Man who lost arm and leg hit by train wins $90 million from MTA

The cash-strapped MTA could lose $90 million after a train operator failed to stop a drunken man who fell onto a subway track and crushed him — breaking one of his legs, his hip. The joint and most of one hand was amputated. ,

Lamont Powell, who is unable to ever work again, won a massive Brooklyn lawsuit award late last month over the 2018 incident — one of the largest judgments ever handed down against the MTA.

Despite the fact that the 56-year-old Brooklyn man took a leak on the tracks because he was blotto — he is entitled to a massive payout because the train driver had plenty of time to avoid the collision, his attorney told the Post.

“This is a matter of public safety,” attorney Ira Newman said. “This accident would never have happened if the train operator had pulled the emergency brakes in a timely manner in accordance with MTA rules and regulations after seeing people alerting him about someone on the tracks.”

Powell collapsed on the tracks at the Broadway Junction subway station after a night of drinking in East New York on June 30, 2018.

Because he fell at the end of the tracks away from where the trains enter, the operator had several hundred feet to stop the train before it hit him, Newman said.

Newman said that as the train slowly pulled into the station, the operator even had straphangers on the platform, anxiously waving at it to stop.

One of those witnesses on the platform was on vacation from Brazil at the time — and flew back to the Big Apple to testify about how they tried to stop the slow-motion nightmare.

A former MTA engineer also told the jury how a train traveling at 16 mph needed about 110 feet to stop — and the operator had about 360 feet to stop — before hitting Powell. There was distance.

“The train operator acknowledged that he saw people waving wildly,” Newman said. “He thought (Powell) was a bag of trash.”

Newman said that during the test, the operator acknowledged how, even with a large bag of trash – let alone a human being – he still should have pulled the brakes.

As a result, Powell, who has no family of his own and made ends meet by doing construction and odd jobs in the past, will live out the rest of his days in an assisted living facility, Newman said, because the damage to his leg and hip would make prosthetics impossible. Has gone .

“If you lose your hip, you get nothing,” he said.

While Newman acknowledged that Powell had been drinking, he had fallen on the tracks in the same way that “someone might have been pushed, or passed out, or had a seizure and fell.”

“If the train operator had pulled the emergency brake in time, this never would have happened,” Newman said.

powell filed their lawsuit against the MTA Almost a year after the terrible disfigurement.

Newman of Sanocki, Newman & Burge said Powell had tears in her eyes when she learned of the decision.

An expert at the trial estimated that his lifetime medical expenses alone could reach $17 million, said Newman, who tried the case with partner Ed Sanocki.

The verdict is one of the largest jury awards against the MTA, which did not respond to a request for comment.

In March, jurors passed a $72.5 million verdict for cancer patient hit by MTA bus.

And in 2019 a young Paralyzed by falling railroad tie Won a grand verdict of $110 million.