One Tower, Two Lives, and the $18.3 Million Price of Silence
Episode Summary
Bryan and Jovan Maldonado came to the mainland United States from Puerto Rico to make better lives for themselves. They found work on a telecom construction crew – but at their very first job, swapping an antenna affixed to a Delaware water tower, they were killed when the boom lift they were on tipped over in high winds. To get justice for the brothers’ family, the trial team of Mike Zettlemoyer and Dave Kwass listened to focus group jurors who revealed what made them really mad about the case. “That was when we began to recognize, ‘Oh, wait a minute. This is what the case is actually about,’” Dave explains to host Brendan Lupetin. It wasn’t wind gusts or training failures. Tune in to find out what that was and how the team secured $18.2 million.
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- After arriving in the mainland United States from Puerto Rico in 2020, the Maldonado brothers joined a telecom construction crew. Bryan’s 22nd birthday was November 2 – the day that he and his brother Jovan were killed at their first job.
- The boom lift the brothers were on toppled over in high winds. The trial team’s engineering analysis revealed that gusting winds created a resonance effect — like pushing a child on a swing in rhythm — that amplified movement in the 40,000-pound ultra boom until there was no point of return.
- The defendants were Nexius Solutions, the general contractor, and Myndco, the firm responsible for training the crew.
- The trial team found that Nexius had sent a replacement aerial lift to the site after the crew mistakenly believed the first was defective. In fact, the machine was locking them out because the crew was overloading it, a direct result of inadequate training.
- A Nexius vice president shut down aerial lift work across the Northeast due to a National Weather Service wind advisory anticipating gusts up to 45 mph — but the region where the accident occurred was never contacted, and the work continued.
- Mock jurors in a focus group were most angered not by the training failures but by the company’s selective shutdown decision.
- The jury awarded $18.2 million, including $2.5 million in mental anguish per parent per son and $1.5 million in pain and suffering per son.
Dave Kwass
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