Disabled trucker wins $1 million arbitration
Adam Bobak, a Cheektowaga trucker left permanently disabled after an accident near Beaver, Pa., 11 years ago, was awarded the maximum-allowable $1 million arbitration award, court and legal officials confirmed Wednesday.
Bobak, now 41, suffered career-ending back injuries when coils of steel weighing almost 20 tons fell from a passing truck and slammed into the cab of his Tripifoods truck while he was eastbound on Pennsylvania Route 151 in Hopewell Township.
Arbitrator Richard J. Diebold ordered the AIG Insurance Co. to pay the award.
The other truck was owned by BRight Trucking of Youngstown, Ohio, and insured by Reliance Insurance of Pennsylvania. Bobak’s lawyer, Edward C. Cosgrove, won a $3.3 million jury verdict in the case last October, only to have Reliance Insurance default.
Tripifoods, where Bobak worked for over eight years before the 1997 accident, took out the AIG policy to cover its employees in such situations.
Cosgrove also is suing an insurance company and an Ohio state government insurance concern in a Pennsylvania court and seeking an additional $4.8 million.
