For a man whose arms were amputated and therefore became disabled as result of “electrocution” injuries, the jury’s award of $3.5 million may be just fair, according to the Superior Court.<\/p>\n
In a decision issued Friday, Superior Court Associate Judge John Manglona denied a motion for retrial filed by Kim Kyung Duk, who owned the commercial building in Chalan Kanoa where plaintiff Felix F. Fitial obtained his permanent injuries eight years ago.<\/p>\n
In upholding the jury’s decision, Manglona said that based on evidence presented at the trial, “it cannot be said that the award of $3.5 million for his injuries is so excessive as to shock the judicial conscience.”<\/p>\n
The case arose from an incident in February 1991, when Fitial, upon Kim’s request, undertook night watch duties at the commercial building, which at the time was under construction.<\/p>\n
While inspecting the second floor of the building, Fitial spotted an object he thought was a reinforcement bar protruding from the end of the building.<\/p>\n
To avoid any accident that might result if it fell to the ground, Fitial reached out to remove the object which turned out to be a live electrical wire.<\/p>\n
Fitial was “electrocuted,” was thrown back about five feet from the object and lay unconscious. As a result, both of his arms had to be amputated. This prompted Fitial to sue Kim for negligence.<\/p>\n
At the trial, Fitial told the court about his pain and sufferings and how he became dependent on his families for daily regiments as a result of his arms amputation.<\/p>\n
Manglona was convinced that the jury’s award “is not excessive” considering evidence of the “traumatic circumstances and economic damages” to Fitial.<\/p>\n
“It does not raise an irresistible inference that passion , prejudice, corruption or other improper cause invaded the trial,” Manglona said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For a man whose arms were amputated and therefore became disabled as result of “electrocution” injuries, the jury’s award of $3.5 million may be just fair, according to the Superior Court.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47152\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}