An East Stroudsburg family has received a $6.9 million settlement in a lawsuit filed in 1987 after a garbage truck rammed into the vehicle in which they were riding in Chinchilla, killing the couple's five-year-old son and critically injuring their eight-year-old daughter. The award represents the largest known civil settlement in the history of Lackawanna County Court. The settlement was reached last March 3, five days after a trial on the civil action got under way in Lackawanna County Court, but terms of the agreement prohibited release of the details until now. In 1985, parents of five Mid-Valley teenagers who died in a single car crash were awarded $17.5 million by a Lackawanna county jury. The present award, however, was received as the result of a settlement between the parties involved before the case went to a jury. Beneficiaries of the settlement agreement were Diane Wisnowski, Saw Creek Estates, East Stroudsburg; her daughter, Lauren, who is still undergoing treatment for brain damage suffered in the crash, and the estate of her son, Joseph, who died in the crash. Joseph was five at the time of the accident and Lauren was eight. The settlement was a structured agreement in which Lauren was awarded approximately $5.3 million. Over her lifetime, it could balloon to $38 million. Diane Wisnowski was awarded approximately $900,000 and the Wisnowski family got approximately $600,000. J.P. Mascaro and Sons, a trash hauling firm based in Harleysville, was the defendant. Mascaro owns Hoch Sanitation Co., whose truck struck the Wisnowski vehicle. Since that crash, two other Hoch Sanitation trucks have been involved in fatal accidents. Sept. 16, 1988, one person was killed and several injured in a 10-vehicle accident triggered after a Hoch Sanitation truck lost its brakes coming down a hill, striking several vehicles, including one that it dragged several hundred feet before it exploded. And earlier this month, another runaway Hoch garbage truck struck and virtually destroyed a home in Jim Thorpe, killing a woman inside it. That accident occurred approximately a month after another truck loaded with garbage lost its brakes while entering Keyser Avenue from the North Scranton Expressway, hitting a pickup truck and driving it 34 feet into a light standard and killing the passenger, Vivian Zawacki, a 63-year-old Dickson City woman. Her husband, Edward, 64, remains comatose at Community Medical Center. Scranton police filed charges against the owner-operator of the tractor as well as the president of Pen Pac Inc., a New Jersey firm that owns the trailer in which the garbage was being hauled. Attorney Robert Munley, who represented the Wisnowskis in their civil action, has initiated civil action in Lackawanna County Court on behalf of the Zawackis. According to testimony in the Wisnowski trial, the Chinchilla fatality triggered when the brakes on a Hoch garbage truck failed while it was descending Shady Lane Road. The vehicle continued into the intersection near Rave's Garden Center and hit the Wisnowski car, which was traveling east on Northern Boulevard (Routes 6 & 11). The impact pushed the car into a small pickup truck traveling west on the boulevard. The garbage truck continued through a guard rail and into Leggett's Creek, which runs alongside the boulevard.

Joseph died while undergoing emergency treatment at Community Medical Center. Lauren, who suffered a fractured skull, remained in a coma for 35 days. She was treated at Community Medical Center and E.I. duPont Institute for Children in Wilmington, Del. She now is undergoing rehabilitation at the New Medico Health Facility near Sarasota, Fla.

Frank Scholz, Scranton Times Staff Writer.


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