Quynh-Huong “Betty” Davis (left) and Bethany Schneider (Courtesy photo)

A DeKalb County jury awarded more than $5.5 million to a man injured by a piece of debris knocked from the roof of the Crowne Plaza Atlanta-Midtown hotel by a remodeling crew, bolstering a co-defendant's $1 million settlement.

The award included more than $500,000 in punitive damages, and a plaintiff's attorney said she will ask the court to award hefty attorney fees as well.

Schneider Law principal Bethany Schneider said the hotel agreed to settle the claims against it for its $1 million insurance policy limit on June 14 just as the trial was set to begin Monday.

She said the remaining defendant, Florida-based Cajun Contractors Inc., turned down an offer to settle the case for $75,000 early last year.

“One thing we were nervous about at trial was, with the big hotel defendant out of the case, whether the jury would allow a big verdict against this mom-and-pop construction contractor,” said Schneider, who tried the case with Quynh-Huong “Betty” Davis of Davis Injury Law.

Schneider said the trial was the second she has handled since she left King & Spalding last year to start her own plaintiffs shop, and the first for Davis.

Cajun Contractors is represented by Tony Jones and Casey Smartt of Galloway, Johnson, Tompkins, Burr & Smith, who did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The Crowne Plaza's corporate entities, Peachtree Property Sub and AWH Partners, are represented by R. David Ware and Pearson Cunningham of Hall Booth Smith.

“We were able to reach a settlement with the plaintiff,” said Ware via email. “Since our crossclaim against Cajun for indemnity and contribution are still pending and since there may be other post-trial proceedings, I cannot comment further.”

According to Schneider and court filings, the accident happened in 2015 after the hotel hired Cajun to demolish the fence and cabanas alongside its fourth-floor pool, and replace the fence.

Cajun hired a subcontractor to assist, RYR Construction, and workers were using a bar and hammer to loosen the fence when the vibrations shook loose a piece of pipe laying on top of one the cabanas.

Plaintiff Max Laguerre, a cab driver, was standing at the hotel's taxi stand when the 8-foot piece of pipe—apparently electrical conduit—plummeted earthward.

“He said he heard a noise and, when he put his head back to look up, it hit him right between the eyes,” said Schneider. “He said it felt like a hammer hitting him.”

The impact broke Laguerre's nose and he went to the emergency room, where a CT scan was normal and he was not diagnosed with a concussion, she said.

A few days later, he went to a doctor complaining of headaches, and several months later he underwent surgery to repair his broken nose.

As time went by, his family began noticing changes in Laguerre's attitude and personality.

“They were noticing he was irritable, having memory loss, things like that,” she said.

He was also experiencing recurring headaches and vision problems.

Schneider said Laguerre, now 55, is a native of Haiti, and was loath to seek medical help.

“He's a very strong, proud man and comes from a culture that's very self-reliant,” she said. “In their culture they think they should heal themselves.”

As his symptoms grew worse, Laguerre was forced to quit driving a cab and tried to start a painting and remodeling business with his brother, but Schneider said he had difficulty working.

“He was portraying to the outside world that he was working full-time, but he really wasn't,” said Schneider. “His daughter testified that he'd get up and get dressed for work every morning, but he wasn't really working.”

Laguerre sued the Crowne Plaza and Cajun Contractors in DeKalb County State Court for negligence in 2017.

After the suit was filed, a neuroradiological scan detected “abnormalities” consistent with a traumatic brain injury.

In addition to the rejected $75,000 offer of settlement to Cajun Contractors last year, Schneider said that—after the diagnosis of brain trauma, they extended a global settlement offer to the hotel and contractor for their combined policy limits of $2 million.

“They sent back a $250,000 global offer,” she said.

Schnieder said her side began pursuing separate negotiations with the Crowne Plaza, leading to the pretrial settlement.

During a four-day trial before Judge Dax Lopez, Schneider said the plaintiffs team relied largely on the defendant's failure to provide any safety measures at the job site.

“We weren't suing for the pipe falling per se,” she said. “We were suing because they had a duty to protect from things falling: There were no warning signs, no netting, no barricades.”

She said powerful testimony from Laguerre's family and friends regarding his changed demeanor and fear for future health impacts was bolstered by his own tearful time on the stand.

“He gave very heartbreaking testimony on the stand about having to hear all these people say all these things, about a higher risk for epilepsy, Alzheimer's,” she said. “He kept saying, 'I didn't know. I didn't know.'”

She also said dismissive testimony from the defendant's corporate representative didn't play well with the jury.

Key plaintiffs witnesses included a construction site expert and Laguerre's treating neuroradiologist, David Owens, Schneider said, while the defense called no experts.

>In closing, she said she asked for between $2 million and $5 million.

“We didn't ask for any medical expenses; we just tried it for pain and suffering,” she said.

On Thursday, she said the jury took two hours and 10 minutes to award $5 million, declining to apportion any liability to the hotel or Cajun Contractors' subcontractor, RYR.

They also found that the defendant should be liable for punitive damages. After another hearing on that, they awarded $500,332, which Schneider said represented the three years, three months and six days between the accident and Laguerre's diagnosis of traumatic brain injury.

“That 336 represented the gap in time that the defense had been saying our client was a liar,” Schneider said.

Schneider said they were also “appalled and shocked” by the corporate representative's lack of remorse.

Schneider said she and Davis were particularly gratified by the outcome, “because it's significant to have this all-female trial team have a verdict this big.”

Schneider said the verdict came on the heels of her first trial since going solo, a Cherokee County car-wreck case the week before that netted a $44,780 verdict.