Plaintiffs attorney Leslie McPadden said her client's straight talk, grit and determination in a slip-and-fall case helped cement a $145,000 settlement.

"My client was a go-getter, a hard worker, who put in 70 hours a week or more, and a tough and credible woman," said McPadden, a Waterbury-based solo practitioner. "My strategy was to highlight her and her credibility. Just keep the focus on her. Having the mediator and claim representative hear her story in her New Jersey accent and seeing her mannerism and how this whole thing affected her during the four-hour Zoom mediation made a big difference in the case."

The firsthand account from 62-year-old Fort Lee, New Jersey, resident Phyllis Rosenstein was powerful, and drove the settlement with defendant Lynwood Place LLC, her attorney said.

Rosenstein was a senior media buyer who was working for a Newtown company at the time of the December 2016 incident. She fell on a brick pathway that Lynwood Place controlled, and which was covered with clear ice. She filed suit in Danbury Superior Court in November 2018.

The lawsuit alleges Lynwood Place was negligent because, among other things, it allowed snow and ice to accumulate on the pavement, and failed to make a proper and reasonable inspection of the site.

"It would make no sense for her to slow down because of this injury, unless she was truly injured," McPadden said. "She has a very high pain threshold."

Rosenstein fell on her left side, injuring her left wrist and left shoulder, her attorney said.

"She had a partial rotator cuff tear and underwent surgery on her left shoulder," McPadden said Thursday.

Rosenstein, who incurred about $50,000 in medical expenses, "has made a good recovery," but "doesn't have the range of motion, or the strength that she once had," according to her attorney. She now  works from her home, and missed about three weeks of work following the fall, McPadden said.

Lynwood Place's counsel, Patrice Noah of Meehan, Roberts, Turret & Rosenbaum in Wallingford, declined to comment for this report.

But in court papers, the defense claimed Rosenstein played a part in her own accident "in that she failed to keep a reasonable and proper lookout for her own safety" and "did not exercise the care of a reasonably prudent person under the same or similar circumstances."

The settlement money will be disbursed before May 1, McPadden said.

Danbury attorney Edward Kelleher of Mix & Goldman referred the case to McPadden.

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