Jury Awards Illinois Teen $910,000 as Result of Bicycle Accident

 Posted on February 07, 2014 in Personal Injury

Media outlets are reporting that a high school student from southwestern Illinois and his parents will get a combined $910,000 award as a result of injuries the teen suffered in a bicycle accident almost four years ago. The defendant in the lawsuit was a construction company, which was in the process of constructing an office building in the city of Alton. It was alleged and the company admitted it had misplaced the steel beam that the teen hit while riding his bicycle to school in March of 2010.

According to an article published by the Edwardsville Intelligencer, the award was divided into $725,000 to the teen and $185,000 to his parents. That article said that at the time the teen was riding his bike to school the day of the accident, construction workers were working on adding the roof to the building they were completing. The project supervisor testified that just before the accident, one of the workers had just loaded multiple steel beams into the front of a backhoe that was then parked next to the sidewalk. The supervisor then left that area and the worker followed him, leaving no one to monitor the front of the building where the backhoe was parked.

The ends of the beams extended beyond the backhoe's bucket by about six feet, and was four feet off the ground.

According to his attorney, it was then that the teen rode his bike into the beams, causing serious facial injuries and missing teeth. The supervisor heard the commotion and went towards the scene of the accident, where he found the teen sitting on the ground bleeding from his face. Both the paramedics and the police were called to the scene. The paramedic was able to testify to the amount of pain the teen seemed to be in on the way to the hospital. His injuries required him to be airlifted to Cardinal Glennon Hospital in St. Louis, due to the deep slice in his nose, gash in his cheek, lost tooth, and another tooth which was displaced into his jaw. While the resulting surgeries were successful, the teen will likely endure permanent loss of feeling to the area in this cheek below the scar. His medical expenses were almost $103,000.00. The construction company has since admitted some liability; there were no barricades or other warnings to pedestrians or bike ridings warning them of the dangers posed by the construction area. The jury did not have to determine liability, their only responsibility was to calculate the amount of damages to be awarded. Although it is much more common to hear of injuries sustained in a car accident, serious injuries that result from another party's negligence can happen in all types of settings. If you or someone you know was injured in an accident, consulting with a personal injury attorney can help you determine if you have a cause of action. Contact us today for a consultation.