Boating accident leads to serious injury

$350,000

A boater on the Connecticut river was with his friend tubing. The owner and operator of the boat pulling the tubes had a few tubes tied to clothesline ropes.

After they finished tubing, the owner pulled in the tubes, gathered in the ropes haphazardly and threw them onto the floor where this young man was sitting. As they sped up the river back towards the dock, a tube blew off.

The passenger tried to catch it, and as the rope unraveled it got caught and wrapped around his arm, getting tighter and tighter. He was thrown into the water with the rope wound tightly. By the time the operator saw what had happened and stopped the engine and helped him back up, the young man’s arm was turning black and blue. When the operator tried to start up the engine he discovered it was out of gas. Finally, after twenty minutes or so, another boater came by and rescued them by towing them in. The young man was taken to the hospital where they diagnosed closed compartment syndrome and had to do emergency surgery to open up his arm from his shoulder down to his wrist in order to get oxygen into his dying muscles and dying tissue. He did recover most of the use of his arm after a lengthy recovery and painful physical therapy. However, he was left with a very unsightly scar. The boat owner’s homeowner’s and boat policy insurance carriers were forced to pay their full policy limits once Attorney Goodman got involved in the case.