At 02:11 PM 3/17/99 +0000, you wrote:
>Speaking of national champions, please do not forget that the undefeated
>women's volleyball team at California State University, Long Beach took
>the national title this year.  (Several of the volleyball players have
>been in my classes.)  Paul Frantz
>


I really hate to change the subject after receiving several dozen "Big
Dogs" messages, but I found the following to be quite interesting and
thought that it might generate some discussion about something else.  There
are a number of questions unanswered by the story; for example, I presume
that the law of Florida requires more than just "but-for" causation.  For
its commentary on how companies should and should not handle P.R.
disasters, litigation (especially in sensitive cases), and other issues, I
believe that it is valuable.

John Allison
[log in to unmask]


Corporate Coldness

After power was cut to a traffic signal and a girl died in a car accident,
FPL's
actions outraged parents and jurors alike

By Jim Oliphant
Florida Daily Business Reviews
Monday, March 15, 1999

At first glance, it was a senseless, horrible traffic accident. A gloomy
late-afternoon sky, a stoplight that didn't work, the screech of tires on
rain-soaked pavement.

A 12-year-old girl died. To her family and friends, it was a shattering
loss. To those who didn't know her, it was just another sad story in the
local section of the daily newspaper.

How that accident led to one of the largest damage awards in Florida
history is a story of an almost  unbroken chain of corporate error. The $37
million verdict against Florida Power & Light Co. delivered by a Miami-Dade
jury March 5 can be viewed as many things: a cautionary tale for companies
facing a sensitive lawsuit, a primer on legal strategy, a study in jury
psychology.

Or it can be categorized more simply.

"The jury had to be angry, either pissed at FPL or pissed at the lawyer,"
says Mitchell Lipcon, a Miami lawyer who has published a newsletter on jury
verdicts for 25 years.

Lipcon says he's never seen a larger wrongful death award in Florida
composed entirely of compensatory damages. No punitive damages were awarded
to the parents of Jill Goldberg, the 12-year-old honor student killed on
Sept. 12, 1997.

What went wrong for FPL? Almost everything, starting with the accident itself.

The traffic signal at the corner of Southwest 120th Street and 67th Avenue
in the Miami-Dade suburb of Pinecrest stopped working that day because FPL
lineman Ray Woodard pulled a fuse from a transformer box on a 20-foot pole
about 100 feet away from the intersection.

Woodard was there to repair a downed power line and turned off power to the
transformer to protect the FPL crew on the scene.

But Woodard never saw the metal plate at the base of the pole marked
"traffic signal," which indicated that the transformer supplied power to
the stoplight. He never alerted police, or the city, of the outage.

About 10 minutes after Woodard removed the fuse, the Mercedes sedan driven
by Rosalie Goldberg, her daughter, Jill, beside her, sailed through the
intersection. A Ford Expedition traveling down 120th Street struck the car.
The Mercedes spun and slammed into a GMC Suburban. Jill was killed.

Early news reports detailing Jill's death didn't mention FPL's role in the
accident. When it came to light, it did so in the Pinecrest local paper.
There, FPL made its second mistake.

Spokesman Dale Thomas told the paper that the utility had no duty to warn
the public about power  outages or disabled traffic lights. The company's
primary obligation, Thomas said, was to protect its own workers. Moreover,
he made no expression of sympathy for the accident victims.

When Jill's grieving father, Walter Goldberg, read Thomas' words, he
decided to hire a lawyer.

"That set me off," says Goldberg, a marine biology professor at Florida
International University. "It was
just corporate posturing."

COMMON CORPORATE MISSTEP

James Lukaszewski advises companies about how to handle potential public
relations disasters. The White Plains, N.Y., consultant, whose clients
average $750 million in revenue annually, says FPL made a common blunder in
its initial public comment.

"The single greatest cause for adverse litigation is when the victims feel
the company doesn't really care," Lukaszewski says.

Questions to FPL concerning the Goldbergs' case were routed through FPL
spokesman Thomas, who
declined to comment other than to say the utility would file an appeal.

Lukaszewski says FPL should have contacted the Goldbergs immediately to
express its sympathy and then settled quickly and quietly to avoid negative
publicity.

