Couple Awarded $2.5 Million in Chair Accident

When Marguerite Healy sat on a folding chair aboard the Queen Mary in Long Beach six years ago, she was the sole caretaker for a quadriplegic husband.

The chair collapsed, and Healy was left paralyzed by the resulting injury. Since then, the Laguna Niguel investment counselor has been unable to care for her husband, James Healy, or even earn a living.

On Friday, the couple was awarded $2.5 million in damages by an Orange County Superior Court jury, which found that the chair had been defective.

The jury, rendering its decision after a three-month trial, concluded that the chair collapsed because it had been held together with screws instead of more secure rivets. The damages were levied against an exhibitor who set up the chairs on an interior exhibition deck of the liner and the furniture manufacturer.

“I feel justice has been done,” Healy, 43, said Friday from her home. “We don’t have any plans at this point. We’re trying to put our life back together.”

Attorneys for the defendants, Industry Exhibitors Service of Pomona and Samsonite Furniture Co. of Tennessee, could not be reached for comment Friday on whether they will appeal the decision in the trial, held in Municipal Court in Westminster. The jury deliberated for a day and a half.

The accident happened Sept. 22, 1984. Healy and her husband--also 43, who became disabled in 1969 in an accident while serving with the Marine Corps--were exhibitors in an investment show, the couple’s court petition states. The Healys had started an investment business about two years earlier and had attended many investment shows around the Southwest.

On the second day of the show, Healy was sitting on a metal-and-plastic folding chair at her exhibit booth while her husband was meeting with other vendors, the court petition states. Suddenly, the chair collapsed beneath her, and she fell to the deck, hitting the back of her head on a rear display table, the petition states.

“Other exhibitors said she hit so hard it sounded like a gunshot,” said the couple’s attorney, Thierry P. Colaw of Santa Ana.

The fall caused permanent damage to the nerves and blood vessels on Healy’s right arm and leg, leaving her with some paralysis and in nearly constant pain along her right side, Colaw said.

Although she can walk unaided and has made some improvement, Colaw said, Healy cannot perform such tasks as housecleaning, shopping and washing and is unable to do the bending and stooping needed to care for her husband.

Healy had to hire attendants to care for her husband, Colaw added, and the couple’s investment business failed because Healy could not carry documents or travel to keep the business going.

The couple in 1985 filed suit in Orange County Superior Court, alleging that the exhibitor who set up the chairs and the manufacturer of the failed chair were liable for a product defect.

Testimony revealed that up to four screws had been missing from the bottom of the chair. “When the last of the screws pulled out, the chair collapsed,” Colaw said.

Several other claims had been filed against Samsonite, testimony also showed--also for chairs that had collapsed because of screws falling out. In fact, Colaw said, Samsonite in 1980 changed the design so that the chairs are now held together with more secure rivets. The chair in question was manufactured before 1980.

“This is a relatively simple case of a poorly designed and maintained chair collapsing, with tragic results,” Colaw argued in the court petition that led to the trial.

Lee King, the owner of Industry Exhibitors Service, said in a deposition that the chairs are inspected when opened for an exhibit, with pressure put on the seat to test stability.

King also testified that the chair came from a group of similar Samsonite chairs that he had bought from an exhibitor and had been used about 20 times in the six years before the accident.

Healy, Colaw said, “happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

In the decision, the jury found that the exhibitor is 65% liable for damages because it did not detect the loose and missing screws when the chairs were set up and that the manufacturer is 35% liable because of the product defect.

The jury awarded $1.5 million to Marguerite Healy and about $1 million to her husband.

Although relieved at the verdict, Healy said the last six years have been hard ones for her and her husband.

“I hope,” she said, “that no one ever has to go through what we have had to go through.”