$1.18 Million Judgment Against State Farm for Driver Injured by Uninsured Motorist on I-25

Rick Hartkopp was a 65-year-old construction site superintendent who grew up on an Iowa farm and spent his free time hunting elk in the San Juan Mountains and paddling in the Boundary Waters. On February 10, 2019, an uninsured driver struck his vehicle on I-25 at about 60 mph and pushed it into the concrete median. The car was totaled. He did not go to a doctor until eight days later.

He tried chiropractic care and physical therapy, then moved on to injections and other pain management procedures in his neck and low back. Each round gave him some relief, though never complete relief. He had bought uninsured motorist coverage from State Farm years earlier, including an additional umbrella layer, and expected it to protect him.

State Farm did pay his medical bills at first, and it conceded that the treatment was related to the crash. The two sides parted ways over the rest of the claim. In November 2021 State Farm offered to settle for an amount that, according to a later federal order, left out his non-economic losses, and it refused to pay anything toward future care. Hartkopp sued State Farm Fire and Casualty Company in Denver District Court in January 2022, and the case was removed to federal court in February 2022, where it was assigned to Judge Robert E. Blackburn. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company was also a defendant. In January 2023, after his experts had been disclosed, State Farm made a further payment but still disputed how badly he was hurt and whether he would need future care.

Laura Browne and Sean Dormer of Dormer Harpring appeared for Hartkopp. Browne retained an interventional pain management physician of the kind State Farm itself had hired before, who reviewed his records from before and after the crash and examined him. That doctor agreed with Hartkopp's treating physicians and rated him 11 percent impaired. His wife and daughter testified that he had begun hiring help for projects he once did himself, and that he had struggled on a trip to Australia to see a dying grandson.

Trial began on June 20, 2023, and the jury returned its verdict on June 23. It found Hartkopp's damages totaled $2.4 million: $1.2 million for non-economic losses, $800,000 for past and future medical expenses, and $400,000 for physical impairment. On September 12, 2023, after briefing on how the judgment should be entered, Judge Blackburn directed entry of final judgment for Hartkopp against both State Farm defendants in the amount of $1,180,053.17.

The verdict was not appealed. A later federal order in a separate bad faith suit that Hartkopp filed against State Farm confirmed the jury's $2.4 million finding and the $1,180,053.17 judgment, and dismissed that second suit because the claims should have been raised in the first case.