by Asher Hawkins
A Philadelphia jury has awarded $5 million to a former security guard at a South Philadelphia sports complex who claimed he suffered permanent abdominal injuries in September 2003 when a parking lot booth he was sitting next to fell on top of him after being blown over by a gust of wind.
Calvin Valenti Jr. suffered a shattered spleen, lacerated pancreas, multiple fractured ribs and a fractured shoulder during the incident, he asserted in court papers. Both his spleen and his pancreas had to later be removed; the injuries to his pancreas have rendered him diabetic, and the surgery performed on his abdomen left him with a gaping wound that is unlikely to ever heal on its own.
In Valenti v. Keystone Structures Inc., according to court papers, the 47-year-old Ridley Park resident had sued the manufacturer of the booth, the company responsible for parking outside the Wachovia Center and corporate entities related to ownership and management of the arena.
But the jury made a finding of negligence only as to defendant Central Parking System of Pennsylvania Inc. Valenti had claimed that the company had failed to make sure the parking booth had been properly secured to the ground on the day of the accident, despite the fact that a major storm system had brought high winds throughout the area in the days before.
The booth manufacturer, Keystone Structures, and the remaining corporate entity, Comcast Spectacor LP, were both found not negligent by the unanimous 12-member panel that heard the case.
Valenti was represented in the matter by James Beasley Jr. and Dion Rassias of The Beasley Firm in Philadelphia.
The defense attorneys involved in the trial were: Brian Calistri of Weber Gallagher Simpson Stapleton Fires & Newby in Philadelphia for Keystone Structures; George McCool of the Law Offices of Donald F. Borrell in Blue Bell for Comcast Spectacor; and Patrick Lamb of Marks O'Neill O'Brien & Courtney in Philadelphia for Central Parking.
Lamb said his client is "disappointed with the jury verdict, and they are pursuing their appellate rights."
Lamb also said litigation stemming from the case continues, as Central Parking has a claim for indemnification against one of the corporate entity defendants.
Lamb declined to comment further.
According to Beasley, Calistri and McCool, jury selection in the case began April 21, and the verdict was handed up on Tuesday after approximately seven days of trial before Judge Gary F. DiVito.
In court papers, Valenti had initially demanded $15 million.
Calistri and McCool said they never made any offers on behalf of their clients.
With the trial about to begin, according to Beasley, Central Parking offered $250,000. On the day of jury selection, that offer went up to $750,000, Beasley said. He said he then offered to settle for roughly $2.1 million, but the highest counteroffer from Central Parking was for a structured $1.2 million settlement, which was rejected.
Two issues shaped the outcome of the trial, the attorneys involved said.
The first concerned which defendant had been Valenti's statutory employer.
In court papers, Valenti had identified his employer as Spectrum Arena Limited Partnership (SALP), one of the originally named corporate entity defendants. However, there was also evidence indicating that Valenti's employer was Comcast Spectacor.
McCool, whose firm serves as house counsel for Pennsylvania Manufacturers' Association Insurance Co., represented both entities in the litigation, at the request of PMA.
McCool said that in court papers he described Comcast Spectacor as the holding company, and SALP as the operating company, of the neighboring sports facilities Wachovia Spectrum and Wachovia Center.
During the trial, the attorneys said, the jury heard evidence concerning the statutory employer issue and engaged in separate deliberations on that point before proceeding to deliberations as to negligence.
In the end, McCool said, the jury concluded that SALP had been Valenti's employer after a 15-minute deliberation on Monday night, and Comcast Spectacor was the corporate entity defendant whose name appeared on the verdict sheet.
The negligence deliberations took place over the course of roughly two hours on Tuesday morning, the attorneys said.
The second major issue at trial stemmed from the plaintiff's decision to let Keystone Structures out of his case shortly before trial got underway.
Beasley and Rassias had planned to put on the stand Richard Daniels, a professional engineer with Consulting Engineers & Scientists in Malvern who was to argue that Keystone Structures - which not only manufactured but also installed the parking booth in question - had used the wrong type of bolts when attaching the booth to the concrete island on which it sat.
However, DiVito had indicated during the pre-trial phase that he was inclined to either exclude or severely limit Daniels' expert testimony, Beasley said. Before DiVito could officially rule on the subject, Keystone Structures was released from Valenti's action.
But Keystone Structures had to stay on for the trial to defend itself against a cross-claim from Central Parking, Calistri said.
Calistri said he presented evidence at trial that Keystone Structures had installed the booth roughly eight years ago, and that in that time, the particular booth in question had been knocked over by vehicles and reattached by parking-lot-maintenance personnel to the point where it could be easily blown over by a strong breeze.
In response, according to Calistri, Central Parking offered at trial the testimony of professional engineer Howard Medoff of Lawrence J. Dove Associates in Philadelphia, who reasoned that when it installed the booth, Keystone Structures had failed to leave behind instructions laying out the proper remounting procedure.
Calistri said that, tactically speaking, the decision to let Keystone Structures out of the case worked out well for the plaintiff's side. During opening statements, Rassias stated specifically that the plaintiff was focusing his case on Central Parking.
Calistri said he believes that disclosure made it appear to the jury that Valenti had come to court with a clear strategy against a single defendant, as opposed to a multi-pronged plan involving several.
Rassias did something else atypical during his opening statement, Calistri said: He referred to a workers' compensation lien against Valenti that amounts to more than $800,000.
In many workplace injury trials, according to Calistri, a defense attorney will refer to a workers' comp lien at trial, and the plaintiff's attorney will take umbrage, fearing disclosure of such information might make the jury less sympathetic to the plaintiff's plight.
But in Valenti, Rassias disclosed to the jury the size of the worker's comp lien and reminded them that any verdict would effectively be reduced by that amount.
"It's the big pink elephant in the room - everybody knows about it," Beasley said of the workers' comp lien. He added later, "If you hide it, it's avoiding the obvious. I think it worked to our advantage to talk about it."
During post-verdict discussions, Beasley said, several jurors expressed to him that they truly believed Valenti was eager to return to work.
At the time of his injury, Valenti had been working at the sports complex since 1979, and enjoyed the proximity to sports events that his position afforded him.
There were no claims for lost wages in Valenti, Beasley said, and the verdict reflected damages only for pain and suffering.
Valenti is seeking delay damages totaling roughly $425,000, Beasley said.
