Mr. Akers was a single parent with a financial responsibility of raising his two daughters. He worked as a Supervisor in a local warehouse. The facility used a series of mechanical and pneumatic walk-boards that connected the interior of the warehouse to a fleet of trucks. Stephen Akers was rendered brain damaged, resulting in a permanent coma and ultimately death, when one of the walk-boards catapulted into the yard. The manufacturer of the mechanical walkboards claimed improper maintenance and driver abuse as the cause of the accident. We claimed that the product was defective and that the cause rested with the design of the product. This case went to verdict in the early 1980s and resulted in approximately an $8 million judgment for the Akers family. It also spawned a bad-faith lawsuit against the National American Insurance Company, one of the AIG group of companies, who insured the manufacturer.