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Marietta, GA— Following the first afternoon of jury deliberations last Friday at trial over a house deck fall that left a Georgia man paralyzed, and with jurors scheduled to return after a weekend break to continue deliberating as to liability, the parties settled the case. Morder, et al. v. Porter, et al., 22-A-1262.
The resolution was announced before Cobb County (Georgia) State Court jurors would have resumed deliberations last Monday at trial over Thomas Morder’s 2021 fall from the deck of his Georgia home. The fall left Morder, then 67, with a traumatic brain injury and a thoracic spinal injury that paralyzed him. He contended Michael Porter, a contractor doing business as McTay Improvement, which had been working on Morder’s home at the time, was responsible.
Terms of the settlement, which followed an afternoon where jurors signaled they were at an impasse, are confidential.
In an email to CVN after the settlement, Porter’s attorney, Gray Rust St. Amand Moffett and Brieske’s Matthew Moffett, noted he was satisfied with the result.
“We felt it was fair and reasonable to both sides in this hard-fought case, by both sides,” Moffett wrote, while praising Morder’s attorneys, Law & Moran’s Peter Law and Michael Moran.
“I felt both sides were successful in trial—that’s clear from the jury impasse—but perhaps the more interesting story is how the lead lawyers, who go all the way back to law school at Emory, engaged in good faith, professional negotiations resulting in the right settlement for their clients,” Moffett added.
The settlement wrapped a four-day first phase of trial focused solely on who was responsible for the fall through an unsecured railing, sending Morder to the concrete 15 feet below. Morder and his wife contend the contractor failed to properly warn about the railing, which had been removed earlier to create a pass-through for equipment.
During last Friday’s closings, the Morders’ attorney, Michael Moran, reviewed evidence he said showed Porter failed to do enough to warn Morder about the inherent danger of the railing. And he added Porter testified that he never verbally warned Morder or his wife that he left the railing unsecured, which Moran said constituted a breach of industry standards.
“If Mr. Porter breached the standard of care that he was subject to,” Moran said, “well, then, if somebody’s hurt as a result of that, [Porter’s] responsible.”
However, the defense contended Porter warned Morder repeatedly not to go on the deck because of its dangers, but Morder ignored those warnings, leading to the fall.
In his closing Friday, Moffett highlighted evidence of multiple safety warnings he said Porter gave, including a text indicating the railing was not secure, which Morder’s wife forwarded to her husband. And Moffett added that Porter regularly blocked access to the railing with a grill, which Moffett said was likely in place before Morder fell. Nonetheless, Moffett said, Morder chose to go out onto the deck and near the railing.
“While someone may have a right to take a risk, or assume a risk,” Moffett said, “if something happens as a result of it, you can’t blame somebody else for it.”
CVN has reached out to the Morders' attorney, Peter Law. and will update this article with his comments.
Email Arlin Crisco at acrisco@cvn.com.
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