Fox 29 story

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On May 1, 2006, Scott Skirpan was working in a landfill in Easton, Pa., when he was hit and run over by a 60,000-pound Caterpillar track loader, a heavy bulldozer-type of vehicle that can move four tons of dirt at a time.

Both of Skirpan’s legs were crushed below his hips. The driver of the track loader fled the scene in a panic. The 47-year-old Skirpan was left bleeding to death alongside a pile of trash. Two other landfill workers stood by and watched, doing nothing to come to Skirpan’s aid.

So the ex-Marine reached into his pocket, fished out his cell phone, and dialed 911.

"My leg’s been amputated, my leg’s been amputated," Skirpan told the 911 operator. "Help me, help me, I need a helicopter. . . Please, please, help me now."

"OK," the operator replied. "Is there anybody else around you?"

"I don’t know. I need a tourniquet. They won’t come over. Help me, please."

"I’m sending help," the operator responded. "Is there anybody around you?"

"Yes, they won’t come over," Skirpan said, before moaning. "Please, please, please, I’m in pain. Please, please, please help me."

"I have help coming," the operator said. "Please stay with me."

On the 12-minute tape, Skirpan is heard moaning before he says, "tell my daughter I love her."

The 911 tape was played in court during a two-week trial in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court that abruptly ended Monday, when both sides announced a settlement: Scott Skirpan, who lost both legs after the accident, as well as his right hip, received a $16.25 million settlement. The owners of the landfill, Chrin Bothers Inc., contributed $12 million, and the manufacturer of the track loader, Caterpillar Inc., contributed $4.25 million.

Slade McLaughlin, co-counsel for Skirpan, said his client "went through probably one of the most devastating injuries you can imagine – they cut him in half."

State police, who arrived in about 15 minutes, found Skirpan alone in the landfill. He was taken by medivac to a local hospital, where he suffered a massive loss of blood, cardiac arrest and multiple organ failure. Following the accident, OSHA cited the owners of the Chrin Brothers Landfill for serious safety-violations, including the failure to provide necessary training, and also levied a fine against the landfill for slipshod work practices.

In his opening statement to the jury, McLaughlin described how his client "was hit and knocked over and dug in the dirt with his hands and tried to crawl away from that machine, but couldn’t get away as it sliced through his legs like . . . a knife slices through butter."

McLaughlin told the jury how the operator of the track loader "ran away and sat on a rock while Mr. Skirpan laid in trash and dirt, bleeding to death with his legs cut off."

Paul A. Lauricella, the other co-counsel for Skirpan, turned his back on the jury when he gave his opening statement. Peering over his left and right shoulders, Lauricella demonstrated to the jury how the operator of the track loader was backing up and trying to see when he ran over Skirpan. Lauricella told the jury that the track loader didn’t have a video camera or side mirrors, and that the only thing the operator could see clearly in the rearview mirror was a smoke stack on the vehicle.

"It’s a big, heavy piece of machinery," Lauricella told the jury. "You don’t want to be anywhere near it when it’s moving, especially when it’s moving backwards. We’re going to show you that the design of that track loader was so poorly conceived, so mind bogglingly thoughtless, that . . . it was a stupid design."

A lawyer for the manufacturer countered in his opening statement that the track loader was safe to operate. A lawyer for the landfill owners told the jury that the operator of the track loader, Ramon Lorenzo-Nunez, ran from the scene "because he didn’t have a phone, and he had to run and get help. . . . And when he did that, he broke down, he started to cry over what he had just seen."

Testimony presented at trial showed that Skirpan had been hired a year earlier by Chrin of Delaware, Inc. as a cement finisher, and that he was not familiar with landfill operations. Skirpan had been transferred to the landfill in early April 2006 after suffering a minor back injury, which relegated him to light-duty status. Unbeknownst to Skirpan, however, the landfill was not owned by the same company that employed him as a cement finisher, but by a separate corporation, Chrin Brothers Inc.

The different corporations operating out of the landfill was one of the reasons why the plaintiff’s co-counsels were able to get around the state worker’s compensation clause that normally restricts employees in Pennsylvania from suing their employers and fellow employees for work-related injuries.

At trial, the defendants could not prove which corporation employed Skirpan, which was their burden, McLaughlin said.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Skirpan, now 50, and his wife, Carole. The couple has two children.

McLaughlin said the really aggravating thing about the case was that the defendants’ initial reaction was to blame Skirpan for his injuries. "We took a liking to him," McLaughlin said. "We dug and we dug and we dug, until we found a way to work through the obstacles."

Skirpan, of Easton, told Fox 29 News "it’s been a long battle," and that he planned to use part of the settlement to buy a new dress for his wife, as well as a new house that would better accommodate his disabilities.