Georgia Jury Awards Over $4M To The Family Of A Worker Who Was Killed By Street Sweeper

A Gwinnett, Georgia, jury has awarded a family $4.25 million for the death of a worker who was killed by a street sweeper.

Gabrielle Smith was awarded the hefty amount after she won her lawsuit against the manufacturer that designed the street sweeper.

Four years ago her father was crushed to death by the machine while he was driving it at work in Gwinnett County, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

However, attorneys who represented the company claim the award amount will be far less than that because jurors also found her father was partly at fault in the fatal accident.

“We considered this a good result for the defense given that (Smith) asked for $25 million and sought punitive damages, and the jury apportioned 49% fault to the decedent, which resulted in a net verdict of $2,167,500 and no punitive damages,” said attorney Brannon Arnold.

Court records show that the verdict came in on Monday after Smith’s legal representation argued that the designer “failed to ensure that the heavy-duty mechanical broom sweeper was in safe operating condition and free of defects.”

The trial lasted five days, and jurors spent more than a day deliberating.

Orlando Hall, 47, was working as a subcontractor for E.R. Snell on the morning of Sept. 7, 2017, and was driving one of the construction company’s M6 Avalanche street sweepers when it began smoking in Duluth.

Hall pulled into a QuikTrip parking lot to see what the issue was with the equipment. Attorneys say he was trying to loosen debris and got pinned between the hydraulic arm and the truck’s hopper after his leg inadvertently activated controls on the side of the street sweeper.

Smith’s attorneys were able to convince jurors that the controls “were negligently placed in close proximity to a crushing hazard” and that they should have been guarded to prevent these types of accidents from happening.

“Our evidence showed the defendants negligently placed faulty equipment in the stream of commerce, which ultimately led to Mr. Hall’s tragic and gruesome death,” Kendall Dunson, one of the family’s attorneys said.

Smith filed her complaint in Gwinnett State Court in July 2018, claiming Schwarze Industries, an Alabama-based manufacturing company that designed the M6 Avalanche street sweeper, used defective equipment that was unsafe for operators like Hall. She also alleged that the unguarded controls and toggle switches on the equipment’s exterior were prone to “unintended activation” that put operators at risk.

Schwarze was represented by attorneys from Weinberg, Wheeler, Hudgins, Gunn, and Dial. According to a statement from the Atlanta law firm, the victim “left the engine running, climbed the side of the street sweeper, (and) wedged himself into a narrow compartment not meant for access behind a lockable door” before he was crushed to death.

Smith’s legal team to a fatal workplace accident in Mesa, Arizona, that happened three years following Hall’s death. Jason Oswald, a mechanic, was crushed the same way by the M6 Avalanche. Following Oswald’s death, Schwarze and its parent company, the Alamo Group redesigned the street sweeper by adding guards to its outer control box.

“Because of this litigation, no one else using an M6 Avalanche street sweeper will suffer the same gruesome fate suffered by Orlando Hall and Jason Oswald,” attorneys said in their release.

Hall’s employer, E.R. Snell, was also named as a defendant, but attorneys said the company wasn’t part of this week’s judgment.