Last week in New Jersey a lawsuit went to trial, a case charging that a local county failed to maintain a road. A matter like that doesn’t sound like it would involve traumatic brain injury (TBI), but it does.
The litigation, taking place in Superior Court in Bergen County, stems from a suit filed by the family of James Griffin Jr. of Oakland, N.J. Griffin, now 26, suffered a TBI and was in a coma for three weeks after a car accident on Sept. 15, 2006, according to The Record. He’s lost his ability to talk and is now a quadriplegic, the paper reported.
The Griffins allege that Bergen County failed to safely maintain Breakneck Road, where their son’s car skidded and hit another car. They charge that he had the accident because of a pool of water that had formed on the road, according to The Record. There have been problems with drainage on that road for three decades, but Griffins’ attorney alleges that the county never fixed the issue.
Griffin now lives in a long-term care facility, The Record reported. He is also wheelchair bound, and his medical bills so far are about $1.2 million.
Bergen County maintains that it had no liability in Griffin’s accident, according to The Record, and that there wasn’t a pool of water on the road.
Here’s what makes me think something was amiss: One of the plaintiffs’ witnesses is a woman who had a phone in her back porch “because she had to call 911 so many times when drivers became involved in accidents in wet weather,” The Record reported.
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