$1.38 Million Verdict for Woman Who Needed Back Surgery After a Rear-End Crash on the Job in Waterbury

On September 7, 2006, Donna Yeager was working for her employer, Priority Care, Inc., when a vehicle owned by Benito Alvarez's business and driven by Maria Alvarez struck her car from behind in Waterbury, Connecticut. Her injuries centered on her back.

She sued the Alvarezes and the businesses through which Benito Alvarez operated, Benny's Used Cars and Benny's Auto Repair, in April 2007, alleging serious and permanent injury and significant, possibly ongoing, medical expense. Priority Care, which was paying her workers' compensation benefits, joined the case to recover them. Her treatment did not go smoothly at first. One orthopedic surgeon told her in November 2006 that he could offer nothing for her neck or back, and a neurosurgeon concluded the next month that her condition was not suited to surgery. A third physician, neurosurgeon Abraham Mintz, took a different view. After recommending an epidural steroid injection, he said she was a candidate for plasma disc decompression in the lumbar spine, preceded by discography.

Yeager chose to go ahead. On August 29, 2007, an anesthesiologist trained in pain medicine performed the discography, and Mintz performed the plasma disc decompression the same day. She reported a hard recovery with a lot of low back pain, followed by slow improvement.

The case was tried to a Connecticut Superior Court jury, which returned its verdict on June 4, 2009. It found for Yeager and awarded her $1,380,240: $396,242 in economic damages and $983,998 in noneconomic damages. Michael D'Amico was her attorney in the trial court, as the Appellate Court's 2012 opinion records. On appeal, Wesley W. Horton argued for her with Karen L. Dowd, and D'Amico and Brendon P. Levesque were also on the brief.

A fight over interest followed the verdict. Under Connecticut's offer-of-compromise statute, a plaintiff who makes a written offer that the defendant does not accept within thirty days, and who then recovers at least that sum at trial, is entitled to eight percent annual interest on the award. Yeager had made such an offer in December 2007, and the verdict exceeded it. The defendants, however, had moved before trial to strike the offer. They argued she should have updated a discovery answer to disclose the August 2007 surgery sooner. The trial court agreed, struck the offer, and then denied her post-verdict motion for interest.

Yeager appealed, and the case moved to the Connecticut Supreme Court. In a decision issued November 22, 2011, the court held that trial judges do have the power to strike an offer of compromise as a discovery sanction, but that doing so here was an abuse of discretion. It noted that defense counsel conceded there was no bad faith, that the trial court made no finding of actual prejudice to the defendants, and that the bills and reports Yeager had turned over would have led a careful reader to the surgery. The court also pointed out that the defendants waited more than seven months after the surgical report was unambiguously disclosed before they moved. The justices reversed the order striking the offer and the denial of interest, remanded with direction to grant Yeager's motion, and affirmed the judgment in every other respect.

A second appeal concerned the money itself. After the verdict, the defendants' insurer paid the full limit of its policy, which covered only part of the award. Priority Care sought reimbursement from those funds, and in 2010 the trial court gave it most of what remained after her attorney's fee, without deducting further expenses Yeager said she had incurred to win the case. On March 6, 2012, the Connecticut Appellate Court reversed, holding that the reasonable and necessary expenditures an injured employee may deduct before the employer is repaid are not limited to the costs taxed in a bill of costs, and sent the matter back. Neither appeal disturbed the $1,380,240 verdict.