The Car-Hauler Drifted Into Her Lane With No Signal and No Warning. A Deputy Noted the Compound Fracture at the Scene, and She Was Airlifted to Jackson.
After trial: Final through certiorari denial, and the gross and final figures are the same number. The jury awarded $1,759,094.30 economic and $1,000,000 noneconomic on September 16, 2020. The noneconomic component sat exactly at the ceiling set by Miss. Code Ann. 11-1-60 for non-medical civil actions, so no cap reduction was available. The Mississippi Court of Appeals affirmed en banc on April 4, 2023 (No. 2021-CA-00684-COA) and the Mississippi Supreme Court denied certiorari on November 17, 2023 (No. 2021-CT-00684-SCT). Note that the accident happened in Yazoo County while the case was venued in Hinds County.
Won by Blackmon & Blackmon, PLLC.
Ashley Newton was driving behind an automobile-hauler trailer on U.S. Highway 49 when its driver drifted across into her lane without signalling. She fractured a cervical vertebra in two places, her hip, her knee, and her tibia and fibula in compound fractures, and needed numerous surgeries.
What happened
On August 22, 2017 Ashley Nicole Newton was driving a 2006 Nissan Altima on U.S. Highway 49, about six-tenths of a mile north of Castle Chapel Road, behind a Big Tex automobile-hauler trailer. The trailer was towed by a 2015 Dodge 3500 Ram owned by I.B. Logistics and driven by David Kirk.
Her case was that Kirk suddenly, without any signal or warning, drifted his truck and trailer over into her lane in front of her, so that the front of her car struck the rear of the car-hauler. Kirk's position was that Newton was solely at fault.
A responding Yazoo County deputy noted the compound fracture of her lower leg at the scene. She was airlifted to the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson and went through numerous surgeries. Her injuries included a cervical vertebra fractured in two places, a fractured right hip, a fractured right knee at the patella, and compound fractures of the tibia and fibula.
On September 16, 2020 the Hinds County jury returned $2,759,094.32, made up of $1,759,094.30 in economic damages and $1,000,000 in noneconomic damages.
That noneconomic figure is worth a second look. Mississippi caps noneconomic damages at $1,000,000 in non-medical civil actions, and the jury landed exactly on the ceiling. There was nothing left for the cap to cut.
The Mississippi Court of Appeals affirmed en banc on April 4, 2023, and the Mississippi Supreme Court denied certiorari on November 17, 2023.
Newton was represented by James W. Nobles Jr. of Jackson as lead counsel, with Edward Blackmon Jr. and Bradford Jerome Blackmon of Blackmon and Blackmon in Canton as co-counsel.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.Kirk and I.B. Logistics, Inc. v. Newton, Mississippi Court of Appeals No. 2021-CA-00684-COA (Apr. 4, 2023): the opinion, giving the Hinds County Circuit Court First Judicial District venue before Judge Winston L. Kidd, the single plaintiff, the August 22, 2017 collision on U.S. Highway 49 north of Castle Chapel Road, the allegation that Kirk drifted into her lane without signal or warning, the deputy's note of the compound fracture at the scene, the airlift to the University of Mississippi Medical Center, the full injury list, the $1,759,094.30 economic and $1,000,000 noneconomic award, the affirmance, and the counsel block naming James W. Nobles Jr., Edward Blackmon and Bradford Jerome Blackmon for the appellee
- 2.Mississippi Jury Verdict Reporter blog: the Mississippi Court of Appeals affirms the $2,759,094 trucking verdict on 4-4-23
Related truck accident verdicts
A Nassau County jury found two trucking companies responsible for the 2017 chain-reaction crash on I-95 near Yulee that killed 18-year-old Connor Dzion, returning a $1 billion verdict that Curry Pajcic won for the teen's parents.
A Titus County jury awarded $730 million to the family of Toni Combest, a 73-year-old great-grandmother killed when a Landstar Ranger truck hauling a 197,000-pound Navy submarine propeller struck her car on a narrow Highway 271 bridge, though the family's actual recovery came from pretrial settlements: $50 million from Landstar Ranger and $1 million from escort company S&M Pilot Service, with the verdict itself returned against the small front-escort company 2A Pilot Cars.
A Leon County jury awarded $411,726,608 to Duane Washington, a career Army sergeant left partially paralyzed in a 45-vehicle pileup on Interstate 10 near Tallahassee, in the Second Judicial Circuit's first virtual jury trial. Ben Crump tried the damages case with co-counsel Robert Cox. The honest frame: liability was entered by default after defendant Top Auto Express stopped responding in the litigation, its lawyer withdrew months before trial, the one-truck Pembroke Pines carrier sat out the Zoom trial undefended, and industry observers called the record number essentially uncollectable beyond the roughly $1 million in insurance that was offered and rejected before trial.