$550,000 Settlement – Pedestrian Struck by Vehicle in Queens
| Settlement Amount | $550,000 |
| Injury Type | Hip fracture requiring total hip replacement, fractured radius, soft tissue injuries |
| Location | Queens |
| Year | 2023 |
| Practice Area | Pedestrian Accidents / Motor Vehicle Accidents |
What Happened
Our client was 67 years old. She had the walk signal. She was in the crosswalk. And she was struck.
A vehicle making a turn failed to yield to her as she crossed – a straightforward violation of New York Vehicle and Traffic Law § 1151, which requires all drivers to yield to pedestrians lawfully in a crosswalk. The impact knocked her to the ground and left her with injuries serious enough to require immediate hospitalization and, ultimately, a total hip replacement.
She had done everything right. She waited for the signal. She crossed where she was supposed to cross. What she could not account for was a driver who was, as cell phone records would later reveal, in the middle of an active text message exchange at the moment of impact.
The Injuries
Our client suffered a femoral neck fracture – a hip fracture – that required total hip replacement surgery. This is a major surgical procedure involving the removal and replacement of the hip joint with a prosthetic implant. It carries significant risks, requires extensive post-operative rehabilitation, and changes the biomechanics of how a person moves for the rest of their life.
She also sustained a fracture of the radius in her forearm and a range of soft tissue injuries consistent with the impact and the fall. Her recovery was extended. She required inpatient rehabilitation following the hip replacement surgery and significant outpatient physical therapy before she regained ambulatory function. Even after her formal recovery concluded, her mobility was permanently reduced – a consequence that, at her age, carries compounding effects on independence and quality of life.
How Liability Was Established
The liability case rested on three independent pillars, each of which would have been sufficient on its own.
First, multiple eyewitnesses at the scene confirmed that our client had the walk signal when she entered the crosswalk and that the driver failed to yield before striking her. Their accounts were consistent with each other and were documented in the police report.
Second, Jason obtained footage from a New York City DOT intersection camera positioned at the crossing. The footage corroborated the eyewitness accounts: the walk signal was active, our client was in the crosswalk, and the vehicle turned without yielding. The footage was unambiguous.
Third, and most damning: Jason subpoenaed the driver’s cell phone records. Those records showed an active text message exchange occurring in the seconds immediately before the collision. The driver was distracted – not by anything external or unforeseeable, but by a choice to text while making a turn through a pedestrian crossing.
Challenges in the Case
The defense contended that our client had not been in the crosswalk when struck – that she had stepped into the street outside the marked crossing area, which would have complicated the liability analysis and potentially introduced comparative fault.
This argument required a factual rebuttal grounded in physical evidence. Jason obtained the police accident report’s measurement data, which documented the precise location of our client’s position relative to the crosswalk markings at the time of impact. He also retained an engineer to analyze the scene dimensions, the crosswalk geometry, and the physical evidence, and to render an expert opinion on where our client was standing when she was hit. The engineering analysis confirmed she was within the crosswalk markings.
Because of our client’s age, the future damages analysis required particular care. An older client faces a different actuarial picture than a younger one, and Jason retained a life care planner and an economist to document the long-term costs of reduced mobility – the home care, the adaptive equipment, the lost independence – and to quantify those losses in a way that a jury could understand and a defendant could not ignore.
The Outcome
The case settled for $550,000. The result reflected our client’s surgical injury, her extended rehabilitation, her permanent reduction in mobility, and the recognition that being struck by a distracted driver while lawfully crossing the street on a green signal is not a risk anyone should bear.
For our client, the settlement provided financial security and acknowledged in concrete terms the serious wrong that had been done to her.
Were you or a family member struck as a pedestrian in New York City? Pedestrian accident cases often involve multiple evidence sources – traffic cameras, phone records, eyewitnesses – that require prompt action to obtain. Call as soon as possible to protect your case.
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Past results do not guarantee future outcomes. Every case is unique. The facts, injuries, and legal theories in your case will determine its value. This summary has been anonymized to protect client privacy.