$4 Million Verdict for Sears Van Crash
After trial: Affirmed and final at $2,781,094.40. The jury's general verdict was $4,000,000, and the district court reduced the noneconomic component to the $1,000,000 statutory ceiling, which the Fifth Circuit upheld when it affirmed on February 27, 2013 (710 F.3d 249).
Won by Hamilton Law Firm, PLLC.
Lisa Learmonth was severely injured in August 2005 when a Sears van driven by a Sears employee collided with her vehicle. A federal jury returned a unanimous general verdict of $4 million without itemizing it, and that single choice set up a fight over Mississippi's damages cap that ran to the Fifth Circuit and the Mississippi Supreme Court.
What happened
In August 2005 Lisa Learmonth was severely injured when a van owned by Sears, Roebuck and Co. and driven by a Sears employee collided with her vehicle.
A federal jury in the Eastern Division at Meridian found Sears liable and returned a unanimous verdict of $4,000,000 in compensatory damages. It was a general verdict, meaning the jury wrote one number and did not divide it between economic losses like medical bills and lost wages and noneconomic losses like pain and suffering.
That is the fact the next four years of litigation turned on, because Mississippi caps noneconomic damages at $1,000,000 in non-medical civil actions under Miss. Code Ann. 11-1-60, and nobody could tell from the verdict form how much of the $4 million the cap was supposed to touch.
Sears moved for a new trial or remittitur and asked the court to apply the cap. The court refused the new trial and the remittitur, then interpreted $2,218,905.60 of the award as noneconomic and reduced that portion to $1,000,000, entering judgment for $2,781,094.40.
Learmonth cross-appealed and attacked the cap itself, arguing it violates the Mississippi Constitution's guarantee of trial by jury and its separation of powers. That is the constitutional question every capped plaintiff in the state has an interest in.
The Fifth Circuit certified the question to the Mississippi Supreme Court, which declined to answer it. The Fifth Circuit then decided it and upheld the cap, affirming the judgment on February 27, 2013.
This is the reason nearly every large Mississippi verdict is smaller than it looks.
Learmonth was represented by Joe Clay Hamilton and Robert Kevin Hamilton of the Hamilton Law Firm in Meridian, with Robert S. Peck as appellate and constitutional co-counsel. Joe Clay Hamilton died in 2023.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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