A $5 million payday is tantalizingly close for a severely disabled New Jersey man.
A Ugandan high court backed a judgment against its UN mission in New York for debilitating injuries worker Christopher Sales, 52, suffered when he plunged 36 feet from the side of the E. 45th Street building in 1990.
“For over two decades taxpayers were paying disability for Sales while the Ugandan mission was getting off scot-free,” attorney Mark Krassner told the Post.
Chris’s wife Carol, 58, said the accident has brought financial ruin on her family. She had to leave her job to care after Chris and raise their three children.
A payout from the Ugandans “would finally get us back on our feet,” she added.
Shortly after the accident, Sales won a $2 million judgment against the mission in a US court, but he was unable to collect when the country claimed diplomatic immunity.
Krassner eventually teamed up with Ugandan attorneys and sued the mission in its home country in 2011, which remarkably ruled in their favor.
Sales “should be allowed to realize the fruits of his judgment,” Justice Eldad Mwangusya declared on Feb. 1.
“This court grants him the prayer that the judgment is enforceable in Uganda,” he added.
The original payout more than doubled with interest in the ensuing years while Sales has subsisted off federal disability payments and endured two bankruptcies to save the family home.
“It’s rough trying to raise a family on nothing,” Sales explained, wincing as he moved around his Belleville home.
“I’ve been struggling all these years. I went from having a bright future to having no plans at all.”
Krassner will return to US federal court in the coming weeks to go after Ugandan assets in New York.
Sales, whose safety lines failed when he was applying sealant to the exterior of the mission, crushed his heels and fractured his spine in the traumatic accident.
He struggles with constant wrenching pain in his spine neck and hips, though he can move around with the help of braces and a cane.
The Ugandan mission referred calls to the embassy, which did not immediately return calls for comment.