After working at Costco for 24 years, Christine D’Onofrio was allegedly fired for speaking too loudly. D’Onofrio is Deaf and cannot self-regulate the volume of her own voice. D’Onofrio was awarded $750,000 for emotional pain and mental anguish for being denied reasonable accommodations while working at Costco. GEC has extensive experience in labor and employment matters, including wrongful termination cases associated with ADA lawsuits, like this one. We have testified nationwide, and analyzed claims in this area across virtually every occupation and industry, from self-employed sole-proprietors to unionized laborers. Zeke Upshaw, a 26 year old member of the Grand Rapids Drive, the Detroit Pistons G League affiliate, died from cardiac arrest during one of the team’s games in March. His family recently filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the NBA, the Detroit Pistons and the owners of the team. The suit alleges that appropriate medical intervention did not happen in a timely manner after Upshaw collapsed, causing him to pass away two days later. GEC has extensive experience analyzing wrongful death claims across many industries and occupations. Our experts have testified and represented both plaintiffs and defendants nationwide in both federal and state courts in personal injury and wrongful death litigation. GEC expert, Matthew Murdock, testified to the economic damages associated with the injury of Shane Ackerschott on behalf of the plaintiff. The jury awarded the plaintiff damages of $7.96 million. Mr. Ackerschott was paralyzed from the waist down while at an urgent care facility and claimed negligent actions were taken by the doctors and the facility as a whole. HDI Global SE, insurers for Aryzta, have filed a lawsuit alleging negligence by a contractor retained to build a metal walkway over its bread making machine in Pennsylvania. The lawsuit alleges that metal chips from the walkway had fallen into the equipment, contaminating the bread and dough production lines, which resulting in Aryzta withdrawing one of its food products. GEC's financial expert's are industry leaders in providing rigorous financial analysis regarding claims of all types, from product liability to breach of contract, and powerfully and clearly testifying to their conclusions. You can see more about GEC's financial expertise here. There are construction injury incidents almost every day across the country. A particular incident that occurred recently involved an independent contractor who fell 12 feet from the upper portion of a staircase where, allegedly, a temporary safety handrail had been removed without warning to him. This contractor is in the midst of suing the construction company in question. GEC has extensive experience in forensic economics and particularly in construction injury cases. We have testified all over the country and have found great success with our methodology utilized within our economic analyses. GEC's methodology and research was recently cited by the Supreme Court of the State of New York as basis for ruling on a construction injury claim. Switzerland-based Syngenta was found negligent in selling genetically modified corn seed and Kansas corn growers were awarded damages of $218 million.Over 7,000 Kansas corn growers were awarded compensatory damages of $217.7 Million when Switzerland-based Syngenta was found negligent in selling genetically modified (GM) corn seed to the Kansas corn farmers, which contained a genetic trait not approved by China at the time. China is a large importer of U.S. corn and thus when the genetic trait, MIR162, was detected in corn shipments from the U.S., shipments were halted. The loss of the Chinese market resulted in corn growers in the U.S. experiencing a significant drop in the price of corn and suffering long-lasting economic damage. This is the first of eight class action lawsuits brought against Syngenta, where total nationwide damages to U.S. corn growers from being shut out of the Chinese market is estimated to exceed $5 Billion. GEC has extensive experience with crop litigation. One such case involved damage analyses associated with hundreds of farming operations resulting from an unexpected drift of a herbicide that was sprayed on BLM land. GEC was retained by the plaintiffs to assess the economic damages to the farmers.
The Supreme Court of the State of New York Cites GEC's Expert Research and Methodology As Basis for Ruling on Economic ClaimThe Supreme Court of the State of New York - New York County ruled that The GEC Group's economic analysis was correctly founded on industry data in line with and specific to plaintiff's claim that an injury caused him to lose employment and earnings as a cement and concrete laborer. The court noted that The GEC Group appropriately considered "data published by Local 18A and the District Council of Cement and Concrete Workers in New York City" to measure future earnings. The court further noted that plaintiff's claim is at odds with the industry data presented by GEC, and in particular that the works hours and earnings claimed by plaintiff are "rare and fail to take into account the downtime during an employee's work life." In contrast, the court ruled that plaintiff's claim, as presented by plaintiff's economist, was speculative and unsupported by industry data that was presented by The GEC Group. The court awarded the economic damages calculated by GEC. The Economic and Legal Impact of Robot Cars: Insurance, Liability, and DamagesThe widespread adoption of robot cars could have a revolutionary impact, reducing injuries and fatalities and transforming the industry from car ownership to ride-share services. The auto insurance industry may wither, as the idea of personal car ownership slowly disappears. And without human drivers, or insurance policies to match, traditional approaches to liability may have to evolve. Already, with a rapidly growing list of computerized functions such as antilock braking, electronic stabilizing, traction controlling, tire pressure monitoring, adaptive cruise controlling, blind-spot detecting, collision warning, lane-departure warning, and emergency brake assisting, one begins to wonder, who's really driving.
The courts have faced disruptive technologies before. In 1916, the New York Times declared that autopilot systems / aeroplane stabilizers would “make the heavier-than-air machines practically foolproof." Like autonomous vehicles, these aviation advancements were lauded as great safety improvements, and were expected to have a significant impact on liability, making it more likely that autopilot manufacturers would be held to account when planes did crash. Also in the early 1900s, automatic elevators began to replace manual elevators, and when the initial technology proved dangerous, states began enacting specific safety requirements for elevators. The insurance industry developed a special “elevator liability” insurance, and courts deemed elevators “common carriers” which held operators and manufacturers to the highest duty of care under the law. In a robot car future, will liability shift from man to machine? Who will carry what type of insurance? And how will litigation change, and what will damages look like? Jury Finds Agency, DuPont Negligent in Land CaseBusiness Week
"A federal jury has found the Bureau of Land Management and E.I. DuPont de Nemours and Co. negligent in the use of an herbicide blamed for damaging thousands of acres of crops across a broad swath of southern Idaho. “The verdict was welcome news to some of the 130 farmers whose potatoes, sugar beets, grains and corn crops were destroyed for several years when winds blew the powdery herbicide on to their nearby farmland." "The farmers allege they lost millions of dollars worth of crops from 2000-2004 because the broad spectrum herbicide either killed plants or made land barren." "The jury deliberated for nearly three days before reaching its unanimous conclusions, ending a trial that lasted more than six weeks by finding DuPont 60 percent at fault and the BLM 40 percent to blame." The GEC Group provided five days of expert testimony to the jury in the bellwether trial regarding the economic damages suffered by the four bellwether farmers. GEC testified that lost crop income and associated debt-based costs for these four farmers totaled $16.4 million; the jury awarded $16.4 million. GEC collected, managed, and analyzed over 1.6 million documents, interviewed and met with hundreds of farmers, crop buyers and agronomists, and testified in federal court regarding the crop loss and resulting economic damages sustained by the plaintiffs. |
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