Suit involving courthouse crosswalk settles

WEST CHESTER » The sides in a lawsuit involving injuries that a former Chester County Common Pleas Court tipstaff suffered while crossing a much-criticized crosswalk at the county Justice Center reached a settlement Thursday, after the trial was delayed because of the nor-eastern snowstorm.

The lead attorney for the plaintiff, the late Agnes Chesko, confirmed that the all of the parties had reached an agreement and that the case settled before court reopened. Lawrence Goldberg, of

the West Chester law firm of Goldberg, Goldberg & Janoski of West Chester, said he was not permitted to disclose or discuss the financial terms of the settlement. Chesko, through her surviving family, had been seeking compensatory and punitive damages.

“The family is very satisfied with the results of the case,” Goldberg said in a brief interview after the settlement was announced to Senior Judge Arthur Tillson of Montgomery County, who was presiding over the trial. He did say, however, that the terms would not mean any charges to the crosswalk would be made.

“People are still going to have to be careful,” Goldberg said.

The attorney for the lead defendant in the case, Stantec Inc., Frederick Michael Brehm, could not be reached for comment. Stantec is a multi-national engineering firm that absorbed the firm that originally designed the mid-block crosswalk that connects the Justice Center with a county parking garage, both located in the 200 block of West Market Street in West Chester.

The trial, expected to last eight days, began Monday, but was halted Tuesday afternoon as county court facilities closed because

of the impending snow storm. All county offices and courts were closed on Thursday as the storm continued. They reopened Thursday morning.

The crosswalk has been criticized by many who use it regularly over the years because automobile traffic does not always stop for pedestrians making their way between the two buildings. Chesko’s attorneys contended that the walkway was designed without proper attention to the dangers it would create.

The engineering firm that designed the crosswalk, “did not do their job,” said attorney Chad Maloney in his opening statement to the jury on Monday. “The crosswalk was not safe.”

The suit accuses the engineers of disregarding pedestrian safety concerns in favor of making sure automobile traffic was disrupted as little as possible outside the new courthouse and its 500-car parking garage neighbor across West Market Street. Those who want to get from the south side of the street to the north side, or vice versa, are directed to use the crosswalk in the middle of the block, rather than at nearby intersections.

Maloney said that in designing the courthouse, the engineers created problems that eventually led to the traffic accident in which Chesko was seriously injured,

Chesko was using the crosswalk the evening of Dec. 18, 2012 after finishing work as a tipstaff in Judge John Hall’s courtroom. As she made her way towards the parking garage, a car driven by a Downingtown woman, Karen Johnson, on her way to a church choir practice, struck her in the right side, flipping her into the air.

Johnson, according to her attorney, apparently failed to see Chesko as she used the crosswalk. State law requires motorists to yield to pedestrians in similar situations.

Chesko, a longtime borough resident well known in the community for her civic activism, suffered back, head, neck, spine and torso injuries. In 2013, doctors amputated her right leg because of the injuries she suffered in the accident, the suit states. Her medical bills exceeded $1 million, Maloney told the jurors in his opening statement.

SHE was 94 when she died of unrelated medical issues in April 2015, was by all accounts a remarkable woman. She raised four children — one with special needs whom she cared for into his adults years — and taught school for more than 20 years. She loved to travel the world, swam into her 80s, drove a 1969 Firebird convertible, and was active in a host of community organizations.

The defendants included

Stantec Inc., which acquired the engineering firm of Vollmer Associates of New York in 2007, which had previously taken over the local firm of Brandywine Valley Engineers, which the county had hired to design the courthouse that opened in 2008.

Also listed as defendants were Johnson, the driver, the borough of West Chester, and the state Department of Transportation.

In his opening statement, Brehm indicated that he would cast blame on the decisions surrounding the creation of the midblock crosswalk not on the engineer who designed it but on the governmental entities that later asked for changes that were put into place when the accident involving Chesko occurred.

The initial crosswalk included only warning signs on opposite sides of Market Street telling motorists they had to yield for pedestrians. After the courthouse opened and a traffic and pedestrian study were conducted, additional signs were put up and pedestrian-activated flashing lights installed.

“The design of the crosswalk at the time of the accident was not the design” that had initially been approved, Brehm said.

MICHAEL P. RELLAHAN - DIGITAL FIRST MEDIA The pedestrian crosswalk between the Chester County Justice center (at right) and its multi-level parking garage is the subject of a lawsuit that began in Common Pleas Court Monday. A former county court tipstaff was seriously injured when she was...