$8.7 million awarded to amputee after crash

ATLANTIC CITY - A casino dealer who lost a leg in a multicar pileup has been awarded $8.7 million from two state agencies that a jury determined took too long to respond to the crash on the Atlantic City Expressway.

Janet Henebema, a dealer at the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa, was on her way home from work on Dec. 4, 2005, unaware that she was approaching a multicar pileup that was growing larger by the minute.

She hit a patch of black ice and struck another vehicle. She got out and started walking to the shoulder of the roadway when she was struck by a car that skidded on the same patch of black ice, and her leg was severed.

The first drivers to crash did so 37 minutes before her accident, and state troopers gave priority to a fatal accident elsewhere on the toll road.

A civil jury Tuesday determined that the South Jersey Transportation Authority was 80 percent responsible for the accident, and state police 20 percent responsible. The vehicle that severed Henebema's leg was driven by an off-duty trooper, but the jury determined that the black ice was so bad that no driver could be held responsible for skids that resulted from it.

Henebema's lawyer, Ralph Paolone, said the authority's dispatchers failed to alert troopers that cars involved in the pileup were still in the roadway, creating an imminent danger to others approaching the scene in Egg Harbor Township.

"I don't think the jury felt the road troopers did anything wrong," he told the Atlantic City Press. "They faulted the SJTA dispatchers for not broadcasting the call and not updating the troopers so they could have made a better decision."

The dispatchers also declined an offer of help from Egg Harbor Township police, the lawyer said.

Sharon Gordon, a spokeswoman for the authority, said it would appeal the jury award but declined to comment specifically on the case.

Henebema spent six weeks in a hospital and now uses a prosthetic leg while working reduced hours at the casino.