioro $15 million.

Learn more about medical malpractice, or contact an attorney to help review your legal issues.

A jury awarded $2.7 million to a passenger in a car that exploded into flames after crashing through a guardrail and hitting an embankment.

The driver of the car was speeding on wet roads and reaching for a cell phone when the crash happened.

In 2009, Waldemar Baranowski lost control of a car he was driving carrying his passenger Jiri Renotiere. The car ran into an embankment and burst into flames. Neither of the men was wearing a seatbelt and the two were ejected from the car.  Renotiere fractured his face and his shoulder blade in the accident and landed in a ditch, suffering third-degree burns to the left side of his body, including his chest, arm, shoulder and foot.

Renotiere sued the driver for negligence. Witnesses in the four-day trial said Baranowski was speeding on wet roads.

Attorney Randall Spivey

“The defendant denied responsibility for the accident, even though the reason that the vehicle crashed was because he was speeding on wet roads on a curve and reached for his cell phone,” said Renotiere’s lawyer Randall Spivey.

Even though both men were unbelted, the jury found the driver 100 percent to blame for the accident and awarded Renotiere $2 million and his wife, Marie, $700,000 for loss of her husband’s services.

Spivey said the award will help his client get medical treatment that he could not afford before.

Renotiere underwent skin grafting procedures and a month of rehab, but the burns to his shoulder and foot left him with ongoing medical issues.

According to Spivey, the driver’s attorney, Kenneth Oliver, asked the jury to award the couple less than $100,000. But the six-person jury made up of four men and two women gave Renotiere $1 million for past and future medical expenses, $1 million for past and future pain and suffering and $3,000 for lost property.

“We feel that the jury was very fair and did the right thing because the accident would not have happened if the defendant had not driven carelessly,” Spivey said.

 Learn about personal injury or contact an attorney for help in reviewing your legal issues related.

A woman who was raped at her apartment complex won a $20 million judgment against her landlord for not telling residents of the building that there had been other sexual attacks on the property.

The woman, who lived alone, was attacked and raped and sodomized for more than 10 hours by a masked man at her apartment complex in west Houston in 2009. She sued the apartment complex for negligence and for deceptive trade practices.

According to the lawsuit, only weeks before she was raped, the apartment next door was broken into and a man had tried to rape that resident, but the apartment complex only told residents that there had been a break-in without informing them there was an attempted rape and a sexual predator was on the loose.

The woman had renewed her lease shortly before she was raped.

“The apartment complex issued a notice that an apartment had been broken into – the same warning that they would send out if a bicycle was stolen off a balcony or a TV was stolen out of an apartment,” said the woman’s lawyer, Tony Chandler. “The notice failed to mention that a burglary occurred, that the assailant waited inside, that a tenant was attacked and that there had been an attempted rape.”

According to Chandler, his client continues to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. After a weeklong trial, the jury awarded $7 million for physical pain and mental anguish, $5 million for future mental anguish and $8 million for violating a state law on business practices.

The man who raped her pled guilty to sexual assault and is serving a 20 year prison sentence.

Learn more about personal injury or contact an attorney to review your case.

A jury awarded almost $40 million to two farmers whose nursery businesses was destroyed by a cheap “knock-off” fertilizer that killed millions of plants.

Attorney Lawrence Baron

The farmers, who were from Canada, saw over 4 million blueberry plants and hundreds of thousands of other plants like azaleas, rhododendrons and Japanese maple trees die after using a fertilizer made by Woodburn Fertilizer Company and Sun Gro Horticulture.

During the month-long trial, the farmers argued that the manufacturers were trying to compete with Scott’s bestselling fertilizer “Osmocote Plus” by making a cheaper knock-off version of mixed ingredients that were untested.

According to the farmers’ attorney, the fertilizer was advertised as a controlled-release fertilizer, but released nutrients too quickly. Their proof was that plants where the farmers used other fertilizers did fine.

“It was kind of like a giant sixth-grade science experiment: Wherever the other fertilizers were used, the plants thrived. Wherever this fertilizer was used, the plants died,” said Lawrence Baron, one of the farmers’ attorneys.

The fertilizer manufacturers blamed the crop failures on the farmers, arguing that they used the product incorrectly and should have tested it first, but Baron argued the company made a cheap fertilizer to increase profits.

“In the early 2000s, (Sun Gro) wanted to get into the controlled-release market, but they wanted to do it on the cheap,” Baron said. “They didn’t want to invest the money into research and development and the factories to make it.”

The jury awarded the two farmers nearly $40 million for economic losses and the loss of customers.

Learn about product liability and how a lawyer can help you review your claim.