$34.1 Million Verdict for Kansas Drunk Driving Crash
After trial: The jury assigned 20 percent of the fault to Coffee, reducing the award to $27,304,560. No post-trial ruling or appellate opinion has been reported.
Won by BG Law LLC (lead counsel) and Playter Trial Lawyers (co-counsel).
A Jackson County jury returned $34,130,700 for Christopher Coffee against Randal White, whose blood alcohol content was .20 when he ran a Shawnee, Kansas intersection at 76 mph, and assigned Coffee 20 percent of the fault, leaving a net recovery of $27,304,560.
What happened
The collision happened in November 2021 at the intersection of Shawnee Mission Parkway and Hilltop Road in Shawnee, Kansas. Randal White had been drinking through the day at a series of bars and restaurants. His blood alcohol content measured .20, two and a half times the legal limit. Data pulled from his vehicle's event data recorder showed he was traveling 76 mph two seconds before impact on a road posted at 55, and that he did not touch the brakes until roughly half a second before he hit Christopher Coffee's vehicle.
Coffee's injuries were severe and lasting. He suffered perforations of the bowel that required a colostomy, a fractured shoulder blade, a broken nose, a facial laceration and a brain hemorrhage. Surgeons attempted to reverse the colostomy about a year after the crash. Scar tissue defeated the reversal, and the colostomy became permanent. His medical bills were charged at $861,355.52, of which $119,326.97 was paid.
The case had an unusual procedural shape. The crash occurred in Kansas, but the suit was filed in Jackson County, Missouri, because White's driver's license listed a Jackson County address. The court applied Kansas substantive law to the claims and Missouri law to procedure and venue. The case was docketed as 2216-CV02385 and tried before Judge Kenneth Garrett III.
The jury returned its verdict on December 20, 2024. It awarded $3,792,300 in actual damages and $30,338,400 in punitive damages, for a gross total of $34,130,700. It then apportioned fault 80 percent to White and 20 percent to Coffee, who had entered the intersection on a yellow turn arrow that changed to red after he crossed the stop bar. Applying that reduction produced a net recovery of $27,304,560.
Blake Green of BG Law in North Kansas City was lead counsel for Coffee, with Eric Playter of Playter Trial Lawyers in Raytown serving as co-counsel. White was defended by Brad Tuck and Jacob Eddy of Evans & Dixon in Springfield and was insured by USAA. The defense called accident reconstructionist Kevin Johnson of Crash Consulting Services.
The punitive award is the part of the number that carries the most risk on review, since it is roughly eight times the compensatory figure and was governed by Kansas rather than Missouri standards. No post-trial ruling reducing or disturbing the award has been reported, and no Missouri appellate opinion in the case has been published as of September 2026. The figure that stands in the public record is the $27,304,560 net verdict.
Missouri Lawyers Media ranked the result sixth among the state's top plaintiffs' verdicts of 2024. BG Law's own site describes it in a single line on Green's attorney page: one of the top jury verdicts in the state that year.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
More proven verdicts from BG Law LLC
All BG Law LLC proven verdicts →A 16-year-old driver stopped at a stop sign on Eisenhower Road in Leavenworth County, Kansas, then pulled into the path of a woman driving 55 mph on the right-of-way road, causing a July 2022 collision. She suffered a concussion, and daily headaches, dizziness, balance deficits and diminished concentration persisted for months despite a negative scan taken the day of the crash, which also exacerbated orthopedic injuries from a prior accident. The suit named the teen driver for failing to yield and the driver's mother for negligent supervision and training. A demand for the defendant's policy limits was made during litigation and accepted, and the case settled in September 2024 for $1.25 million without reaching trial.
Terri Murphy of Independence, Missouri lost two and a half fingers and the tip of her thumb in 2017 when her hand was pulled into the auger of a LEM 'Big Bite' electric meat grinder while she was processing pork from her family's hobby farm. She sued the grinder's manufacturers, LEM Products Holding LLC, LEM Product Distribution LLC and LEM Product Direct LLC, alleging the machine had an oversized feed throat, could run with its safety feeder tray removed, carried inadequate warnings, and had a power switch she could not reach once her hand was caught. Rather than take the case to trial, the manufacturers made Murphy an offer of judgment, which she accepted, and the court entered a $600,000 judgment on January 25, 2023. Blake Green of BG Law and Adam Graves of Norman & Graves represented Murphy.
Related car accident verdicts
On December 7, 2021, a Nueces County jury in Corpus Christi returned $1.04 billion in actual damages and $300 billion in exemplary damages, about $301.04 billion in total, against Beer Belly's Sports Bar and its owner for overserving a driver who killed Tamra Kay Kindred, 59, and her 16-year-old granddaughter in a 2017 crash. It was reported as the largest jury verdict ever recorded, and it was built to be symbolic: the bar had closed in 2019, Texas does not require bars to carry liquor liability insurance, and the family and its lawyers said openly that they expected to recover nothing and sought the number as a public statement against drunk driving. John Flood of Flood Trial Lawyers was lead counsel, with Sico, Hoelscher & Harris LLP as co-counsel; Craig Sico delivered the closing argument that asked jurors to decide how loudly their voice would be heard.
An Oakland County jury awarded $896.5 million to a young boy who was struck by a prototype test car during a student field trip at a Continental test track, reported as the largest verdict in Michigan history. The award is pre-appeal: post-trial motions are pending, Continental never made a settlement offer, and the amount could still be reduced.
A Bexar County jury awarded roughly $831 million to Blas Mendez Jr., a longtime Seguin ISD special education behavior specialist left partially paralyzed after his motorcycle hit wreckage left in the road by an 18-year-old drunk driver who had been served at Koozies Icehouse & Grill in New Braunfels. Todd A. Hunter of Hunter Trial Law tried the dram shop case with E. Chevo Pastrano and Ginna G. Pastrano of The Pastrano Law Firm. The award was reported as the largest verdict ever returned by a San Antonio jury, and the bar had already closed by the time it came in, so the family is not expected to collect most, if any, of it.
A Harris County jury awarded Mary Johnson $557 million against Union Pacific for a 2016 Houston train strike that cost her a leg, several fingers, and left her with a brain injury, a figure the trial court later cut and an appeals court reversed for a new trial.