Brazos County Jury Awards $1.68 Million to Passenger With Brain Injury in College Station Drunk-Driving Crash
After trial: No appeal or post-trial reduction was found, though the appellate docket was not checked directly. Whether the judgment against the driver has been collected is not public.
Won by Daniel Stark Injury Lawyers.
A Brazos County jury awarded Rance Walker Kenney $1,680,784 in October 2023 against Brian Patrick Lockwood, the 19-year-old driver in a January 2019 College Station crash that left Kenney, a passenger, with a traumatic brain injury. Lockwood was driving an estimated 80 mph when his BMW left the road and hit a tree. Claims against the bar and the fraternity chapter were settled confidentially before trial. The award covered pain, mental anguish, physical impairment and lost earning capacity.
What happened
A Brazos County jury awarded Rance Walker Kenney $1,680,784 in October 2023 for a traumatic brain injury he suffered as a 19-year-old passenger in a drunk-driving crash in College Station.
The wreck happened in January 2019 near FM 2818 and George Bush Drive. Earlier that night, Kenney and the driver, Brian Patrick Lockwood, also 19, had attended an informal recruitment event for the Theta Sigma Chapter of the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity. They then went to Northgate, the bar district near Texas A&M, where both were served alcohol at Shiner Park.
Around 2 a.m., the two left in Lockwood's BMW. Lockwood was driving an estimated 80 mph when the car spun out of control, left the roadway and struck a tree. Kenney was the only passenger, and neither young man was old enough to be served alcohol legally. He suffered serious bodily injuries, including a traumatic brain injury.
Lockwood faced criminal charges first. He pleaded guilty to intoxication assault with a vehicle causing serious bodily injury and was sentenced to 10 years of probation, community service, 60 days in the county jail, DWI education courses, a $1,000 fine and court costs.
After the criminal case, Kenney sued Lockwood, the fraternity chapter and the bar. His claims against the bar and the fraternity chapter were resolved before trial in confidential settlements, which were not an admission of liability. The case against Lockwood went to a jury in Brazos County.
Michael Bristow and Zain Pleuthner of Daniel Stark Law represented Kenney, according to KBTX and KWTX. The jury returned its verdict on or before Oct. 31, 2023, the date both stations reported it. The award was a single sum of $1,680,784 covering Kenney's past and future physical pain, past and future mental anguish, physical impairment and loss of earning capacity. The jury was asked to decide damages only against the driver, since the bar and fraternity chapter had already settled out of the case.
KBTX and KWTX reported the verdict the same day, and KBTX quoted Pleuthner with a warning aimed at other drivers: 'just don't do it. You're going to screw up your life and you're going to screw up somebody else's life.' Neither report mentioned a post-trial motion or appeal, and we found no appellate record in the case.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
More proven verdicts from Daniel Stark Injury Lawyers
All Daniel Stark Injury Lawyers proven verdicts →A Limestone County jury awarded $41 million to a married couple who suffered catastrophic injuries when an intoxicated company driver ran a stop sign and struck their pickup truck, holding both the driver and his employer vicariously liable.
A retired Texas elementary school teacher received a $402,500 settlement after a distracted teenage driver crossed the center line on FM 2843 in Bell County and struck her vehicle head-on, fracturing seven ribs and forcing her to leave a teaching career that had spanned five decades.
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 Morgan & Morgan trial team won a $120 million Alachua County verdict for Jacob Rodgers, paralyzed at 20 when a Gainesville Regional Utilities driver ran a stop sign and broadsided the pickup he was riding in. After appeals and remittitur cut the judgment to $18.3 million, the case settled for $11 million, most of it paid through a Florida legislative claims bill that became law in 2025.