Personal Injury Law

Pizza Hut Delivered a Hefty Lawsuit ? Employer Liability for a Motor Vehicle Accidents Causing Severe and Permanent Personal Injury

By Benjamin J. Sansone, Esq.

In November 2008 Olena and Shari Novak, a mother and her adult daughter, were the victims of a head on collision. The car accident caused serious and permanent personal injury, including permanent brain injuries to the daughter and a broken neck, among other personal injuries, to the mother. The vehicle that struck them was operated by 18 year old Nicole Fisk, Pizza Hut delivery driver. The negligent driver suffered only minor injuries.

As presented at the car accident personal injury trial, Fisk had a seizure while driving, blacked out, and hit the Novaks. Injury lawyers for the Novaks filed a lawsuit against Fisk and Pizza Hut. The driver was later dropped from the injury lawsuit. Novak?s personal injury attorneys contend that Pizza Hut was responsible for assessing whether or not Fisk was a competent driver before putting her on the road and therefore is, ultimately, culpable for the accident and resulting personal injuries to the victims.

A key point to this particular case is that Pizza Hut asserts their employee was not diagnosed with seizures until after the accident and did have the qualifications to drive for the company ? having a valid driver?s license, clean driving record, her own vehicle and auto insurance.

One attorney for Pizza Hut, James Yukevich, argued that Fisk had been to a doctor several times prior to the accident, complaining of ?staring spells, trouble breathing, and at times unresponsiveness.? At no time was she diagnosed with epilepsy - until after the accident.

Personal injury plaintiff attorney, John Gomez, says that Pizza Hut is only shifting ?blame for its negligence to the doctors who treated Fisk and the state DMV? which issued her a license. He purports that the California DMV sets a minimum standard for California drivers; as such, Pizza Hut should have done more to ensure that Fisk was a safe and suitable driver.

My cooking barely sustains life so we have a lot of takeout delivered to our home. I started thinking back on all of our deliveries ? all the way back to yesterday - and realized that beyond our faithful and beloved Chinese delivery man, I rarely even speak to these guys and gals beyond the required four words: thank, you, very, much. I truly don?t care if they can tell a good joke, if they respond appropriately to another coworker when he/she continues to make mistakes on the job, or if they are even able to formulate a complete thought. I do care, however, if they have a medical condition that would heighten the risk of them hitting my child, who is forced to play in the street since moving to the city, or my car, which still has a hefty bank loan attached to it.

I wanted to see if Pizza Hut asked - as most employers must these days - if there were any medical reasons why this would-be employee could not perform the position?s required tasks. So I submitted my application to Pizza Hut. I went through endless pages of personality questions set up to weed out the non communicative, anti-team player and possible psycho, but not one question on the actual physical ability to perform the job. They did ask for permission to run a DMV background ? so that is something.

Persona Injury Plaintiffs awarded 10.8 Million against Pizza Hut.

Contact Ben Sansone - St Louis Mo car accident lawyer and brain injury lawyer

Full post as published by Missouri Injury Law Blog on August 02, 2010 (boomark / email).