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It was announced today that Paramount has reached an $18.5 million settlement with Gabriella Cedillo, the extra who suffered a severe head trauma on the set of the Transformers 3 film on September 1, 2010. The victim’s attorney accused Paramount of doing “everything they could to avoid payment”. A source tells Deadline that the lawsuit filed in October 2010 would have gone on longer if Michael Bay’s name hadn’t been thrown into the legal mix. But the possibility that the director and his Platinum Dunes production company suddenly were to be pulled in as defendants apparently lit a fire under Paramount to speed a settlement. Today’s 
news comes after a year and a half of legal maneuvering, including attempts by the studio to move the case from Illinois to California, as well one already failed mediation. Then Paramount approached Cedillo’s attorneys early this year seeking a second mediation. It took just a couple more meetings between the lawyers for the settlement to be reached in late March. But it took up until today for all the paperwork to get finalized, and for Cedillo’s attorney to present the deal to the judge. “We are pleased that the Cedillo family has agreed to move forward with the settlement. This was a tragic accident and our thoughts and prayers remain with Gabriela,” a Paramount spokesperson said today.
Cedillo was represented by Todd A. Smith and Brian LaCien of Chicago’s Power Rogers & Smith. She was struck in the head by a metal bracket that broke loose off the cable holding a stunt car on the Transformers 3 set in Hammond, Indiana, during an explosion scene. The bracket flew through the window of Cedillo’s car, which she was driving as an extra, and hit her. It was revealed after the fact that the stunt had failed the day before and that the production did not have the correct permits for explosive devices on the day of Cedillo’s accident. According to a statement from Cedillo’s lawyer Smith, Paramount promised immediately after to take care of all of the medical bills and care for the disfigured and brain injured Cedillo, but “in reality, they did everything they could to avoid payment”.
Deadline's Dominic Patten - tip him here.
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Paramount can’t even manage to pay vendors or talent on time. No surprise that their behavior here was consistently repugnant. It’s always so classy to see a multi-national with billions in profits try and cheat the little guy. The American way I guess.
It seems that Michael Bay’s movies can now cause head injuries on both sides of the screen.
So… Paramount decided to do the right thing to curry favor with Michael Bay, not because they’ve destroyed this poor young woman’s life or because they feel any sense of guilt or responsibility.
PRICELESS.
That last paragraph. Wow! Not good & with the picture there i saw it all in my head.
Giving up all that cash for a midnight screening is going to kill Paramount’s bottom line.
Screw Paramount. This shows how despicable and disgusting they are but so are all the studios. They should have written her a check for at least two million as soon as it happened they’d have saved 16.5 million if they had done the decent thing. Serves them right for being such jerks about an accident they were liable for.
It would have been a huge surprise if Paramount had done the right thing from the getgo. They made millions off the movie yet they tried to nickel and dime an innocent person.
How’s that for corporate greed? The movie made over a billion and they are dragging their feet with medical bills?
c’mon Par! Don’t be the bad guys!!!! Do what’s right in the future!!
What planet do you live on? These are evil ass m.f.s , man.
So.. No mention of the injured’s current condition? Whether or not she is ever expected to make a full recovery, let alone lead some semblance of a normal life? There are more immediately human, and important aspects to this story than Michael Bay, and the price tag of crushing a girl’s skull. A girl that wasn’t even properly compensated for using her own car in the stunt for that matter.. Now, who wants to be an extra?!
Not to blame the victim here, but why would anyone think it safe to do their own stunt driving? I don’t care how safe they told me it was, I wouldn’t feel safe doing that. Who told her it was alright to drive?
Cameron-You should go back and read about this accident when it happened. It is very common for background actors to drive cars in many instances for films. Often in the deep background (or as in this case, on the other side of the highway) while stunts are being shot. You do understand that in most cases EVERY car in a frame of film (or a byte of digital information) is one being operated by someone connected to the film-occasionally a stunt driver, but in most cases an extra.
While I am in no way commenting on the specifics of whether she should have been driving and how close was safe, the problem here was a catastrophic failure of equipment.
I feel terrible for this family and am surprised how small the amount of settlement actually is.
I was on set that day as well as previous days and we weren’t where the actual stunts were taking place. We were the back ground vehicles you see on streets or highways in movies. We weren’t involved in or around the actual stunts they were done on the other side of concrete barrier on opposite lanes. It just so happened that the cable snapped off and swung into our safe zone causing the accident. It’s just like if I go to a MLB game at Wrigleyfield and am sitting minding my own business enjoying the game and I get hit in the head by a foul line drive, am I not suppose to go enjoy a game for fear of a freak accident? Think about it, we got paid to be on set and basically do nothing at all day (I literally slept in my car for 4 hours an then played football in the parking lot with other extras on said day.) except drive up and down the highway every once in awhile, see the movie be filmed, meet actors, it all and all was alot of fun and I would do it again in a heartbeat. You should know all the facts before you start judging people and or things.
