$8.71 Million Verdict for Mother With Brain Injury After Grocery Company Van Ran a Stop Sign in Arkansas
After trial: The figure is the jury's award to Kerry Hogland herself, returned August 20, 2015; the family's gross across all verdict forms was $9,189,790.88. Liability was admitted before trial, and no appellate record has been reported.
A grocery company's van ran a stop sign onto Arkansas 412 and broadsided Kerry Hogland's car, launching it across three lanes with her three sons inside. She needed brain surgery and has permanent cognitive injury. The company admitted liability, so the nine-day federal trial was about damages alone.
What happened
On August 7, 2012 Kerry Hogland, 36, an ultrasound technician from Pocahontas, was driving her 2006 Nissan Maxima east on Arkansas 412 in Lawrence County. Her three sons were in the car, aged two, nearly four, and twelve, all belted or in car seats.
Douglas Eugene Bounds came off the U.S. 67 offramp onto Arkansas 412 in a 2009 Chevrolet van he was driving for Town and Country Grocer of Fredericktown, Missouri. He ran the stop sign. The van broadsided the Nissan and launched it across three lanes of highway into a field.
Hogland needed brain surgery. The cognitive injury is permanent, and she was able to return to work only part-time.
The claim against the company was not only that its driver was negligent but that the company had been negligent in hiring, training and supervising him. Town and Country admitted liability. That is unusual and it changed the shape of the case completely: the nine-day trial before U.S. Magistrate Judge Tom Ray in the Jonesboro Division was about damages and nothing else.
On Thursday, August 20, 2015 the jury returned $8,714,790.88 to Kerry Hogland, itemized closely: $6.5 million for past and future pain, suffering and mental anguish, $1.4 million in lost future earnings, $321,755.80 in past medical expenses, $300,000 in future medical expenses, $50,000 in lost past earnings, $50,000 for scarring, $48,720 for future in-home help, $34,259.08 in future medical expenses for her son and $10,000 more for in-home help.
Her eldest son, who had been in the front seat, was awarded $450,000 for pain, suffering and mental anguish and $25,000 for scarring on a separate verdict form. The children were identified in the lawsuit by initials only, and they are not named here. Her two younger sons' claims were settled separately for about $10,000 each.
Hogland was represented by Roger Dreyer of Dreyer Babich Buccola Wood Campora in Sacramento as lead trial counsel, with Brett McDaniel of the McDaniel Law Firm in Jonesboro.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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