A Hand Grenade Was Taped to a Spare Tire Outside His Front Door. The Doctor Who Put It There Is Serving Life, and a Crittenden County Jury Put $122.5 Million on Him.
After trial: Affirmed and uncollected. The Arkansas Supreme Court affirmed the $122,500,000 judgment 5 to 2 on 1 December 2016 in Mann v. Pierce, 2016 Ark. 418 (No. CV-15-595), rejecting Mann's attempt to relitigate responsibility after his federal conviction. No cap applied and none could: Article 5, Section 32 of the Arkansas Constitution forbids the legislature from limiting damages, and the state's punitive cap was struck down in Bayer CropScience v. Schafer (2011). Collection is a different matter. Randeep Mann is serving life in federal prison for conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction, and plaintiffs' counsel told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette at the time that he did not expect the Pierces to collect. The only identified asset was Mann's antique gun collection, valued at $1.5 million to $2 million, which a federal judge ordered sold in March 2017. The judgment is real, final and enforceable; the money behind it is not there.
Won by Cearley Law Firm, P.A..
Dr. Trent Pierce, then chairman of the Arkansas State Medical Board, found a spare tire propped against his car on the morning of 4 February 2009. A hand grenade was duct-taped to it, rigged to fire when the tire was moved. He lost the sight in his left eye and the hearing in his left ear. The man who sent him there was a physician whose prescribing authority the board had revoked.
What happened
On the morning of 4 February 2009, Dr. Trent Pierce walked out of his house in West Memphis, Arkansas and found a spare doughnut tire propped against his car.
He was chairman of the Arkansas State Medical Board, and he was on his way to a board hearing. When he moved the tire, an MK3A2 hand grenade duct-taped to it detonated. Investigators later found string embedded in the burned tape, which is how they knew it had been rigged to fire when the tire was disturbed rather than on a timer.
The blast blew two gold teeth out of his mouth. It broke many of his bones and burned him severely. It destroyed the sight in his left eye and the hearing in his left ear.
The hearing he was driving to that morning concerned Dr. Randeep Mann, a Russellville physician. The board had already revoked Mann's authority to prescribe narcotics, and he was under investigation a third time, this time for dispensing controlled substances without prescriptions. In August 2010 a federal jury convicted Mann of conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction. He is serving life.
The Pierces then sued him in Crittenden County. Because a federal jury had already decided the question of who did it, the circuit court granted the Pierces partial summary judgment on liability using offensive collateral estoppel from the criminal convictions. That left the jury a single job: fix the damages.
On 17 March 2015 it returned four awards totalling $122,500,000, being $17,500,000 in compensatory damages and $105,000,000 in punitive damages, to Dr. Pierce and his wife Melissa. Robert M. Cearley Jr. of the Cearley Law Firm in Little Rock represented them.
Mann appealed, arguing among other things that he should be allowed to relitigate whether he was responsible. On 1 December 2016 the Arkansas Supreme Court affirmed, 5 to 2, in Mann v. Pierce, 2016 Ark. 418. The court's answer to the relitigation argument gave the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette its headline: he could not rehash his side.
Arkansas is one of the few states where the full figure survives as a matter of constitutional law. Article 5, Section 32 of the Arkansas Constitution forbids the legislature from limiting recoverable damages, and the Arkansas Supreme Court struck down the statutory punitive cap in Bayer CropScience v. Schafer in 2011. Nothing reduced this award, and nothing could have.
What did not follow was payment. Cearley told the Democrat-Gazette he did not expect the Pierces to collect, because Mann is in federal prison for life. The realistic recovery was the proceeds of Mann's seized antique gun collection, valued at somewhere between $1.5 million and $2 million, which a federal judge ordered sold in March 2017.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, 20 March 2015: "a Crittenden County Circuit Court jury awarded Pierce and his wife, Melissa Pierce, a total of $122.5 million in four awards for compensatory and punitive damages"; names "Robert Cearley, a Little Rock attorney who represented the Pierces"; the two named plaintiffs; the 4 February 2009 grenade attack and Pierce's injuries; and Cearley's statement that he did not expect the family to collect against a defendant serving life
- 2.Courthouse News Service: the Arkansas Supreme Court's affirmance of the $122.5 million award against Randeep Mann, and the procedural posture in which liability was established by collateral estoppel from the federal criminal convictions
- 3.Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, 2 December 2016: the Arkansas Supreme Court's 5-2 affirmance in Mann v. Pierce, 2016 Ark. 418, holding Mann could not relitigate his responsibility for the bombing
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