Yeah, on a multi-million dollar project with Michael Bay, Shia LeBeouf… she should’ve known that it was a possibility that a huge chunk of metal could risk the safety of everybody on set and then burst through her windshield.
Cameron, you are an idiot. The thought of Cedillo or members of her family reading your comment… sigh.
Ok moron she was NOT doing her “own stunt driving”.
Can’t you read?
She was an EXTRA IN THE BACKGROUND in her OWN CAR. She had NOTHING TO DO WITH THE STUNT.
Paramount ILLEGALLY set the stunt up and it was THEIR FAULT.
Wow, if that’s how Michael Bay does business on the set….whoa. I’ll bet Paramount would’ve come to an agreement earlier if it was one of his “model” actors or extras who was injured. Why on earth would it take this long to settle? Karma can sometimes come back and bite you in the ass, and in his case, the whole dog pound from Chicago came back to chew his ass up. Guess word to the wise, don’t mess with the lawyers in Chicago, cause apparently, they can’t be bought.
Only Paramount is paramount to Paramount.
Not a crippled, young woman whose health and life they have on their conscience because of unprofessional work.
That girl wasn’t just injured. She was disfigured, and suffered a brain injury. You can’t fix that.
Looks like the CEO of Paramount is a moral elephant man with a disfigured and brain injured ethic attitude.
And, by the way: they never told the girl that this was dangerous work.
She was a bank teller with a love for movies.
There must be criminal prosecution for letting extras do risky work.
There are just too many nutcases on the set who don’t know their jobs or are too disrespectful of others for what they are doing.
I remember once an overpaid so-called professional fired a gun on a set without letting anybody know there was “fire in the hall”. A dozen people got a tinnitus from that.
Update on the victim:
She’s paralyzed on her left side, blind in her left eye, and has permanent brain damage and cognitive difficulty – 1/3 of her skull had to be removed. She has trouble walking and speaking, and will probably have this damage for the rest of her life.
She wasn’t stunt driving, but was following a couple cars tied to cables for a controlled roll. She was driving 50 mph, along with other extras in her car, when the roll cable snapped, and sliced her car in half.
But like everyone says, the studio had to nickel and dime her.
Youre absolutely right Cameron. Obviously Gabriela was asking for it. Any 18 year old actress from middle America that moves here to chase her dream would do anything Michael bay or his first AD asked her to do on set. It’s called hope and naivity. You can assume that someone in authority told her it was alright to drive. Perhaps she was doing a simple drive from point A to point B – sounds like the permit lacking faulty rigged explosion was the real stunt in this scene. And agreed with what’s this story about- they did call her “disfigured and brain injured”. Though I hardly doubt Oaramount will actually pray for this young lady, I know I will. And whatever the amount this family received, you can bet it wasnt enough.
When the old geezer who owns Paramount dumped Tom Freston, he lost the man who had integrity and was admired in this town by professionals on both sides of the camera, and he would have done the right thing in a second in this incident. Instead, he kept the man-who-looks-perpetually-in-the-mirror, Brad Grey, and all you see anywhere at the studio is ego, ego, ego, even longtime employees who are older, out of shape, etc, are fearful that the vanity of Grey, and the befuddled and twisted mind of Scrooge-at-the-Top, operate with an “Off with their heads” mentality to make up for any negative issues. And Paramount lays claim to the throne as King of Studios, by saying they are the only studio left in Hollywood, all the rest have abdicated and moved out of town. Pity they don’t have any class or moral value.
“… including attempts by the studio to move the case from Illinois to California, as well one already failed mediation.” DISGUSTING! DISGUSTING!
Finally, and most importantly — I wish Gabriella well, and wish and hope she might recover and rehabilitate as much as modern science can possibly accomplish – and more. My thoughts are still with you, even after these many, many months. Peace. Be well.
The piece of cable was 10 inches long and flew over 650 feet. That’s over two football fields.
Brad Grey have you no shame? How Gabriella’s situation was handled from day one of this preventable tragedy falls directly in your lap. With great salary comes great responsibility. Somehow over the years it has become acceptable for business leaders (Brad Grey, Rupert Murdoch, Jamie Dimon, Tony Hayward et al.) to plead ignorance or lack of culpability for the failures and crimes of the organizations under their leadership. Leadership is a burden that you either embrace fully or leave to more competent people with greater integrity than your own. What Paramount did to Gabriella Cedillo is what Brad Grey did to Gabriella Cedillo: if you can’t handle the truth of that, you are too deluded for leadership.
Terribly sad situation.
It seems that another Twilight Zone Movie kind of affair could happen again in Hollyweird…