A state employee permanently injured while working on a highway accepts $4.5 million to settle his Passaic County suit. The plaintiff of Paterson, 47, a state Department of Transportation employee, was operating a lawn tractor along the shoulder of Interstate 80 in Totowa when a speeding, fully loaded dump truck rear-ended a passenger car nearby, causing both vehicles to careen off the road and hit his tractor, says the plaintiff’s auto accident lawyer, Raymond Gill Jr. of Gill and Chamas in Woodbridge.
The plaintiff was taken to St. Joseph’s Hospital in Paterson, where a CT scan revealed skull fractures and left-brain hematomas. He suffered a post-traumatic brain injury, neurological injuries which necessitate him to walk with a cane, vision disturbances, hearing loss and post-traumatic headaches, Gill says. The Social Security Administration claimed him totally disabled.
