No reward in firecracker suit

Wisconsin State Journal 7/14/2005

A cleaning woman who lost much of her right hand after she mistook a firecracker she found in a Downtown apartment for a candle will not get any money from the apartment's owner or its property management firm, a Dane County jury decided Tuesday night.

After about five hours of deliberations, the jury found that Dora Alvarado suffered $1.25 million in damages and medical bills. But it also found that she was 50 percent negligent for lighting the firecracker, while the maker of the firecracker, who is unknown and was not a defendant in the lawsuit, was also 50 percent negligent.

The bottom line, said Alvarado's attorney, Donald Murphy, is that she will get nothing.

"She was very upset and I think she was distraught and beside herself," Murphy said. "But she pulled together. She got her day in court after seven long years."

The case, originally filed in 1999, had been dismissed by a Dane County judge and by the 4th District Court of Appeals but was revived by the state Supreme Court in 2003.

Alvarado, of Racine, was cleaning an apartment at 325 W. Main St., owned by Meriter Retirement Services, on Aug. 14, 1998. She needed to vacuum the inside of a gas range, but had no matches to re-light the pilot, so she picked up what she thought was a candle from a window sill. It exploded in her hand after she lit it.

The firecracker had been left on the sill by painters, who had found it in a kitchen cupboard. Murphy contended that Meriter's property manager, Oakbrook Corp., should have found and disposed of the firecracker as part of an inspection of the apartment.

Alvarado previously settled with the painters for an undisclosed sum, Murphy said.