Clark County Jury Awards $14.1 Million to Cyclist Run Over by Gentleman's Club Driver
Won by Claggett & Sykes Trial Lawyers (lead counsel) and Benson & Bingham.
A Las Vegas jury awarded bicyclist Thunder Roybal more than $14.1 million after an SUV driven for the Sapphire Gentleman's Club struck and ran him over, a verdict the Nevada Supreme Court later affirmed in full.
What happened
In 2016, Thunder Roybal was riding his bicycle in Las Vegas when an SUV came up behind him. The driver, Louis Bellomo, was working for SHAC LLC, the company that operates the Sapphire Gentleman's Club. Bellomo tried to pass, clipped the bicycle, and ran Roybal over. He then tried to leave the scene. Roybal's brother stepped in front of the SUV and blocked it from driving off.
The collision left Roybal with crush injuries to his shoulder, neck, and chest. He went through four major surgeries. The care he had already received came to roughly $2.13 million in medical bills, and his doctors testified that he would need treatment for the rest of his life.
For about four years, the defense did not offer a dollar to settle. Bellomo and SHAC took the position that Roybal had caused the crash himself, that not all of his surgeries were tied to the collision, and that the wreck may even have been staged. Only after the case reached trial, partway through the proceedings, did the defense put $500,000 on the table.
The case was tried over ten days in May 2022 before the Eighth Judicial District Court in Clark County. Sean Claggett and Geordan Logan of Claggett & Sykes represented Roybal, with Logan serving as lead trial counsel. They walked the jury through the physical evidence and the medical record, then took on the defense theory directly. "They wanted to tell a story that this was a staged wreck and none of the evidence pointed that at all," Claggett said.
The jury found that Roybal was not negligent in any way and rejected the suggestion that he had staged the accident. On May 25, 2022, it returned a verdict of $14,126,607.74. The award broke down to about $2.13 million in past medical expenses, $3 million for past pain and suffering, and $9 million for future pain and suffering.
Bellomo and SHAC appealed, arguing that the damages were excessive, that the record did not support the award, and that the trial court should not have awarded attorney fees. The Nevada Supreme Court disagreed. In an order filed September 8, 2025, it affirmed the judgment in full, leaving the $14.1 million verdict and the fee award in place.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
More proven verdicts from Claggett & Sykes Trial Lawyers
All Claggett & Sykes Trial Lawyers proven verdicts →A Utah judge entered a $951 million default judgment against Steward Health Care after newly trained nurses, an excessive Pitocin drip, and a delayed C-section at Jordan Valley Medical Center left a newborn permanently brain damaged.
A Rio Arriba County jury held Acadia Healthcare and its New Mexico foster care subsidiaries responsible for placing an 8-year-old girl with a foster father who raped her repeatedly, returning one of the largest single-plaintiff sexual abuse verdicts in the country.
A 20-year-old painter suffered a traumatic brain injury in a 2021 ladder fall in Utah. A Denver jury found his workers' compensation carrier, NorGUARD Insurance, knowingly and unreasonably delayed and denied his care, including inpatient rehabilitation. It awarded $145.26 million, made up of $85.26 million in compensatory and $60 million in punitive damages.
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.