$41.5 Million Verdict for Teen Who Suffered Burns Over 90% of His Body in Motocross Gear Defect Case
Won by Eglet Law.
A Clark County jury awarded $41.5 million to a young man who sustained third-degree burns over 90 percent of his body after the motocross clothing he wore failed to protect him from a fuel fire, finding LeMans Corporation liable for selling gear that was not fire-retardant.
What happened
On May 4, 2001, a 13-year-old boy was riding a Yamaha dirt bike in the Pahrump area outside Las Vegas, celebrating his grandfather's 80th birthday with family. After making a jump, he fell. The bike's gas tank ruptured on impact, soaking him with fuel. The running engine ignited the fuel, and the clothing he was wearing, motocross gear manufactured and sold by LeMans Corporation of Wisconsin, offered no fire protection. Third-degree burns covered 90 percent of his body.
The injuries were catastrophic. The teenager spent seven months on a ventilator, underwent more than 35 surgeries, and suffered a foot amputation. Complications included pneumonia and damage to his heart and kidneys. By the time the case reached a jury six years later, the plaintiff was 19 years old.
Robert Eglet of Mainor Eglet Cottle took the case on a product-liability theory centered on design defect. The argument was straightforward: clothing marketed specifically for motocross, an activity that places a rider on top of a gas tank and a hot engine, should be fire-retardant. Eglet pointed out that LeMans already sold fire-retardant children's pajamas styled to look like motocross outfits. The company had the technology and the knowledge of the hazard, but it had not applied either to its actual riding gear.
The defense, led by Texas attorney Wayne Mason, countered that LeMans never advertised the gear as fire-retardant and that buyers had no basis to assume it was. The jury disagreed.
On May 10, 2007, the Clark County jury returned a verdict of $41.5 million. The award broke down as follows: $4,266,600 for past medical expenses, $7,115,370 for future medical expenses, $2,029,482 for future lost earning capacity, $17,000,000 for past pain and suffering, and $11,000,000 for future pain and suffering. LeMans announced it would appeal.
LeMans carried the case to the Nevada Supreme Court, which heard oral argument in November 2010 under docket No. 51026. The appeal focused on whether the trial court should have dismissed the claims against LeMans, whether it should have granted a new trial, and how prejudgment interest was calculated. The company did not unwind the jury's finding that its motocross gear was defective for failing to protect against fire.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
More proven verdicts from Eglet Law
All Eglet Law proven verdicts →A Clark County jury awarded $3.8 billion against Real Water on March 21, 2025, after finding the Las Vegas alkaline water company liable for poisoning consumers with hydrazine-contaminated product that caused acute liver failure, autoimmune disease, and death.
Retained as outside counsel to the Nevada Attorney General, Eglet Adams drove more than $1.1 billion in opioid settlements across 12 agreements with over 40 defendants, including Walgreens, McKesson, AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health, and Johnson & Johnson.
An $800 million settlement from MGM Resorts International resolved claims by more than 4,400 plaintiffs over the October 1, 2017 Route 91 Harvest Festival mass shooting in Las Vegas, one of the largest victim-compensation settlements in U.S. history.
A Clark County jury awarded Henry and Lorraine Chanin $505 million against Teva Parenteral Medicines and Baxter Healthcare after finding that both companies supplied oversized propofol vials to Las Vegas endoscopy clinics, enabling the reuse that infected Henry Chanin with hepatitis C.
Related product liability verdicts
Sullivan Papain was among the firms representing New York State against Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds, Brown & Williamson, and Lorillard, securing a $25 billion recovery through the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement.
C. Steven Yerrid, the youngest of Florida's 11-lawyer 'Dream Team,' added racketeering and conspiracy charges that tripled the damages ceiling, helping the state secure what was then the largest civil settlement in American history against the tobacco industry.
As co-lead counsel in the federal Roundup multidistrict litigation and the first firm to sue Monsanto in 2015, Weitz and Luxenberg helped negotiate a $10.9 billion settlement resolving approximately 125,000 non-Hodgkin lymphoma claims against Bayer-owned Monsanto.
After fifteen years of litigation and three failed bankruptcy maneuvers by Johnson and Johnson subsidiaries, Ashcraft and Gerel attorneys R. Bryant McCulley and Michelle Parfitt helped negotiate a global, uncapped settlement of at least $5.5 billion covering approximately 76,000 ovarian-cancer claims.