N.J. To Pay $4.75 Million for Fatality, Injuries From Tree Falling on Highway (New Jersey Law Journal)
September 23, 2011

By Mary Pat Gallagher

The state agreed on Sept. 8 to pay $4.75 million to settle a suit over a tree that crashed through a car roof, killing one person and paralyzing another, McGlynn v. New Jersey Department of Transportation.

The tree fell on Sept. 19, 2003, during Hurricane Isabel, onto a Jeep traveling east along Route 46 in White Township. Passenger Pamela McGlynn, 35, of Bushkill, Pa., died instantly. The driver, her husband Edward, 41, suffered a burst fracture at C-6 that left him paralyzed from the waist down.

The lawyer for the McGlynns and for Pamela's estate, John Dodig of Feldman Shepherd Wohlgelernter Tanner Weinstock Dodig in Philadelphia, says the tree was an 80-foot-tall ailanthus leaning over the highway and it snapped a few feet above the ground. He says he adduced expert testimony that a routine inspection would have identified the tree as a hazard, based on its visible structural defects. The defendant, the New Jersey Department of Transportation, disputed that point, he says.

The suit, filed in Warren County Superior Court, included a Portee claim by two of the McGlynn children who were in the back seat but suffered only minor injuries.

The case settled through mediation with retired Union County Chancery Judge John Boyle, now with Lindabury McCormick Estabrook & Cooper in Westfield.

Defense lawyer John Bowens of Schenck Price Smith & King in Florham Park referred a call to the Attorney General's Office, which confirms the settlement.

Feldman Shepherd's Jason Daria assisted Dodig on the case.