TAMPA - A Hillsborough County jury has awarded a Zephyrhills man $1-million for back injuries he sustained while operating a jetway at Tampa International Airport in 1982.
      The jury late Friday found Wollard Airport Equipment, Inc., of Plantation, negligent in the design and manufacture of a movable hydraulically operated jetway that was in place at Pan Am's Gate 66.
      But the jury also found the man was 25 percent negligent himself, cutting the actual award to $750,000.
      "Wollard obviously disagrees with the verdict" said the company's attorney, Frank Gassler. He said post-trial motions in the case are pending, and did not want to comment further.
      A jetway is the accordion-like walkway that airline attendants move next to a commercial jet's door, allowing passengers to walk directly into airport terminals at second-story level.
      Lynn G. O'Connell was operating one for Pan Am in June 1982 when the jetway suddenly dropped several feet, pitching O'Connell to his knees and pinning him against a plane.
      O'Connell sued Wollard in 1983. Another defendant, Mecon, Inc., which had a contract to maintain the jetway, settled with O'Connell before the case went to trial before Hillsborough Circuit Judge John Gilbert.
      According to court records, O'Connell claimed to suffer from debilitating pain after the accident and was not able to return to the kind of work he had done with Pan Am for 16 years.
      Marcia O'Connell, his wife, said Monday that her husband's pain has increased with age and that he wears an electronic device that sends small electric shocks to specific points on his body in order to take the edge off the pain.
      Mrs. O'Connell said that her husband earned as much as $30,000 a year before the accident but has been able to make only $10,000 in recent years, at such jobs as small-engine repair.
      "It's a mind thing more than anything," she said. "To keep him occupied and his mind off the pain."
      Mrs. O'Connell said the couple was surprised that the jury award was so high. "The lawyer said before the verdict that the highest award they'd had here for that kind of case was in the $300,000 range," she said.
      But such large awards are not unprecedented for the O'Connell's attorney, C. Steve Yerrid and his associates.
      Last fall, Yerrid won a $500,000 verdict from an apartment building owner. Yerrid's client was a tenant in the building who was raped at home after having asked the building management for security improvements.
      He also won a $1.8-million award from an Orlando company on behalf of a noted narrator's estate. The man had recorded Bible readings in the early 1970s on the condition they be used only for the blind and disabled. Later, they were sold commercially for millions of dollars.

01/30/90