NEW ORLEANS (Legal Newsline) - Harrah’s Casino in New Orleans is liable for injuries a woman suffered after a contractor hired to remove birds from the trees in front of the building ran over her with a motorized high-lift platform, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has ruled, rejecting the casino’s arguments it wasn’t responsible for the actions of an independent contractor.
The appeals court in its January ruling did reject a federal jury’s $1 million award for future pain and suffering as excessive and ordered damages to be reconsidered.
Carla Echeverry was waiting to cross the street in front of Harrah’s in February 2017 when the lift operated by an employee of Alabama Wildlife Removal struck her and broke her ankle as it was being moved from one tree to another. Echeverry said a flagman walked past her without warning her of the oncoming lift. She suffered fractures that required multiple surgeries to fix and has been advised she will have joint pain and a higher risk of arthritis the rest of her life.
Harrah’s argued Louisiana law protects it against liability for the actions of independent contractors, but the Fifth Circuit agreed with the trial court that exceptions applied in this case. The casino company knew or should have known AWR was incompetent because it had an "F" rating from the Better Business Bureau and its insurance certificate was expired. Harrah’s said the BBB rating could be for reasons unrelated to the company’s skills and it didn’t know about the expired insurance until after the accident.
The appeals court said a jury could conclude from the evidence Harrah’s was liable, however. The casino also failed with arguments it complied with industry standards by requiring a flagman on the job site and couldn’t be held responsible for the worker’s failure to alert Echeverra of the oncoming lift as he walked past her. A casino employee attended meetings where the use of a flagman was discussed, the court held, so it could be liable under Louisiana law for authorizing “unsafe work practices.”
The $1 million pain-and-suffering award was excessive, however, the court ruled, because it greatly exceeded awards in other cases involving similar injuries. In one published opinion from 1997, a court criticized it as being “on the high side” but approved a $165,000 award for a woman with a nearly identical ankle fracture.
“Even accounting for inflation … the award on the `high side’ there shows how excessive Echeverry’s million-dollar award is,” the Fifth Circuit ruled, remanding the damages portion of the case for reconsideration.