Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, November 30, 1994                   TAG: 9411300072
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

WHEELCHAIR DEALER TO PAY $225,000

A lawsuit filed in Roanoke Circuit Court had claimed that the specially designed wheelchair was defective, allowing Sarah Bensen to slip down in the chair to a position where her neck was lodged against a chest restraint pad.

"She was choked, or in essence hanged, on the chest strap," said S.D. Roberts Moore, a Roanoke lawyer who represented Bensen's parents, Gloria and Ted Bensen of Horseshoe Lane in Blacksburg.

Sarah Bensen had cerebral palsy and was unable to sit, stand or crawl.

Bensen, who had been left unattended in a family room while other family members were eating dinner, was found unconscious in the chair on Jan. 13, 1990, according to court records.

She was taken to Montgomery Regional Hospital and later to the University of Virginia Hospital. She died nearly a year later of complications that the lawsuit said were caused by the wheelchair incident.

United Home Health Care, a Brandon Avenue business that assembled and sold the chair, had denied liability for the accident. The business maintained in court papers that the chair was improperly used after it was sold to the Bensens in 1989.

"It's always been the position of United Home Health Care that the chair was safe," said Michael Cleary, a Roanoke lawyer who represented the business.

Last month, a Roanoke jury heard one day of testimony in the case before a settlement tentatively was struck. The amount was not made public until this week, when Circuit Judge Clifford Weckstein approved the settlement. Of the $225,000 paid by United Home Health Care, $118,905 will go to Moore's law firm for legal expenses. The rest will be split among members of the Bensen family.

In a $2 million lawsuit filed in 1992, the Bensens had claimed that United Home Health Care acted negligently by failing to properly fit the wheelchair for Sarah Bensen, to test or inspect it, or to warn about possible dangers.

Two other companies, the manufacturers of the wheelchair and the chest pad, were named in the lawsuit but had settled earlier, making the total settlement amount $345,000.

Keywords:
FATALITY