Cook County Jury Verdict for Quadriplegic Flight Attendant Reduced to $21.36 Million by Illinois Supreme Court
After trial: The Illinois Supreme Court affirmed on January 30, 1997, but ordered a $1 million remittitur of the future medical care award, reducing the total from $22,358,814 to $21,358,814. The lessor, Rollins Leasing, settled separately for an undisclosed sum.
Won by Corboy & Demetrio.
In May 1990 a Cook County jury awarded $22,358,814 to a 23-year-old flight attendant who was left an incomplete quadriplegic when a semitrailer struck her stopped car from behind in Highland Park, Illinois, in November 1987. The Illinois Supreme Court affirmed in January 1997 but cut the future medical care award by $1 million, so $21,358,814 stood.
What happened
In the early morning of November 26, 1987, Keva Richardson, a 23-year-old flight attendant, was driving on Interstate 94 near Clavey Road in Highland Park, Illinois, with a friend in the passenger seat. They had stopped at a traffic light when a semitrailer driven by Jeffrey Chapman struck their car from behind.
Richardson fractured her fifth cervical vertebra and suffered permanent spinal cord damage. She was left an incomplete quadriplegic, with the loss of use of her legs and limited use of her arms, paralysis of the chest and abdomen, and no control of her bladder or bowels. She also had facial injuries that left some scarring, lives with chronic pain, faces a high risk of infection and pneumonia, and requires constant attendant care. Her passenger, Ann McGregor, had a cut on her forehead and was treated for a minor injury.
The two women sued Chapman, his employer Tandem Transport, Inc. (successor to Carrier Service Co.), and the truck's lessor, Rollins Leasing Corp. Philip H. Corboy, Thomas A. Demetrio, Michael K. Demetrio and David A. Novoselsky of Corboy & Demetrio represented the plaintiffs. Liability was directed against the driver and the carriers, and the case went to a Cook County jury on damages in May 1990.
The jury awarded Richardson $22,358,814. It broke down as $258,814 for past medical care, $11 million for future medical care, $900,000 for past and future lost earnings, $3.5 million for disability, $2.1 million for disfigurement and $4.6 million for pain and suffering. McGregor received a separate, much smaller award for her own injuries.
The defendants appealed. A divided appellate court affirmed, and on January 30, 1997, the Illinois Supreme Court issued its decision in Richardson v. Chapman, 175 Ill. 2d 98. The court affirmed the judgment but ordered a remittitur of $1 million from the future medical care award, reducing it from $11 million to $10 million, because the figure went beyond what the evidence of future costs supported. It left every other component of Richardson's award intact, so $21,358,814 stood. The court also reduced McGregor's award by half of her pain and suffering component.
Rollins Leasing, the lessor, settled with the plaintiffs in October 1996, after oral argument in the Supreme Court, for amounts that were not disclosed.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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