Carrollton Jury Awards $237,943 After Rear-End Crash Leads to Four-Level Cervical Fusion
A Carroll County jury returned a $237,943 verdict for a woman who needed a C4-7 cervical fusion after a minor rear-end collision, exhausting the available UIM coverage from Kentucky Farm Bureau.
What happened
The crash itself left little to photograph. A rear-end collision in Carroll County caused only taillight damage to the plaintiff's vehicle. She went to the emergency room that day, then had a gap of roughly 50 days before resuming care. What followed was anything but minor: she ultimately required surgery to fuse four levels of her cervical spine, from C4 through C7.
The at-fault driver carried only $25,000 in liability coverage. That policy settled out early, leaving the plaintiff to pursue the remainder of her losses through her own underinsured motorist policy with Kentucky Farm Bureau. The UIM limits were $100,000 above the PIP floor, and Farm Bureau contested the case through trial.
Attorneys Hoyt Grimshaw and Alex White of Alex R. White, PLLC took the case to a three-day jury trial in Carrollton. The defense argued the gap in treatment and the modest property damage cut against the severity of the claimed injury. The plaintiff's team countered with the surgical record: a multi-level fusion is an objective finding, and the bills reflected it.
The Carroll County jury sided with the plaintiff. It awarded $187,943 in medical expenses and $50,000 for pain and suffering, for a total verdict of $237,943. The figure exhausted the available UIM coverage. No post-trial reduction or remittitur has been reported.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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