Photo: Sean Lewis won $1.3 million in a bullshit construction accident settlement. He has also survived being shot 3 different times in his life.
In an added twist to the unlikely death of an uncommonly brave 13-year-old, the Range Rover that killed her was bought with a $1.3 million settlement its driver won in a lawsuit - when he shouldn't have pocketed a penny.
At the time of his supposed fall at a Brooklyn construction site, 44-year-old Sean Lewis was a seldom employed ex-con without a valid driver's license who traveled by bus and subway.
His greatest luck was to have survived being shot on three different occasions between 1983 and 1995. In one of the shootings, he was hit in the middle of his back, the bullet piercing his spleen and pancreas.
"I think it is still in there," Lewis said in a court proceeding.
Lewis was never able to name a witness to the backward fall he says he took on April 26, 2004, while working as a laborer in Brighton Beach. He offered differing accounts in a deposition as to whether the plywood ramp he said broke underfoot was flush to the ground or was elevated 2 or 3 feet.
He took a cab to Brooklyn Hospital Center, where a doctor wrote "back pain" but an X-ray found "normal appearing vertebral bodies and disc spaces." An MRI did subsequently indicate some injury and he underwent two outpatient procedures. He continued to complain of unrelenting pain.
"I can't stand for any period of time," he said in a deposition. "I can't sit for long periods of time. I can't bend over. I can't lift my leg up. I can't play with my kid. I can't work. I can't sleep. I can't have sex without pain and lots of other stuff I can't remember right now."
He complained he had difficultly getting in and out of a car.
"Everything I can do, hurts to do," he said.
His medical records indicated that he had stopped seeing a doctor about his back in 2006 and wasn't taking medication. He insisted in a deposition he was in fact seeing a doctor whose name he could not remember. He said he had been referred to this new doctor by a friend named Reggie.
"Reggie what?" a lawyer asked.
"I don't know," he said.
He also said he had never hurt his back before. Medical records show that he had in fact complained of suffering painful injuries to his "left shoulder, neck and back" after an auto accident in 2002. He underwent physical therapy and acupuncture twice a week for three months before an insurance company doctor declared that any injuries he suffered had "been resolved."
Medical records also show that Lewis suffered what was described as a "nail gun injury" in 2006. A doctor noted in court papers, "Clarification of this injury is needed in light of the fact that claimant states that he has not worked in any capacity."
Lewis may have been lying about not working. Or the injury may have come from a handgun, making Lewis lucky a fourth time. Either way, it was one more contradiction.
Nonetheless, Judge Arthur Schack is said to have urged a settlement. Schack has made himself a true hero to the whole city by standing up for the victims of illegal foreclosures, but in the Lewis case he may have failed to see that the little guy can every once in a while be as much a hustler as a big banker.
In July 2010, Lewis scored a $1.3 million settlement. A guy who said he had trouble getting in a car bought a high-riding Range Rover. His luck ended Saturday, when somebody stabbed him. He should have stuck to getting shot.
A mortally wounded Lewis careened down Pacific St. in his settlement-mobile, striking three parked cars, then reversing toward the stoop where Kira Goddard sat with her friends after seeing "Captain America."
"It's reversing back! Run, run!" Kira cried.
She was hustling her friends away like a movie superhero when she was struck and killed. It seems fate had gone out of its way to claim one of the great ones.
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