TAMPA - While Jerald Swanson waited in his wheelchair outside a Hillsborough County courtroom this week, his lawyer Steve Yerrid told jurors they would spend their next few days hearing "of broken lives and shattered dreams." They would learn, he said, about a 26-year-old man with a wife and two children who, in a tragic instant in 1991, broke his back when he fell 20 feet at a Sarasota construction site. He will be paralyzed from the waist down for the rest of his life.
      The fault, Yerrid asserted, belonged to general contractor Phillips Construction Co. Inc, which, he said, overlooked minimal safety procedures. Late Thursday night, the five-woman, one-man jury awarded Swanson $16 million in damages.
      "I'm still in shock," Swanson, 30, said Friday. "I can't thank the jury enough. But I'm not counting my chickens before they hatch. One battle's over but the war ain't won yet."
      Attorneys of Phillip Construction could not be reached, but Swanson expects an appeal.
      The jury verdict, Yerrid said, "shows that a common worker given equal treatment under the law can sustain the same enormous loss as the most successful citizen when it comes to miser, disfigurement, and paralysis."
      The award is among the largest in Hillsborough County's history. In April 1994, a jury awarded wrestler Chick Austin and his family $26.7 million for injuries he sustained when he broke his neck in a wrestling accident. Austin's case has been appealed.
      Before his accident on Aug. 13, 1991, Swanson had spent two years working as a welder. That day, he was working for a subcontractor, Gulf Coast Steel, welding bar joists 20 feet above the Sarasota Outlet Mall.
      In court records, Swanson recalled seeing a spark at the end of the 200-feet welding cable he was using. He tried to whip it a cross a joist but instead it arched sending an electrical shock into the mental joist he straddled.
      "My right leg rubbed the joist, and the shock hit me and caused my leg muscles to spasm and lose may balance, " Swanson said. He lost his grip and fell.
      As a result of his injuries, he is a paraplegic. He has been through several surgeries to repair muscle and nerve damage and has been hospitalized for depression.
      Although he is still married to his wife, Pamela, the couple is separated, and Swanson lives and helps tend a quadriplegic. Pamela Swanson stayed by his side through the trial.
      Initially, Swanson sued Gulf Coast Steel and its owner, Shannon Murphy, and SOS Associates, owner of the mall. He settled his complains against those defendants. The settlements are confidential.
      But the construction company refused to concede more than minimal liability. Swanson accused the company of failing to maintain a safe working environment. He was not wearing a safety harness when he fell.
      The construction company tried to convince the jury that Gulf Coast Steel was primarily responsible for the accident. But the jury didn't buy it.
      After the verdict was announced, each juror hugged Swanson.

07/22/95