Anne McDonald fell down these stairs at the Noah Webster House in West Hartford in 2016 during a tour of the museum. She recently settled the case for $2 million. Anne McDonald fell down these stairs at the Noah Webster House in West Hartford in 2016 during a tour of the museum. She recently settled the case for $2 million. Courtesy photo

Plaintiffs attorney Stewart Casper's practice deals almost exclusively with traumatic brain injuries, and he knew he had a good case in the matter of Anne McDonald, who suffered a traumatic brain injury after a fall at the Noah Webster House Inc. museum in West Hartford.

The problems, though, were twofold: liability and getting experts to prove the severity of McDonald's injuries.

"There was potential liability because no one saw the incident, and she had no memory of the incident," said Casper of Casper & de Toledo in Stamford. The liability issue, Casper said Friday, was resolved because McDonald's co-workers, even though they did not witness the incident, were with her on the tour. Casper was able to put the pieces together through their testimony, and demonstrate just how unsafe the stairway to the museum attic had been.

McDonald, a 50-year-old Massachusetts resident, was on a tour of the museum with colleagues from the Merriam-Webster dictionary company when the incident occurred almost four years ago. A lawsuit was filed in April 2018 in Hartford Superior Court.

McDonald, Casper said, fell "from the stairway and onto the hard wooden floor. She struck the back of her head. This was an accident waiting to happen. The stairway going into the attic was poorly lit and the stairs were antiquated and there was no guardrail to hang onto. There was really no other explanation for the incident."

The case settled for the museum's insurance policy limit of $2 million on July 6.

Then, Casper said, was the issue of medical experts.

"Connecticut and western Massachusetts, where my client lives, has a shallow bench of experts in providing treatment for TBI," Casper said. "Getting her in the hands of a physician who really knows what they are doing and what to look for was key."

Through his work for other clients with traumatic brain injury, Casper said he put his client in touch with one of the best in the field: Dr. Gregory O'Shanick, a brain injury medicine specialist in Virginia with more than 20 years of experience. O'Shanick is also the emeritus medical director of the Brain Injury Association of America.

"There are very few people in very few places that can do advanced neuro-imaging and interpret it and really understand the brain injury. The doctor did a complete evaluation," Casper said.

Getting O'Shanick on board was "huge" in dealing with any pushback from the defense, Casper said. "In doing a case like this, you assemble pieces like they were in a jigsaw puzzle and put them all together."

In addition to the brain injury she suffered from the fall, McDonald also needed right-shoulder replacement surgery.

McDonald's long-term prognosis, Casper said, is difficult to predict.

"Because of what she went through, there is an increased risk of seizures and early dementia," the attorney said.

McDonald incurred about $194,000 in medical expenses, her attorney said.

Representing the Noah Webster House is Alan Chandler of the Law Offices of David J. Mathis in Hartford. Chandler didn't respond to a request for comment Friday.

Jennifer Matos, the museum's executive director, also didn't respond to a request for comment.

In court pleadings, the defense said McDonald "failed to be watchful, careful and alert as to where she was going, what she was doing, and the area over which she chose to walk."

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