Eight days after being hit in the head by an errant sliding door aboard a luxury cruise ship in 2011 and after suffering a seizure, James Hausman, owner of The Gold Center in Springfield, says a doctor at a San Diego hospital gave him instructions.
Take it easy. Don’t do anything for six months.
“The sentence was, ‘Don’t do a damn thing for six months — you need to be waited on hand-and-foot,’” Hausman recalls. “Where do you get waited on hand-and-foot? … Pick up the phone, room service – whatever you need.”
And so Hausman got back aboard a Holland America cruise ship and completed his journey around the world. Then, he sued Holland America. And last week, a federal jury in Seattle awarded Hausman $21 million for brain injuries he says that he suffered from an automatic sliding door that hit him in the head somewhere near Hawaii on Nov. 26, 2011.
Hausman, his wife Carol and their daughter were aboard the Seattle-based Amsterdam when disaster struck. Hausman and his wife were strolling to the Lido Deck for a poolside function when a sliding glass door closed unexpectedly, striking Hausman on the side of his head. Video of the mishap shows Hausman putting his hand up to his face, clearly caught by surprise, after the door hit him.
“He was a little bit dazed, you know,” Carol Hausman told KIRO television in Seattle. “Like many people you sort of think, ‘Well, let’s move on to the next thing.’”
In an exclusive interview with Illinois Times, James Hausman says that he can’t just move on. He needs more sleep than he ever did, and his memory has suffered.
“Us talking right now, I won’t remember ten words of it tomorrow,” says Hausman, once an avid pilot who flew everything from fighter jets to helicopters to single-engine Cessnas. “I’ll be on seizure drugs the rest of my life. I’ll never fly a plane again. The vertigo, it will be with me the rest of my life. … I offered Holland America $10 million if they’d give me my life back.”
Hausman says that Holland America had plenty of chances to avoid a trial.
“Trust me: We tried to settle many times with Holland America,” Hausman says. We bent over backwards trying to settle.”
The cruise ship line in court documents said that Hausman entered the doorway at such an angle that the door’s sensors did not detect his presence. Third parties not named in the lawsuit were responsible, Holland America says in court documents. In a prepared statement issued after the trial, Holland America says that takes passenger safety seriously and plans to appeal the verdict.
Hausman says that Holland America modified sliding doors on its ships to save fuel costs. As originally designed, he said, the doors were safe. But he said that the changes resulted in the doors closing unexpectedly on dozens of people before he suffered his injury. Injuries in other incidents ranged from bruises to a broken vertebrae, a lawyer for Hausman told KIRO television in Seattle.
“I wish one of the earlier victims would have taken action because then, I wouldn’t have been injured,” Hausman said.
The Seattle jury awarded Hausman $1.5 million for what he has already suffered and another $3.5 million for future suffering. The bulk of the award, $16 million, came in the form of punitive damages.
On the Internet message boards, the award is being portrayed as excessive, with some posters suggesting that Hausman would have received even more if he’d been carrying a cup of hot coffee, evoking an infamous lawsuit against McDonald’s in which a plaintiff was awarded six figures after hot coffee spilled in her lap.
“It sounds like a lot of money, but it’s not, when you figure taxes and attorney’s fees,” Hausman said.
Hausman says that his injury so impaired his normal life that he was forced to sell his precious metal business to Todd Green, a local car dealer. Hausman says that Green is now running The Gold Center, once owned by Hausman, but a dispute over who should own the building and property is now being adjudicated in Sangamon County Circuit Court, where Green alleges that Hausman has reneged on a deal to sell the building.
Green said that he could not recall specific questions that were asked during the deposition, but they centered on the deal to sell The Gold Center. He said that he didn’t know Hausman prior to the door incident and was not asked how the incident affected Hausman.
Hausman said that he’s not concerned about Holland America’s vow to appeal the verdict.
“In my opinion, they were granted everything that they asked for in trial – Holland America was granted literally every defense motion that they wanted,” Hausman says.
Contact Bruce Rushton at brushton@illinoistimes.com.
This article appears in Oct 29 – Nov 4, 2015.
