Dump Truck Rear-Ends Middletown Man, Firm Secures $400,000 Settlement

The collision happened at the intersection of South Main Street and Pameacha Avenue in Middletown. Joseph Norris, operating a dump truck for Poolman Pools of East Windsor, rear-ended the 2005 Saturn driven by John Larosa. Police issued Norris infractions for following too closely and speeding. Larosa was 53 years old at the time.

The impact left Larosa with a torn meniscus in his left knee, a rotator cuff tear in his right shoulder, and a tear in his right hip. He underwent three surgeries: two to repair the left knee and one to address the shoulder. The hip tear did not lead to surgery, but Larosa required steroid injections over roughly a year to manage the pain. His total medical bills came to approximately $118,000, all of which his health insurance covered.

Emanuele Cicchiello of Cicchiello and Cicchiello filed suit on Larosa's behalf in September 2017. The defense maintained that Larosa's knee and back complaints reflected conditions that predated the crash and were unrelated to it. Cicchiello countered by securing independent medical opinions that drew clear causal connections between the accident and each new injury, and separately documented how the crash aggravated pre-existing conditions.

Medical causation was the central fight in the case. Establishing that a rear-end crash at a relatively modest speed could produce the full range of orthopedic damage Larosa experienced required careful selection of treating and expert physicians willing to address the prior history directly rather than around it.

The parties reached a $400,000 settlement in 2019. The case was reported in a December 2019 staffed-reporter article in the Connecticut Law Tribune, which described Cicchiello's strategy for overcoming the preexisting-injury defense.