A man struck by a MARTA fare cart while working security at the Lindbergh Station was granted a post-apportioned award of more than $1.1 million for neck and back injuries.

Plaintiffs attorney Keith Fryer said MARTA only offered $50,000 to settle the case during a failed mediation.

“We offered to settle for $350,000 at mediation, but they turned it down,” said the Fryer, Shuster, Lester & Pollack partner.  

Fryer said his case was aided by evidence the MARTA employee operating the cart had other mishaps the same day, including running into a vending machine and hitting an elevator door so hard that it came off its tracks.  

Fryer said the fact that the jury assigned 15 percent of the fault to the plaintiff indicated the panel fully considered the evidence and that the verdict will likely withstand any potential appeal.

“I think MARTA's stuck with the $1.1 million, particularly since they apportioned some fault to my guy,” Fryer said.

MARTA staff attorney Vincent Hyman, who defended the case, said via email that MARTA is reviewing the case record.

According to Fryer, court filings and a plaintiff's account, Camal Rashada was 59 and working as a security guard for Norred & Associates in 2015 when he was injured.

As Fryer explained, MARTA uses battery-powered fare carts to transport money, tokens and Breeze cards to and from the token vending machines at its stations. The cart operators—MARTA employees who operate a steering handle and forward and reverse buttons—are accompanied by armed guards as they travel between stations.

The security guards are supposed to get no closer than 5 feet or farther than 15 feet from the cart, he said.

Rashada had moved in front of the cart to press an elevator button when the driver, Jimmy Arnold, struck him in the back.

Rashada felt a burning pain in his back, but he was told to “tough it out” until he and Arnold finished up their route at Lenox Square, Fryer said.

There were no functioning video cameras where Rashada was struck. A camera at Lenox showed Arnold running his cart into an elevator door, and he and Rashada trying to get the door back on its tracks.  

“We had video showing this operator steering with one hand while talking on the phone, and another incident earlier the same day when he crashed the cart into a Coke machine,” Fryer said.

“He was apparently having a bad day. My guy said he was usually OK,” Fryer said.

Rashada saw a doctor the next morning and was treated for herniated disks in his back and neck. He continues to get injections for pain and underwent stem cell treatment last year, but “it didn't do anything,” Fryer said.   

Rashada never returned to his job with Norred and was unemployed until February, when he signed on with a temp agency as a part-time security guard.

“He sits in a car and walks with a cane,” Fryer said.

Rashada sued MARTA in 2016 in Fulton County Superior Court. Trial began May 14 before Judge Henry Newkirk.

According to the defense portion of the pretrial order, Rashada “failed to pay proper attention and keep a safe distance” from the moving cart. It said he told his treating physician he injured himself while riding a bicycle not long before he was hit by the cart.

It also said Norred denied his workers' compensation claim, and that he and Norred later reached a “no liability settlement agreement in the amount of $50,000, wherein Mr. Rashada admitted that he did not sustain a compensable work-related injury.”

Newkirk refused to allow the jury to hear about that settlement over defense objections, Fryer said. Newkirk also turned down Fryer's request to let jurors know that MARTA fired Arnold from his job as a Mobility bus driver four years earlier but rehired him after a union grievance was upheld.

But the biggest defense problem was that Arnold had earlier said Rashada was walking to the left of Arnold's cart, then crossed in front of him to the right to press the elevator button, Fryer said. MARTA hired an expert to reconstruct the incident, and the button was on the left, not the right.

“On the stand, [Arnold] said 'I guess I was mistaken,'” said Fryer. “I asked him, 'If you had been more attentive do you think you would have hit this guy?' and he said 'No.'”

Fryer said key plaintiff's experts included neurosurgeon Max Steuer of Polaris Spine and Surgery Center, and Atlanta radiologist Darr McKeown.

He also hired forensic reconstructionist Sean Alexander to gauge stopping time and distance for the cart, but Fryer said defense's expert Amber Stern's figures “came out better for us, so I used her. Why pay for my expert to come to court when I can use theirs?”

Other defense experts included video testimony by orthopedist Michael Kalson.

Fryer said Rashada's past medical bills topped $70,000, and his estimated future bills are $181,000. He cited past and future lost wages of almost $148,000.

At closing, he suggested an award of $1.5 million.

MARTA's lawyer did not suggest any number and asked for a defense verdict, Fryer said.

The jury took more than four hours on May 17 to award $1,304,000, apportioning 85 percent to MARTA, for a total award of $1,108,400.

Fryer said the panel included five jurors with master's degrees and several corporate officials, and was “the smartest jury I think I've ever had in Fulton County in 38 years of trying cases there.”

The jurors did not stay around to talk, he said.