On February 4th, 2011, a Cook County jury returned its verdict in favor of the estate of Charles Chuck Ingolia, resulting in an award of over six million three hundred thousand dollars in damages for his family after he was badly burned, and died, in a switchgear explosion.
In the aftermath of this November 13, 2006 tragedy, the official reports promptly blamed Chuck for causing an arc blast in a new switch gear at the CTAs Clark Street substation. Theconstruction accident lawyers at GWC Injury Lawyers sought out to prove that this tragic accident was not Chucks fault. Working with the best expert witnesses and sparing no expense to protect the financial well being of Chucks wife, it took over 4 years of investigation, including numerous depositions by Chicago personal injury lawyers Larry Weisman and Joe Sorce to identify the truth behind this fateful event. In a trial that lasted over 3 weeks, evidence was presented to the jury that project managers from defendant, Target electric, failed to comply with the basic NFPA 70E standards and also with job specific safety requirements, misleading workers into believing that an offline and dormant switchgear cabinet was not energized.
Veteran personal injury trial lawyers Larry Weisman and Joe Sorce rejected pre-trial and ever increasing midtrial settlement offers to allow a jury to pass final judgment about the truth of what killed Chuck Ingolia. Chucks reputation as a smart guy and a safety stickler was vindicated by the jurys decision. For the Ingolia family, this was the final word in a 4 year battle to reaffirm and re-establish the legacy Chuck created in his 38 years as an electrician with IBEW local 134. As Larry Weisman said after the verdict; The case had to be tried to give Chuck a voice to explain the events of that fateful day. A settlement wasnt good enough.
For GWC, this wasnt just a case-it was a cause, successfully concluded after 4 years of hard work and uphill litigation battles that finally overturned the contractors and insurance companies attempt to wrongly blame Chuck and attempt to avoid financial responsibility for this tragedy.