GROVELAND, Fla. – A lawsuit filed against the Florida Department of Transportation claims a bad repair job on a guardrail -- conducted by an FDOT field crew and prison inmates -- resulted in a Lake County teenager losing his leg.
[WEB EXTRAS: Local 6 initial report | Read lawsuit]
Charles Pike, now 22, was sitting shotgun in a friend's truck in October 2010, when the driver swerved to avoid an animal in the road and hit a guardrail on SR33 at Groveland Airport Road head on, according to the lawsuit. Because the guardrail was improperly repaired, the suit claims it did not deflect the rail away from the vehicle, and instead "essentially became part of an immoveable battering ram awaiting impact."
The metal sliced Pike's left leg below the knee, all the way to the bone and it had to be amputated.
Before Pike's accident, FDOT had repaired the guardrail damaged by a previous accident with a "field crew and prison inmates by using a random collection of parts from the FDOT warehouse... Including an obsolete piece of guardrail built in 1965," the suit alleges.
Pike's attorney, Ted Leopold, said FDOT did not learn its lesson after the improper installation resulted in the loss of his client's leg.
"After our accident, the same representatives for DOT, with the same type of correctional inmates, used the wrong parts again," Leopold said. "I had to inform the DOT that they installed it incorrectly. I had to tell the DOT representatives."
"The Florida Department of Transportation is evaluating the ongoing litigation," spokesman Dick Kane said in a short statement released to Local 6.
The alleged improper repair issue is separate from federal and state whistleblower lawsuits filed against Trinity Industries by Joshua Harman, which are related to an alleged design flaw Local 6 first reported in July. The federal whistleblower suit went to trial in July, but a judge declared a mistrial after questions over whether a witness was tampered with came to light. A new trial on that issue is expected as early as October.