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LITWIENSKI ARTICLE
The vocational expert
in this article is me
- Steve Miller

Litwienski v. First Union Bank, et al.: A Middlesex County jury awarded more than $2.8 million to a Bloomsbury woman on Oct. 2 for back injuries suffered when she slipped on an icy sidewalk outside a bank building and fell. Carol Litwienski was vice president of a title insurance company at the time of the December 1995 accident, which occurred on Broadway in South Amboy. Now 40, she has suffered severe back pain since the accident, says her lawyer, Raul Gonzalez, a name partner at New Brunswick's Wysoker Glassner Weingartner Gonzales & Lockspeiser. She had an operation to remove part of a disc and a second surgery to fuse two discs with screws. Her doctor recommended a third operation, but she declined because the first two did not provide the predicted relief, Gonzalez says, adding that she has been unable to work since the accident. The case went to trial Sept. 18 before Judge Bryan Garruto in Middlesex County. Gonzalez called as witnesses an orthopedic surgeon, a physiatrist and a vocational expert , who testified that she was unable to work again because of the injury; an economist, who testified about her lost earnings; and an engineer who gave testimony about the small patch of ice left behind when the sidewalk was plowed, causing the accident. The defendants called one expert, a physician who said Litwienski was exaggerating her symptoms. After two weeks of trial and 12 hours of deliberation, the jury came back with a verdict for $2,975,000 in damages to Litwienski, and a finding that the bank was 90 percent at fault, the plowing contractor 5 percent at fault and the plaintiff 5 percent at fault for the accident. The verdict meant the defendants were to pay Litwienski $2,826,250. The building's owner, First Fidelity Bank (which has since merged with First Union Bank of Charlotte, N.C.), was sued along with Gillette Amoco of Gillette, its plowing contractor. The bank had agreed in the contract to accept liability for accidents relating to ice and snow, but the insurance carrier for the contractor, Selective Insurance of Branchville, agreed at the outset of trial to pay for any claims against First Union. First Union was represented by Francis Smith, a solo practitioner in Westfield, who says his client and Gillette Amoco plan a joint appeal of the verdict, on the grounds that the award was excessive and that Litwienski's refusal of the third operation should factor in their favor, says Smith. The plowing company was represented by Robert McLarty, of Romando Astorino McLarty & Demille in Hamilton, who could not be reached.

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