$16.9 Million Verdict for Shopper Injured by Fleeing Shoplifter at Wal-Mart
After trial: The jury put 30 percent of the fault on Wal-Mart and 70 percent on the shoplifter, and the court entered separate judgments of $5,076,600 against Wal-Mart and $11,845,400 against him, which the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals affirmed on November 18, 2020. The shoplifter's share is unlikely to be collected.
Won by Bordas & Bordas, PLLC.
Johna Ankrom, 52, was shopping with her granddaughter when Wal-Mart employees detained a shoplifter in the vestibule's main traffic aisle. He broke away, collided with her cart and pulled it down on top of her. She suffered traumatic intestinal injuries, went through multiple surgeries, and now lives with a permanent ileostomy.
What happened
In February 2015 Johna Diane Ankrom, 52, of Mineral Wells was shopping with her granddaughter at the South Parkersburg Wal-Mart.
Employees had stopped a shoplifter, Robert Leist, in the vestibule near the exit after he took a pair of gloves. He gave the gloves back. They kept him there, in the store's main traffic aisle, with customers still moving past.
He broke away and ran. He collided with Ankrom's shopping cart, knocked her to the floor and pulled the cart down on top of her. She sustained traumatic intestinal injuries, went through multiple surgeries, and now lives with a permanent ileostomy.
The case against Wal-Mart was not that it should have let a shoplifter go. It was about the manner and the place: a store that chooses to detain someone in a busy exit aisle, with shoppers walking around them, has made a decision about where the risk of a struggle is going to land.
After five days of testimony a Wood County jury deliberated for under two hours and awarded $6.5 million in past and future medical expenses plus more than $10 million in general damages. It apportioned 30 percent of the fault to Wal-Mart and 70 percent to Leist.
That apportionment is the whole story of the number, and almost every account of this case gets it wrong. W. Va. Code 55-7-24, enacted in 2005, makes judgment several rather than joint, and the circuit court read it to count Leist as a defendant for apportionment even though he was a third-party defendant. So the court entered separate judgments by share: $5,076,600 against Wal-Mart and $11,845,400 against Leist. Leist's 70 percent is unlikely ever to be collected.
On November 18, 2020 the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals affirmed both the denial of Wal-Mart's post-trial motions and the entry of judgment against each defendant according to its apportioned fault.
Ankrom was represented by James G. Bordas III of Bordas and Bordas, who led at trial, with Scott S. Blass, James B. Stoneking and John Artimez, and Todd S. Wiseman of the Wiseman Law Firm in Vienna as local counsel.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.Wal-Mart Stores East, L.P. v. Ankrom, 854 S.E.2d 257 (W. Va. Nov. 18, 2020), No. 19-0666·Archived copy
- 2.West Virginia MetroNews, Mar. 5, 2019: the Wood County jury award, quoting Jamie Bordas for the plaintiff·Archived copy
- 3.Marietta Times, March 2019: the Wood County jury verdict and the five-day trial·Archived copy
- 4.West Virginia Record: the state Supreme Court affirms in the injury verdict against Wal-Mart·Archived copy
More proven verdicts from Bordas & Bordas, PLLC
All Bordas & Bordas, PLLC proven verdicts →Lewis Timmons, 61, was transferring hydrogen from his tanker into the storage system at the Muskingum River power plant when the storage area exploded and killed him. The enclosure had a defective roof and undersized copper relief stacks that could not vent a release, and an earlier hydrogen explosion at an AEP facility had already produced safety recommendations the company never acted on.
A woman came to the Wetzel County Hospital emergency room in 2001 and came under the care of a surgeon who, the estate proved, failed to perform the exploratory surgery that would have found and corrected her intra-abdominal condition. She went into shock and died the next day. The jury awarded $4 million. She was paid $1,162,741.60.
Related premises liability verdicts
Anapol Weiss shareholder Kristen Gibbons Feden helped secure $1.6 billion in default verdicts for 104 women sexually abused as children by former Long Island pediatrician Stuart Copperman, one of the largest cumulative civil awards against a single individual in U.S. history.
A Dallas jury awarded $1.1 billion against a trust fund heir who beat a 2-year-old into a permanent vegetative state in 2021, a verdict the firm calls the largest child-assault award in U.S. history.
A Clayton County jury awarded $1 billion to a woman who was raped at age 14 by an armed security guard her employer hired without verifying he was licensed to carry a weapon.
Joseph Bruno and Bruno & Bruno served as lead plaintiffs' counsel in a landmark class action brought by more than 8,000 Gentilly residents exposed to a butadiene tank-car fire in 1987, securing a jury verdict that included $2.5 billion in punitive damages against CSX Transportation alone, later reduced to $850 million on appeal and affirmed by Louisiana's Fourth Circuit.