One major reason for the countless number of wheelchair tipovers is the number of stupid cheapskates in the bevy of attorneys who obtain these cases.
As every expert witness knows, and which many attorneys lie to them about (or pretend it doesn’t exist), when you win a case, an attorney’s expenses – including expert witnesses – is paid out of the two-thirds the client is awarded in a settlement or by a verdict, at trial. But for a plaintiff’s attorney, a wheelchair tipover case is impossible to lose. That is because if a wheelchair is secured according to the industry standard (not the dumb section of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of the defendant’s choice), a chair simply cannot tip over.
The principles that lie as the basis for this were first introduced in 1674. The principle by which chairs must be secured emerged in the 1970s, promoted as the standard by the principal wheelchair securement manufacturers in business at the time – Sure-Lok and Q-Straint (consolidated about 20 years ago, and branding today as Q-Straint). But the formal standard, adopted about five years after the promulgation of the ADA by the Society of Automotive Engineers (since evolved into the Society of Automotive Engineers, International) known as SAE-J2249. According to this standard, anything secured in a vehicle must be secured to withstand 20 g-forces of exertion on the object (be it a seat, a seatbelt, a shoulder harness or a wheelchair. Reaching 20 g-forces is similar to a vehicle crashing into a steel wall at 30 mph. (whereas slamming on the brakes will exert only about one g-force on the items secured.)
For these reasons, if a driver merely slams on the brakes, and a wheelchair user it jettisoned from his or her wheelchair, I know immediately that no lap-and-shoulderbelt was affixed to that individual. Yet I also know that since it takes only about 15 or 20 seconds to affix a passenger into his or her wheelchair, yet requires about five minutes to often secure a garden-variety manual wheelchair to the vehicle’s floor, that if a wheelchair occupant was not secured into his or her wheelchair, that the wheelchair was also not secured.
Attorneys with cases where their client flew out of his or her chair do not realize these things. And in many cases, after an unsecured wheelchair tips over, spilling its occupant onto the vehicle floor, the driver picks up the wheelchair, secures it properly, and picks up the client and plops him or her back into the chair – and delivers this individual to his or her destination as though nothing had happened. In most cases, those receiving these individuals at facilities (usually nurses) or at their homes (parents, children, siblings, friends) also know something is not right. I have done cases where the wheelchair users were dropped off – as if nothing was wrong – stone cold dead.
The first and last rule in any wheelchair case is for the attorney to arrange to have his or her expert examine the vehicle and the securement equipment (and also the wheelchair, if it still exists). The importance of this examination is as critical as it is obvious: A case is worth a lot more if the equipment was composed of broken, missing or mismatch parts, or it the “tie-downs” were rusts or stuck in place I the floor – than if it was in pristine condition but the driver did not fasten it properly. Especially as the costs for an expert’s work comes out of the two-thirds of the proceeds obtained in the settlement or verdict, paying an expert to make this excursion should be an afterthought. Yet it is surprising how often attorneys do not want to pay for their expert to make this trip.
In the world of common sense, it could be costly to assign this trip to an expert from, say, Pluto. But coast to coast travel costs a pittance compared to the value of what a knowledgeable expert will find. Yet durn the 23 years my office was in Manhattan, the last two years of it (2018 to 2020) it lay on Riverside Drive West and 158th Street – a few blocks from the southern border of the Bronx. Yet I was once hired to do a wheelchair tipover case where I learned – too late to decline the case – that the attorney did not want to pay the cost for me to travel to examine a vehicle in the Bronx!
There are a handful of fabulous dirty jokes about cheapskates. Few of them involve lawyers. But among the worst things that a client can learn is that his or her counsel is a cheapskate. But by that time, it is too late: No replacement attorney will take the case because if he or she wins or settles it, the original lawyer will place a lien on the winnings and often obtain a large part of it. Its easier for an expert called about a wheelchair case. When I am, I make it known that examining the vehicle is a requirement for me taking the case. And while I do not include such specifics in my Engagement Agreement, my practice lies on one of those states where one need not ask permission from the person on the other end of a call if he or she may record the conversation. I have a recording of every single conversation I’ve had with every attorney I speak with – and have been doing this for years. Having helped win or settle at least 150 wheelchair tipover cases, I am not about to lose one just be the attorney engaging me is an idiot. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Not me.
An expert should always be allowed to examine the vehicle in a wheelchair tipover case. The case has much more value if the equipment were faulty, broken or non-ADA-compliant than were it in pristine condition yet the driver simply did not use it.
#wheelchairtransportation #wheelchairipovers #wheelchairandpassengersecurement #transalt #wheelchairexpertwitness