PITTSBURGH - As the nation's largest personal injury law firm sues the food industry for allegedly ruining the nation's health, it now blames a woman's heart attack on having to take the stairs to her apartment.
Laura Signorelli of Morgan & Morgan's Philadelphia office on April 3 filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the Allegheny County Housing Authority and the Commerce Plaza Apartments, claiming a malfunctioning elevator caused the death of a 64-year-old resident.
The building is in Wilmerding and is marketed as an "excellent choice for seniors wanting affordable housing." But problems with the elevator caused residents to take the stairs, says the suit filed on behalf of the estate of Robin Cunningham.
"The direct and proximate cause of Robin K. Cunningham's death was the extreme physical burden imposed upon her by the non-functional elevator, which forced her into repetitive, excessive exertion beyond her physiological limits," the suit says.
"Defendants' failure to repair or maintain a basic, necessary component of the building infrastructure foreseeably placed medically vulnerable tenants like (Cunningham) in a position where fatal exertion and its sequelae were not just possible but inevitable."
The case is a second novel try in recent months by Morgan & Morgan in Pennsylvania to lay blame on defendants for the health problems of clients. A first-of-its-kind lawsuit filed in Philadelphia in December sues the nation's food industry for intentionally using addictive ultra-processed foods, blaming companies like Kraft Heinz and Coca-Cola for the diabetes and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease suffered by Bryce Martinez by the age of 16.
Some of those companies were once owned by tobacco giants Phillip Morris and RJ Reynolds, who used their "cigarette playbook to fill our food environment with addictive substances that are aggressively marketed to children and minorities."
Though the complaint is 149 pages, defendants recently attacked it as too vague and an example of "shotgun pleading." A motion to dismiss filed March 31 says Morgan & Morgan fails to define what makes a food "ultra-processed" then neglected to mention which foods Martinez ate that caused his conditions.
"Plaintiff's complaint singles out Defendants, 11 of the country's most popular food and beverage manufacturers that are dedicated to making safe products enjoyed by generations of consumers, and essentially asks the Court to hold this select contingent of an entire industry liable for nothing more than making and advertising federally regulated and legally compliant products," the motion says.
The case of Cunningham blames her heart attack on "undue physical burden." She lived in apartment 4B of the Commerce Plaza Apartments until her death in September 2023.
She and other tenants had complained about the "frequent outages" of the elevators until a three-day period in which stairs were the only avenue to her apartment available.
She over-exerted herself on Sept. 27-28, 2023, the suit says, then collapsed while climbing the stairs on the 29th. She was a veteran who had managed her health with exercise and activity, the suit claims.
The complaint gets medical on Page 9, claiming the stairs caused stress-induced cardiomyopathy, a stroke, multi-system organ dysfunction, acute kidney injury and other conditions.
"Defendants' egregious inaction violated the most basic principles of duty and decency, transforming what should have been a safe, habitable residence into a death trap for tenants," the suit says.