After repeated calls in the middle of March to her landlord saying she had no heat, Bonita Townsend finally got a maintenance man to come up to the apartment she shared with her 2-year old twin girls. The man said he could provide heat, but was missing a part that would allow her to control the temperature of the old fashioned cast iron radiators. He promised to return with the part as soon as possible.
Bonita put little Tiffany down for her nap on her bed while she tended to her sister in the other room. Tiffany woke up and tried to get down off the bed, falling between the scalding hot radiator and the wall. She lay there trapped and screaming while her mother ran to help her. Tiffany suffered a severe burn to her stomach which became a large pronounced keloid scar that will require surgery when she is older.
An attorney from the Haymond Law Firm filed a claim against the landlord's insurance carrier. Initially the claim was denied. A nominal offer was then made by the carrier which claimed a lack of supervision on the part of the mother. Alternatively, the landlord claimed that even if the mother could have controlled the heat, the radiator still would become hot. That claim was rebutted by the fact that the radiator did not have a protective housing that would have shielded the child from the hot surface.
The attorney hired a plastic surgeon to evaluate the severity and performance of the scar on little Tiffany's stomach and to estimate the cost of future medical treatment. The mother's deposition was taken and an out of court settlement was negotiated which will yield Tiffany $50,000 by the age of 25. There is also a separate fund set aside to pay for her current medical treatment necessary from the accident.
*Some names and details have been changed to protect confidentiality. While we can't guarantee the same results we can assure you the same effort.