A Derby Superior Court jury has rendered a plaintiff's verdict in favor of a 61-year-old Oxford woman who suffered neck injuries after a vehicle T-boned her Saab.

The jury awarded $96,223 to Shirley Viszkocsil for the lawsuit filed in March 2017.

Defendant Amanda Monaco's insurance carrier, Liberty Mutual, is set to pay the award.

One issue at trial was who would be liable for the injuries Viszkocsil sustained in the 2015 accident on Route 34 in Newtown.

Attorneys for Monaco said Valdirene Da Costa Firmino—whose vehicle was also involved in the accident—should be held liable, while Da Costa Firmino's counsel sought to place the blame on Monaco.

The jury sided with Da Costa Firmino and against Monaco.

Monaco's attorney is Michael Carreira with Wallingford-based Meehan, Roberts, Turret & Rosenbaum. He did not respond to a request for comment Friday.

Representing Da Costa Firmino is attorney Melissa Papantones with the Hamden-based Law Offices of Mark S. Gilcreast. Papantones didn't respond to a request for comment.

The parties have filed no post-trial motions. Their deadline to do so is July 26.

Plaintiff counsel James Miron argued defendant Monaco was stopped at a stop sign in traffic on Route 34 “when, our theory is, she saw a break in the traffic and thought she could make it across, so she gunned it and was struck by Ms. Da Costa Firmino's vehicle.” The impact of that crash sent the Monaco vehicle into Viszkocsil's Saab.

Miron, a partner with Zeisler & Zeisler in of Bridgeport, told the Connecticut Law Tribune on Friday that Viszkocsil had to be extricated out from her car because Monaco's Honda Pilot SUV “intruded into her car by 18 inches.”

“The only way to get my client out was with the Jaws of Life,” he said. “One EMT who was there at the time said one of the only things that saved my client's life was how her car was built.”

The six-person jury heard three and a half days of testimony and deliberated for less than two hours before reaching its verdict earlier this week.

Miron believes the testimony of plaintiff expert, Dr. Mark Wilchinsky, had an impact on the jury.

“The doctor was very strong,” Miron said, in rebutting comments the defense made that Viszkocsil's neck injuries were preexisting from a car accident years earlier.

“The doctor testified there was a nine-year gap of no treatment to my client's neck as it related to the accident in the 1990s,” Miron said. “This neck pain was totally from this accident. And the doctor said the trauma was from this accident, and not the prior accident.”

Viszkocsil injuries to her neck, more than four years after the accident, are still present, her attorney said.

“The doctors assigned her a 5 percent permanency rating impairment to her neck,” Miron said. “She still has pain on a daily basis. It doesn't stop her from working, but driving more than 40 minutes at a time will cause pain in her neck.”

Viszkocsil is a special-needs transportation driver.

Miron said his client turned down injection treatments and underwent several physical therapy regiments, but the pain remains.

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