Road Crew Worker's $3 Million Recovery After Falling From Moving Trailer

Charles Zygmunt was riding on a trailer hitched to an Atlantic Pavement Marking Inc. vehicle as the crew collected traffic cones from a Connecticut roadway. A co-worker, Steven Lima, changed lanes abruptly. Zygmunt was thrown from the trailer and struck his head on the road.

The head trauma was severe enough that Zygmunt had no recollection of what happened. That gap in memory complicated the case from the start. Andrew Buchetto, who led the litigation alongside colleagues Carla Minniefield, Jessica Ayala, Ryan Veilleux, Luke Mario, and Robert Messey, had to reconstruct the sequence of events through witnesses and other available evidence rather than the client's own account.

Because both Zygmunt and Lima worked for the same employer, the case required pursuing two separate legal tracks at once. The first was a workers' compensation claim against Atlantic Pavement Marking. The second was a third-party motor vehicle action against Lima under Connecticut's co-employee exception, which permits a claim against a co-worker whose negligent operation of a vehicle causes injury on the job.

The third-party auto action carried the larger share of the recovery, and combined with the workers' compensation component, total recovery reached $3 million. The Connecticut Law Tribune reported the resolution in March 2023.