Town OKs $9.9M  deal in lawsuit

By Ivan H. Golden
Staff  Writer
September 1, 2004

The town of Greenwich and a contractor  have reached a $9.9 million settlement with a pediatric neurosurgeon who was severely injured in September 2001 when he was thrown from his bicycle while riding over a rough patch of pavement on Lake Avenue .

Town officials announced the settlement late yesterday, after the Board of Estimate and Taxation voted to approve it, clearing the final hurdle to resolving the two-year-old case.

First Selectman Jim Lash said he hoped the settlement would allow both sides to move past the accident. "This was a terrible accident," he said. "We can't fix the outcome with money, and we understand that. But this at least allows us and the family to move on."

Dr. Fred Epstein, 67, a Greenwich  resident and the founding director of the Institute for Neurology and  Neurosurgery at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City, suffered severe internal head injuries, paralysis and other permanent injuries in the Sept. 30, 2001, accident, according to a lawsuit filed in 2002 by his wife, Kathy. He was in a coma for 26 days, remained hospitalized for nine months and has been unable to return to work.

Epstein's attorney, Jay H. Sandak, said his client has recovered somewhat from the accident, but he still has  extensive disabilities. Epstein and his wife declined to comment on the settlement.

"No amount of money can compensate Dr. Epstein for his loss," Sandak said.

Epstein, who used to remove deadly tumors from children's brains, among other surgeries, now is wheelchair-bound and has had to stop seeing patients. He may never be able to operate again, though he continues to work at the Beth Israel Medical Center in New York , concentrating on fund-raising and helping the center provide high-tech medicine in a nurturing environment.

The $9.9 million settlement may be the largest in Greenwich 's history, according to lawyers involved in the case, and is among the largest settlements for a highway defect case in state  history.

But the town will pay just $250,000 toward the settlement. The balance will be paid by the town's insurance carrier, Zurich Insurance, and the insurance carrier for A. Vitti Construction, the Greenwich firm that was working on Lake Avenue at the time of the accident.

Lash said the town chose to settle the case rather than risk a trial, in which damages could have exceeded $20 million, according to pre-trial documents filed in the case as well as an analysis by the town's legal department.

"Whenever we have a settlement, it's based on the risk as (weighed) against the potential cost," Lash said.

Sandak said negotiations had been ongoing for about two months; the case was scheduled for trial in March  2005.

The Epstein settlement is the latest in a series of costly verdicts and settlements against the town. Earlier this year, the town was hit with a $6 million verdict in a case involving another Greenwich physician who was injured while sledding near the Western Greenwich Civic Center . The town also settled another lawsuit for $4.5 million.

Those two cases have driven up the town's insurance premiums, and Lash said yesterday's settlement, when viewed in context of the other two, will likely continue that trend.

"There's been a series of these cases,"  he said. "And as a result of that, the town's insurance has already gone up."

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