Case Summary
A 16-year-old driver who blew through a red light at 80 mph in his father’s Mustang collided with a man driving a pickup truck, which left that driver with a broken collarbone and shoulder injuries.
The impact immediately fractured our client’s collar bone, multiple ribs and caused the 5,000-pound F-150 to be lifted off of all four wheels of the ground and roll over. Our client’s truck almost hit another family’s vehicle. A witness said the teenager was driving erratically and accelerated at impact.
A St. Louis County jury awarded Simon Law’s client $1.265 million.
The client required arthroscopic surgeries to repair two slap tears to both shoulders injured during the November 2020 collision. It happened as the client was on his way home from church near the intersection of Tesson Ferry Road and Lindbergh Boulevard.
Key Highlights
- The last pretrial demand was $1.5 million, and the last pretrial offer was $636,998.
- The defendants admitted negligence, but disputed liability for punitive damages and fought causation for one of the shoulder injuries.
- At closing, Simon Law attorneys sought $2.45 million and the defense countered with $50,000 to $100,000.
Case Analysis
The Simon Law client in this case was driving a 2014 Ford F-150 pickup truck. The crash happened at 11:20 p.m. on a Thursday night in November of 2020.
The teenager told EMS at the scene that he blacked out and didn’t know what happened. Minutes later, his story changed. He told a different EMS provider that he did remember the collision and did not black out.
Simon Law’s client was a marine veteran, and spent the remainder of his Veteran’s Days in pain. Bleeding from his head, he was taken by ambulance to the emergency room at Mercy South where he was diagnosed with a fracture of his left clavicle and rib fractures. He was a pipefitter and welder, so he had to miss the next two and a half months of work as a result of this collision.
We believed a jury would understand the life-long injuries inflicted on our client and would take care of him in the same way that he gave up years of his life to serve his country. In addition, we believed the jury would like be allowed to consider the issue of punitive damages — damages for which the defendant would be personally responsible.
Outcome and Impact
The jury awarded $1.25 million in compensatory damages and $15,000 in punitive damages.
Additional Case Information:
Alan Scher Zagier. Driver T-boned by teen wins at trial. Missouri Lawyers Media. July 25, 2023. https://molawyersmedia.com/2023/07/25/driver-t-boned-by-teen-wins-at-trial/
