Jerry’s Story

Jerry is a 40-year old man who, on July 5, 1997, had just moved to Colorado with his wife and daughter. After leaving a career with a large, public utility corporation, he was starting a new life of self-employment, working on his 250-acre ranch. To earn extra money, he would frequently cut and bale his neighbor’s fields.

One Saturday morning, the baling twine on his large round baler broke and would not feed itself through the compression rollers. Since this was a critical component of the round hay baler's operation, he was forced to dismount the tractor and walk back to the baler to manually feed the twine into the rollers. While doing this, and despite his vigilance, his left arm was pulled into the belts of the upper portion of the baler, causing both a serious crushing injury and the de-gloving or removal, of the skin from his arm. Although he was eventually able to yank his left arm out before it could be traumatically amputated, the torque of this motion caused his body to twist around, jamming his right arm directly into the rollers held together by eight hundred pounds of compression.

Over a period of approximately ninety minutes, Jerry suffered the slow, painful grinding amputation of his right arm, just below the bicep. The only reason his entire body was not pulled into the machine was pure self-determination. The owner of the field came home and noticed the blowing dirt and hay from the stationary tractor in the field. His investigation saved Jerry's life. When the emergency medical technicians arrived, it required a “Jaws of Life” and several individuals to separate the compression rollers. As a result of the injuries he received from the baler, our client has no right arm and a left arm with no more than twenty percent function. He became one hundred percent occupationally disabled at the age of 42.

The attorneys at the Law Offices of Stuart A. Kritzer filed a complaint against the manufacturer of the baler. The design of the baler in question had defects that created an unreasonably dangerous condition not readily apparent to a user and for which no adequate warning was provided. They also alleged the designer of the baler never conducted a hazard analysis or other meaningful or appropriate safety engineering prior to bringing the product to the market. In addition, the complaint also alleged that from the day the Vermeer® big round baler was created, the manufacturer knew operators would have to place their hands in or about the pinch rollers while they were in operation in order to remedy clogging, baling twine problems and other malfunctions. Over the past 20 years, the company that manufactured the hay baler had knowledge of approximately one hundred similar, horrible accidents like this one. In those 20 years, the company never recalled the machine or put out a meaningful warning to its operators.

As a result of efforts of the attorneys at the Law Offices of Stuart A. Kritzer, dignity and financial security has been restored to Jerry and his family.