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Man settles burn lawsuit for $4.75M

An electrician has won a $4.75 million settlement from the Missouri company that designed the overcurrent protection system for the Middle River Regional Jail in Augusta County.

Larry Shifflett suffered burns to his arms, torso and neck as he was attempting to connect a ground cable to an electrical switchboard in January 2005.

The cable slipped from his hand and struck an energized buss bar. The resulting arc generated heat in excess of 10,000 degrees and set his clothes on fire, according to Tom Oxenham, who represented Shifflett along with partners Brad Chandler and Steve Hammond.

Shifflett was flown to the University of Virginia Medical Center, where he was placed in a drug-induced coma for five weeks. He underwent painful skin grafts and physical therapy and continues to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, Oxenham said
Oxenham said Shifflett’s physicians have cleared him to return to restricted duty, “but he hasn’t been able to bring himself to do it” and has not worked since the incident.

Shifflett’s attorneys contended in the product liability action that Electric Power Systems International Inc. had failed to follow industry standards in setting the overcurrent protection system to cut power when there was a surge for three-tenths of a second. The proper setting should have been a tenth of a second, which would have cut the power before Shifflett could have been so seriously injured, Oxenham said.

The defendant’s attorneys contended that the longer delay in cutting power was necessary to reduce nuisance power outages because the jail operated an emergency health care system.

Shifflett’s attorneys countered with testimony from jail personnel that the facility only had an infirmary and immediately transferred any inmate with an emergency condition to a nearby hospital. Moreover, the attorneys said, the jail had battery and generator backup in the case of a power failure.

Defense attorneys also contended that Shifflett was contributorily negligent and assumed the risk of being shocked when he didn’t cut power to the switchboard before starting to work on it.

Greg Booth, an electrical engineer licensed in Virginia, testified that Shifflett had not violated any industry standards and that the settings the defendant had on the equipment were inconsistent with industry practice and engineering standards.
The company acknowledged that it was not licensed as an electrical engineering firm in Virginia, and its expert who contended that Shifflett violated industry regulations was not licensed in Virginia either.

The case was tried last month in two phases before U.S. District Judge Glen E. Conrad in Harrisonburg. A jury deliberated less than an hour after hearing testimony and arguments for three days before finding Electrical Power Systems liable for Shifflett’s injuries.

The parties reached the settlement shortly after Shifflett’s attorneys began presenting their damages case the next day.

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