GM compensates man paralyzed after GMC Sierra Accident

The Ammons Law Firm has successfully negotiated a personal injury settlement with GM that will pay a 33-year-old man who was rendered tetraplegic after the 2008 GMC Sierra 1500 he occupied crashed. The crash occurred when the pickup slid off an interstate after hitting a patch of black ice. It then proceeded down an embankment, overturned, and landed on its roof.

Witnesses that first appeared at the scene of the crash to find the overturned vehicle found the man still belted in the overturned vehicle with his neck pushed down onto his chest by the severely crushed cab roof. He was barely able to breathe or speak. Bystanders quickly jumped into action and removed the man from the truck, and rested him next to the wreckage as they waited for the EMS to transport him to a local hospital.

In the lawsuit filed by Ammons for the injured man, it was alleged that the pickup’s roof was incapable of maintaining its integrity in a rollover and that the seat belts did not provide proper, adequate and continuous movement-limiting restraint benefits to occupants in such crashes. The lawsuit contended that using closed header sections, thicker sheet metal, or foam-filled pillars would have resulted in a roof structure strong enough to withstand a rollover without compromising the vehicle’s safety cell and would only cost GM $11 per vehicle. This pickup’s inadequacies rendered it defective and uncrashworthy and directly caused the man’s spinal cord injury that paralyzed him. Specifically, as the roof was deforming downward, it impacted the man’s head, buckling his spine, breaking his neck and severing his spinal cord.

Charges for medical treatment of the man’s life-altering injuries exceeded $600,000, and the costs of necessary future medical and life care were estimated by a medical doctor specializing in physical medicine and rehabilitation to total nearly $9 Million.

The Ammons Law Firm has a nationwide personal injury practice focusing on tire defects, truck accidents, rollovers, consumer protection and product liability, catastrophic injury, wrongful death, post-collision fires, seat belt defects, airbag defects, and plant explosions.