Verdicts & Settlements
$8 Million: Settlement For Fiery Crash In Luzerne County
In 1995, the parents of a Carbon County couple killed in a fiery accident in Luzerne County were awarded one of the largest cash settlements ever in the Middle District of Pennsylvania. Schneider National Carriers of Green Bay, Wisconsin, agreed to pay the survivors of Lisa M. Shook and Ernest Ginder, as well as two others injured in the accident, a total of $8 million.
Attorney Robert W. Munley, who represented the Shooks and the Ginders, said Tina Wotherspoon and Elisha Wotherspoon, formerly of the Allentown area and who were injured in the crash, received $600,000 of the total. The remaining $7.4 million was to be divided evenly among Shook and Ginder’s survivors.
The cash settlement was struck in May 1994 just before the scheduled trial start of the personal injury lawsuit filed by survivors of the Shooks and the Ginders. Under terms of the agreement, Munley said, the recorded outcome was sealed until just recently.
(Although records of civil settlements are not kept, Munley said he believes it is one of the largest in the history of the Middle District. Another memorably large settlement was awarded to pop singer Gloria Estefan, who received an $8.5 million settlement in a civil suit after her tour bus was rear-ended on Route 380 in Monroe County in 1991.)
Munley said Shook and Ginder were driving from their home in Lehighton to the Bloomsburg Fair on September 19, 1990, when they were forced to stop for traffic backed up at a construction site on Interstate 80. The vehicle was owned by Shook and operated by Ginder.
A tractor trailer owned by Schneider and driven by Larry Jackson of Arkansas came up behind the line of traffic in which the Shook vehicle was stopped. Unable to stop, the attorney said, Jackson drove the rig onto the berm of the road, passed six cars and then veered into the line of traffic, driving into the medium strip and killing a passenger in another vehicle, 14-year-old Ryan Dillon, who lived in Budd Lake, N.J. and Stroudsburg.
The rig then started to slide sideways and bounced up against the Shook car, shoving it 100 feet or so until it hit a station wagon operated by Tina Wotherspoon, the attorney said. It then toppled over onto the Shook car and burst into flames.
Tina Wotherspoon and her daughter, Elisha, were able to escape from their vehicle but suffered injuries. Shook and Ginder were not able to get out of their car before it burst into flames. Jackson was not injured, Munley said.
In addition to Munley, Martin H. Philip of Palmerton and Charles Banta of Easton represented the Shooks, the Ginders and the Wotherspoons. A Washington, D.C. firm represented Dillon’s estate, Munley said.
