$41.5 Million Verdict for the Family of a Sanitation Worker Crushed Inside a Queens Garage

On June 21, 2014, Steven Frosch was working a shift inside a New York City Department of Sanitation garage in Maspeth, Queens. The 43-year-old was greasing the brushes on his street sweeper when a coworker pulled a second sweeper up beside him. That machine rolled forward and pinned Frosch between the two vehicles. He suffered crushing internal injuries, including a severed spinal cord, and was pronounced dead at the scene within minutes.

Frosch had worked for the city for eighteen years, four of them as a New York City police officer, and he was roughly two years from retirement. He left behind his wife, Bina, and four children. The youngest was seven weeks old. The oldest was eleven.

Gair Gair Conason tried the wrongful-death case in Queens, with Ben B. Rubinowitz and Peter J. Saghir representing the family. The second sweeper had lurched forward as its operator reached down to unplug a Bluetooth radio. The defense framed that movement as a mechanical fault in the vehicle. The firm's case was that Frosch died because of negligence in how the sweeper was operated inside the garage, and that ordinary care would have kept the machine still while a man stood greasing equipment a few feet away.

The firm also set out what the family had lost: a father taken from four young children, the guidance and support those children would grow up without, and the income Frosch was on course to provide through the rest of his working life.

On October 24, 2017, the Queens jury returned a verdict of $41.5 million. The award broke down as $1.5 million for Frosch's conscious pain and suffering, $15 million for the past loss of his support and guidance, and $25 million for the support and guidance his family would lose in the years ahead. It was the largest truck-related verdict in New York State that year.