A physics professor and a graphics computer named Iris helped persuade a Broward County jury to reject police testimony and award $7 million to a woman left brain-damaged when an 18-wheeler broadsided her car.
Florida Highway Patrol investigators testified that former Boca Raton resident Jill Grant was to blame for the 1983 accident involving Grant`s car and a Publix Super Markets truck carrying 24,000 frozen apple pies.
But jurors believed a computer-generated video simulation that showed the Publix truck hit Grant`s car from behind as she drove on Florida`s Turnpike, causing her to swerve into the truck`s path.
They returned the verdict against the Lakeland, Fla.-based grocery chain late Thursday, finding Publix 100 percent negligent after a three-week trial and 7 1/2 hours of deliberations.
The simulation put together by Queens College physics professor Arthur Paskin was compelling, said juror Frances Scott of Pompano Beach.
”The more I looked at the pictures, the more I thought it was a wonderful thing,” Scott said.
It was the first time that a computerized reconstruction of an accident was used as evidence in a personal-injury case in Florida, said Scott Schlesinger, one of Grant`s attorneys.
Rex Conrad, Publix`s defense attorney, said he plans to ask Broward County Circuit Judge Geoffrey Cohen for a new trial, and, if that`s unsuccessful, to appeal.
”The computer didn`t solve the accident,” Conrad said. ”It just illustrated one of their engineers` opinions of what happened. It said whatever they wanted it to say.”
Paskin-who spent nearly five months poring over the evidence, applying the laws of physics and punching his calculations into a Cornell University graphics computer named Iris-said Conrad was correct, to a point.
”You can put wrong information into a computer and get wrong information out,” he said. ”If I misused the laws, that certainly could happen. But I`ve been a physics professor for 21 years. And I can teach a jury some of the laws of physics and why some things can happen and some things can`t happen.”
There were no witnesses to the 4:30 a.m. accident except for Grant, now 40 and living with family in Illinois, and the truck driver, Denver Wayne Burtz.
Grant-whose injuries left her severely impaired, with short-term memory loss, permanent double vision and difficulty walking-couldn`t remember what happened.
Burtz blamed Grant, saying she lost control of her car as she got on the turnpike in Delray Beach.
But a toll-taker at the Delray Beach interchange testified that Grant didn`t get on the highway there.
Grant, a licensed practical nurse and mother of two, was 33 at the time of the accident. She was in a coma for three months.
