The Guardrail Went Through the Engine and Speared Into the Passenger Cab. He Was Conscious for an Hour While They Cut Him Out.
After trial: Final at the full amount, and the reason is worth understanding. Mississippi caps noneconomic damages at $1,000,000 in non-medical civil actions under Miss. Code Ann. 11-1-60, but only $400,000 of this award was noneconomic, well under the ceiling, so there was nothing for the cap to reduce. A docket check of the Mississippi appellate courts found no appellate case for either Feldman or Parker, so no appeal was taken from the judgment. Note that this was a suit against a co-worker rather than an employer or a manufacturer; the defense was funded by insurance, and there is no public record of what was collected.
Won by Carroll Bufkin, PLLC.
Matthew Feldman, 32, was a passenger being driven back to a work cabin by a co-worker who had been drinking. In heavy rain the driver hydroplaned at about 50 mph and hit a guardrail head-on. The rail went through the engine and into the passenger cab, pinning Feldman against the rear window. His right leg was amputated.
What happened
Matthew Feldman was 32 and lived in Chunky, Mississippi. He worked for River and Roads Directional Drilling out of Laurel, and in June 2021 he was assigned to a pipeline project near Indianapolis.
On the evening of June 18 his supervisor let him and a co-worker, Ethan Parker, off shift early. They drove into town for a steak dinner. Parker had several beers, and then Parker drove them back toward the cabin they were staying in.
Hacker Creek Road in Martin County, Indiana is rural and winding. It was raining hard. Parker lost control at roughly 50 miles per hour, hydroplaned, and hit a guardrail head-on.
The guardrail did not stop at the bumper. It went through the engine and speared into the passenger cab, struck Feldman in the front seat and drove him into the back, where it pinned him against the rear window.
He was conscious for about an hour while firefighters cut him out. He believed he was going to die. His right leg was amputated at the knee.
One fact about this case needs stating plainly, because the venue makes it easy to get wrong: the crash happened in Indiana, not Mississippi. The case was tried in Newton County, Mississippi because both men were Mississippi residents and the employer was a Laurel company.
On August 16, 2024, after a trial before Judge Caleb E. May, the jury returned $4,078,223.
Feldman was represented by Mark C. Carroll and Gary Bufkin of Carroll Bufkin.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
Related car accident verdicts
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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 honest frame: 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.