A former JP Morgan analyst was awarded $35 million nearly a decade after a glass door in a New York City office building shattered on her head, leaving her with brain damage.
Meghan Brown, 36 years old, He suffered the traumatic brain injury while leaving 271 Madison Avenue on February 2, 2015.
Dramatic video captured the moment the eight-foot door broke, sending shards of glass crashing down.
Brown suffered “permanent and serious” injuries, which ended his promising career in banking and even affected his love life, he told the court.
Doctors have even told him that he is likely to develop early dementia along with sensitivity to light and noise, headaches, vertigo and post-traumatic stress disorder.
“I remember at one point there were women who were ripping shards of glass out of my head and hair,” he told the court.
A former JP Morgan analyst has been awarded $35 million nearly ten years after a glass door in a New York City building shattered and left her with brain damage.
Meghan Brown, 36, suffered a traumatic brain injury while leaving 271 Madison Avenue on February 2, 2015. Pictured: Brown with her late service dog Dawson.
“I remember seeing glass everywhere, in the lobby, near me, just… I saw it all.”
Brown was forced to take a year off work and eventually returned to JP Morgan, but her career gradually declined and she was fired for “performance reasons” in 2021.
‘After the accident I just didn’t get better. “I couldn’t get better,” Brown added.
‘I just constantly failed all the time. There was never a situation that I wasn’t in. And it’s embarrassing.
‘I just couldn’t understand that this was the new me. I just couldn’t accept it and that’s why I kept trying.
Brown had to get a service dog, who has since passed away, to help her with daily life.
She was also engaged until her fiancé broke off the relationship after realizing he couldn’t have a “normal life” with her, Brown told the court.
“There is no facet of his existence that is not affected by his brain injuries,” Brown’s attorney added.
He was awarded the sum after a jury agreed that the trauma could have been avoided if the owner of the 271 Madison building had conducted proper inspections.
Brown’s attorney successfully argued that a crack had formed in the door that would have been fixed with proper maintenance.
He also noted that the glass in one of the doors had previously been broken in 2010 and 2014.
Today, the building houses the office of an audiologist, a dentist and an estate planner, among other commercial tenants.
The day she was injured, Brown was leaving a physical therapist when she pushed the door at the same time as someone on the other side.
Dramatic video captured the moment the eight-foot door shattered and shards of glass fell on top of it.
Defendant 271 Madison Co. was determined to have been negligent in failing to inspect the door and identify a crack that had appeared in the glass.
The glass broke over her head and several members of the public came to her aid before she was rushed to hospital.
‘There was blood in the snow, a lot of blood,” he told the court. ‘I remember thinking: it was almost like I was floating or looking down, basically. I didn’t know where this blood was coming from and I was wondering where this blood was coming from.
Since then, Brown has undergone years of medical treatments to aid her recovery, including “neurologists, psychologists, otolaryngologists, pain relievers, neuropsychologists, psychiatrists, vision therapists, and vestibular therapists,” according to the verdict.
Thomas Sofield, attorney for defendant 271 Madison Co., argued that there was no evidence of a crack in the door and that the tempered glass behaved exactly as designed when it broke into several smaller pieces rather than one large sheet.
He also responded that Brown had not suffered any brain injury and that the only treatment he needed was a cut on his hand.
However, the jury found that the defendant was negligent, that his negligence was a substantial factor in causing Brown’s injuries, and awarded him $1,750,000 for past pain and suffering and loss of enjoyment of life.
He was awarded $20,000,000 for future pain and suffering and loss of enjoyment of life, and $13,429,208 for future medical therapies, medications, and home health care.