$19.61 Million Verdict for Driver Hurt When a Concrete Truck Signaled Left, Then Turned Right Into Him
After trial: The jury returned $19,607,486 on January 29, 2014. Defense counsel said they were considering an appeal, and no appellate decision has been reported.
Won by Cullan & Cullan LLC.
Billy Moyle, 24, was driving behind a Mack concrete truck on US Highway 75 near Nebraska City on Halloween 2012. The truck moved into the left turn lane and then turned right across his path, running his pickup off the road. He suffered a broken vertebra and a partially severed spinal cord.
What happened
On Halloween 2012, Billy Moyle was 24 and driving north on U.S. Highway 75 near Nebraska City, behind a Mack concrete truck.
The truck's driver, Roger T. Clarke, moved into the left turn lane. Then he turned right, across Moyle's path, running Moyle's Ford pickup off the highway.
Moyle suffered a broken vertebra and a partially severed spinal cord. He uses a wheelchair. Before the crash he had been an accomplished amateur skateboarder; he rehabilitated as an outpatient at Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital in Lincoln.
The case did not turn on the turn signal alone. The plaintiffs proved that the truck's steering mechanism had been worked on earlier that same month, and that Clarke knew it still was not steering correctly.
The defense argued Moyle had tried to pass on the right shoulder. The jury rejected it, and on 29 January 2014 returned a verdict for him before Senior U.S. District Judge Lyle Strom. The award covered past and future medical bills, past and future lost wages, and pain and suffering. The precise figure was $19,607,486.
Nothing in Nebraska law cuts a number like this one. The state's famous damages cap reaches only claims against qualifying health care providers, and its political-subdivision cap reaches only public bodies. The defendants here were private companies, Concrete Industries of Nebraska City and its Lincoln parent NEBCO, plus an individual driver. Nebraska also bars punitive damages outright, so there is no punitive component in the figure to be stripped or diverted.
Moyle was represented by Joseph and Patrick Cullan of Cullan and Cullan in Omaha.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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