"$2.5 million awarded in industrial accident"
From the The Cleveland Press, Saturday, May 2, 1981

WARREN(UPI) - A Trumbull County man struck by a 3,500-pound piece of machinery in a 1972 auto assembly plant accident has won a $2.5 million damage award. A six-woman, two-man Trumbull County Common Pleas Court jury returned the verdict Thursday after about six hours of deliberations in the case of Kenneth Ancill, 38, of North Canton. He sued the machine's manufacturer, charging that the equipment was defective.

The size of the award surprised Ancill, a machine repairman at General Motors Corp.'s Lordstown assembly plant; his wife, Cynthia, 34, and even the judge in the case said Lawrence Landskroner, the man's attorney. "He's just dumbfounded," Landskroner said of his client.

Ancill was working at the Lordstown plant in June 1972 when a 3,500-pound part from a steel-decoiling machine he was repairing fell on him, pinning him against a piece of steel, the lawsuit said.

As a result of the accident, Ancill suffered the loss of a testicle, injured his knees and tore muscles in his thigh, the lawsuit said. He was hospitalized for five months before he was able to reeturn to work.

Ancill filed in 1973 against the decoiling machine's manufacturer, Press Automation Service, Inc., a division of USI Clearing of Chicago. GM was not named as a defendant in the lawsuit.