Jury Awards $1.2 Million After Logging Truck Rear-Ends Young Driver
Won by AutoAccident.com.
A 19-year-old driver was rear-ended in Sacramento County by a fully loaded logging truck weighing about 73,000 pounds. The impact was slow, roughly 6 to 7 miles per hour, but it totaled her car and left her with a neck injury that eventually required an artificial disc replacement at C5/C6. The replacement worked for about a year, then her pain and headaches returned as the hardware sank into the bone and her cervical curve went abnormal. At trial the defense argued she had an excellent surgical result and that her current pain came from her work as a cosmetologist. In 2013 a Sacramento County jury rejected that and awarded about $1.2 million, a figure both plaintiff firms report as $1,208,401.52, with Edward A. Smith of the Law Offices of Ed Smith serving as co-counsel of record alongside the Bohm Law Group.
What happened
In 2009, a 19-year-old woman was driving a sedan in Sacramento County when a fully loaded logging truck rear-ended her. The truck and its load weighed about 73,000 pounds. The estimated speed at impact was 6 to 7 miles per hour, and the vehicles came away with what looked like minor damage, but the weight behind the hit pushed her car forward into the vehicle ahead of her and bent her frame badly enough that the car was declared a total loss.
Her neck hurt immediately. The more serious symptoms took longer to surface. More than a year after the crash, numbness in her arms and severe headaches had reached the point where they interfered with her work and with the rest of her life. Conservative treatment through Kaiser did not fix the problem, so she saw an orthopedic surgeon. A concordant discography confirmed disc disruption, and she underwent a one level artificial disc replacement at the C5/C6 level of her cervical spine.
The surgery worked at first. Her neck pain and headaches resolved, then about a year later they came back with steadily increasing frequency and severity, along with persistent low back pain and soreness. Her experts attributed the decline to subsidence of the artificial disc, meaning the hardware had begun sinking into the bone, together with a kyphotic deformity, an abnormal curve in her cervical spine. They also opined that the artificial disc itself would fail at some point in the next 5 to 40 years.
She sued the truck's driver and its owner in Sacramento County Superior Court, case number 34-2011-00107465. The defense did not concede that her ongoing pain came from the crash. Its opinion providers told the jury she had an excellent surgical outcome and that what she felt now was repetitive work trauma from her occupation as a cosmetologist doing nails and hair.
The trial ran three weeks. Jury Verdict Alert lists her counsel as the Bohm Law Group, by Lawrance A. Bohm and Charles S. Bracewell of Sacramento, with Edward A. Smith of the Law Offices of Ed Smith as co-counsel of record. Diepenbrock & Cotter defended, by Mary L. Diepenbrock and John P. Cotter.
In 2013 the jury returned a verdict in her favor. Jury Verdict Alert reports the award as $1.2 million and keeps its damages breakdown behind a subscriber wall, so how the jury split the figure between her medical care, her lost earnings and her pain is not public. Both plaintiff firms report the exact figure as $1,208,401.52.
No appeal of the verdict turned up in California appellate records or in verdict reporting, and nothing on the public record indicates the award was cut after trial.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.Jury Verdict Alert (Neubauer & Associates), case report Elliot v. Lewis (Big Rig v. Auto): establishes Sacramento Superior Court case number 34-2011-00107465, a $1.2 million jury award, plaintiff's counsel Bohm Law Group (Lawrance A. Bohm, Charles S. Bracewell) with the Law Offices of Ed Smith (Edward A. Smith) as co-counsel of record, defense counsel Diepenbrock & Cotter LLP (Mary L. Diepenbrock, John P. Cotter), and the summary facts (logging truck rear-ends car at low speed with heavy impact, female age 19, surgery for cervical injury, pain persists)
- 2.Bohm Law Group (lead trial counsel, firm source, corroboration only): lists a $1,208,401 personal injury verdict in Elliott v. Rick Vance Trucking, et al., dated 2013, for a young woman rear-ended while driving, which supplies the verdict year and matches the exact figure on the co-counsel page
- 3.AutoAccident.com (firm)
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