{"id":90,"date":"2015-11-18T13:28:59","date_gmt":"2015-11-18T13:28:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.midtowncpafirm.com\/blog\/?p=90"},"modified":"2015-11-18T13:28:59","modified_gmt":"2015-11-18T13:28:59","slug":"sliding-door-injury-results-in-21-5m-trial-verdict","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.midtowncpafirm.com\/blog\/index.php\/2015\/11\/18\/sliding-door-injury-results-in-21-5m-trial-verdict\/","title":{"rendered":"Sliding Door Injury Results in $21.5M Trial Verdict"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.midtowncpafirm.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/Holland-American.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-91\" src=\"http:\/\/www.midtowncpafirm.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/Holland-American-300x154.png\" alt=\"Holland American\" width=\"300\" height=\"154\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.midtowncpafirm.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/Holland-American-300x154.png 300w, https:\/\/www.midtowncpafirm.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/Holland-American.png 415w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>A federal jury trial awarded <strong>$21.5 million in damages<\/strong> to a Springfield, Illinois man who was injured by an automatic sliding-glass door on a Holland America Line cruise ship dating back to 2011.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/US\/wireStory\/jury-awards-215-million-man-injured-cruise-ship-35134442\" target=\"_blank\">personal injury damages awarded<\/a> by the jury were $5M, which are tax free.\u00a0 The punitive damages were $16.5M which means a windfall for the IRS.\u00a0 That\u2019s right, the entire $16.5M is taxable and the attorney fee, which is normally contingent for personal injury cases (30-40% contingent fee), will be challenging to deduct.\u00a0 That means the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/robertwood\/2015\/11\/18\/man-gets-21-5m-verdict-for-door-injury-but-irs-is-biggest-winner\/?ss=taxes\" target=\"_blank\">IRS will get the largest share<\/a> of the $16.5M and the attorney will get a large cut as well.<\/p>\n<p>Shockingly, it pays to evaluate the tax implications into your legal decisions when the punitive awards could create a huge tax bill.<\/p>\n<p>As you might suspect, Holland America Cruise has appealed the verdict so a settlement for a amount less than $21.5M, but a higher award for personal injuries (higher than $5M) may be a win win solution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A federal jury trial awarded $21.5 million in damages to a Springfield, Illinois man who was injured by an automatic sliding-glass door on a Holland America Line cruise ship dating back to 2011. The personal injury damages awarded by the jury were $5M, which are tax free.\u00a0 The punitive damages were $16.5M which means a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[59,58,57],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midtowncpafirm.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midtowncpafirm.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midtowncpafirm.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midtowncpafirm.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midtowncpafirm.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.midtowncpafirm.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92,"href":"https:\/\/www.midtowncpafirm.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90\/revisions\/92"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midtowncpafirm.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midtowncpafirm.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midtowncpafirm.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}