$25 Million Verdict Against MARTA After Paratransit Passenger Falls Into Vegetative State

On January 24, 2016, Jaccolah Johnson, a 66-year-old woman who relied on MARTA's Mobility paratransit service because of pre-existing mobility problems, boarded one of the agency's vans for what should have been a routine trip. When the van reached her stop, she moved toward the exit steps carrying her personal belongings. She lost her balance on the sharply angled step and fell backward, striking her head on the concrete curb below.

The fall triggered a massive brain hemorrhage. Emergency surgery saved her life but could not undo the damage. Johnson never regained consciousness and remained in a vegetative state from that point forward, dying not long after the trial concluded.

Attorneys Michael Goldberg and Joseph Fried, then of Fried Rogers Goldberg (now Fried Goldberg), joined by co-counsel Donald Singleton and Melanie Eyre, argued that two failures combined to cause the injury. First, the exit step on that specific van model was designed at an unusually steep angle, creating a trap for passengers with any balance difficulty. Second, MARTA's own training protocols required drivers to 'shadow' passengers as they exited, precisely because the agency knew the step design was treacherous. The driver on duty did not do so.

Defense counsel for MARTA contended that Johnson had ridden paratransit before and declined help, and that the driver accommodated her preference as trained. The jury weighed those competing accounts over less than three hours of deliberations.

On November 8, 2018, the jury returned a $25 million verdict, assigning 75 percent fault to MARTA and 25 percent to Johnson. After apportionment, the effective award was $18.75 million. Judge Todd Markle later entered judgment for that amount plus roughly $72,000 in pre-judgment interest, which accrued after MARTA declined a pre-trial $5 million settlement offer. The judgment at that point was described as the largest jury verdict ever returned against MARTA.

In July 2021, however, the Georgia Court of Appeals reversed the judgment and ordered a new trial. The court found that the trial judge had given the jury a spoliation-of-evidence instruction without first conducting an evidentiary hearing or making the required factual findings, and that no pre-trial spoliation motion had been filed. The appellate court treated the instruction as a severe sanction that was not properly supported, vacating both the verdict and the attorney-fee award. The matter was remanded to Fulton County Superior Court.