Luisa Janssen Harger Da Silva had been visiting New York for the first time when it happened. She was 21, studying architecture back home in Brazil, standing on the platform at Atlantic Avenue-Barclays Center with her boyfriend and she fainted. Fell off the platform. An oncoming train ran over her left arm and her left leg.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Both severed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She survived and spent the next stretch of her life in hospitals and rehabilitation centres learning to walk on a prosthetic leg and use a prosthetic arm at an age when the hardest thing most people her age were dealing with was a final year thesis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Her lawyers did not argue that the MTA should have stopped her from fainting. Nobody can prevent that. What they argued was that the agency had been collecting data on platform falls for over 15 years and the data showed a clear pattern of passengers ending up on the tracks at stations across the system and despite having that information the MTA had not installed barriers or padding or anything that would have reduced what happened to Luisa from a double amputation to maybe a broken arm or a concussion or bruises.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The MTA’s position was that her fainting caused the injuries, not anything the agency did or failed to do. They also argued that retrofitting the system with platform barriers was not economically feasible. And they spent nine years making that argument.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A jury in the Eastern District of New York returned the verdict and it covered past and future medical costs, lost income, pain and suffering and the reality that Luisa is going to be living with two prosthetic limbs for the rest of her life. She had been 21 when it happened and was 30 by the time a jury heard her case, which is a long time to wait for an answer when the question is whether the agency that runs the subway bears any responsibility for what happened to you inside it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is an old Anglo-Saxon idea that runs through English common law and it has stayed alive in courtrooms for a reason, that the measure of justice is not whether it works for the strong but whether it still holds when the person asking for it has nothing behind them except what actually happened. Luisa had no political connections in New York, no institutional support, no leverage. She had the facts of her case and a legal team that was willing to stay with it for almost a decade against an agency that employs thousands and can litigate indefinitely if it chooses to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mr. JJ Hill, founding partner at Shulman & Hill New York personal injury law firm<\/a>, said that justice really was delivered in this case. He has handled claims against government<\/a> entities in New York himself and he knows how difficult they are because the institutional resources on the other side are essentially unlimited and a lot of people who have valid claims against the MTA end up settling for less than what the case is worth because they simply cannot afford to wait that long for a trial.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you get hurt on MTA property the rules for filing a claim are not the same as suing a private company or an individual.<\/p>\n\n\n\n New York requires a written Notice of Claim filed within 90 days of the incident before you can even think about a lawsuit against a government agency. Name, date, location, what happened, what injuries you sustained. Miss that 90-day window and in most situations your claim dies right there regardless of how strong it was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ninety days is not long when someone is in the hospital or learning how to use a prosthetic arm.<\/p>\n\n\n\nSuing the MTA in New York Is a Different Kind of Fight<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The 90-day Notice of Claim<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
The one-year-and-90-day lawsuit deadline<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n