FPL could have done just that. Stuart Grossman, the Miami personal injury
lawyer who represented the Goldbergs, says his first and only settlement
demand was $5 million. The most the utility's lawyers ever offered was
$400,000.

"The Goldbergs would have been happy not to go to court," Grossman says.

Lukaszewski says FPL's decision to press for trial is a sign that FPL still
acts like an old-style public                  utility with monopoly power
instead of a corporate entity with shareholders with whom to reckon.

FPL decided to handle the personal injury suit internally, rather than
turning to longtime outside
counsel Steel Hector & Davis. That may have been its third mistake.

Walter Goldberg says the principal FPL lawyer, Robert Dugan, never
expressed any regret to him over the loss of his daughter.

"I saw him at least a half-dozen times. He never once offered an apology,"
Goldberg says. "The last time I saw him, he wagged his finger at us and
said, accept our [settlement] offer or we'll see you in court."

CORPORATE CONFIDENCE

FPL had good reason to feel confident. The law concerning liability for
power outages in Florida seemed to be in the utility's favor. In fact, had
a bolt of lightning knocked out the traffic light, FPL would never have
faced a trial.

Based on that, FPL's lawyers twice asked Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Juan
Ramirez Jr. to dismiss the case, maintaining that it couldn't be held
responsible for Jill Goldberg's death. Ramirez refused.

Its best legal argument defeated, FPL decided to sail into trial anyway.

Once the case went before a jury on March 1, FPL switched strategy.

"They blamed the drivers," Goldberg says.

FPL lawyers Dugan and co-counsel Robert Boan told the jury that the utility
couldn't be obligated to ensure that every traffic light in the county
worked when it terminated power. And, they said, Rosalie
Goldberg should have stopped at the intersectiononce it was clear that the
light was not functioning, as required by Florida traffic laws.

JURORS' VIEW

Jury foreman Juan Perez says FPL made its biggest mistake in not accepting
any blame for Jill's death.

"If FPL would have acknowledged responsibility for throwing the switch and
then made the case that they were only partially responsible, that might
have flown better with some members of the jury," Perez says. "But they
said, 'Screw you, we're not responsible.'"

Perez, a 30-year-old Kendall resident, says the jury was angered by FPL's
repeated assertion that it "was impossible" to identify which transformer
supplied power to every traffic light in the county. Evidence at trial
showed that there are 2,024 signals in the county, he says.

"That's what pissed me off the most," he says.  "There are a limited
[number] of lights and they kept saying it was impossible. Give me a break."

But even more convincing to the jury, he says, was the testimony of FPL
lineman Woodard, who said
that he never looked to see whether the traffic light was affected.

"To them, power outages were a fact of life and they throw switches all the
time," he says. "But to
say that in front of a jury is almost suicidal to a defense."

He said the jury also found fault with FPL's lawyers.

"They turned their back to the jury when they spoke, and when they talked
to us, they wouldn't look us in the eye," he says.

After a one-week trial, the jury deliberated for three hours. It was
unanimous. FPL was entirely at fault
for Jill's death. But for the power outage, the fatal accident would not
have happened.

'SHAME ON YOU'

Then came the matter of damages. Perez, the foreman, took the lead. (FPL's
lawyers may have made another mistake in allowing Perez on the jury. He
works as a consultant to construction companies that have damage claims
against government entities.)

Grossman had asked for $10 million. The jurors ultimately awarded the
Goldbergs $37 million - $17
million for Walter Goldberg's pain and suffering and almost $20 million to
Rosalie, Jill's mother.

After reading the verdict, Perez made a statement.

"We, the jury, urge Florida Power & Light to review the limited amount of
intersections that are
controlled by its disconnects and provide a proper label or
identification," Perez said.

Perez says one female juror pointed at the FPL lawyers and said, "Shame on
you."

The FPL lawyers left the room immediately, leaving their trial materials
behind.

FPL has hired the Miami firm Hicks & Anderson to handle its appeal.
Post-trial motions are due today
and FPL is expected to ask Ramirez to reduce the judgment.

Perez says the case "has really affected me." He's considering approaching
the Miami-Dade County
Commission to ask it to force FPL to comply with the jury's directive.

"I hope FPL listened to us. I hope this wasn't all about money," he says.
"We weren't a runaway jury."