The Jury Wrote One Number and Did Not Break It Down. That Is How a $4 Million Verdict Became $2.78 Million, and How Mississippi's Cap Survived a Constitutional Challenge.
After trial: Affirmed and final at $2,781,094.40. The jury's general verdict was $4,000,000. The district court denied a new trial and remittitur but construed $2,218,905.60 of the award as noneconomic and reduced that component to the $1,000,000 statutory ceiling under Miss. Code Ann. 11-1-60. The Fifth Circuit had already affirmed the denial of a new trial in an earlier opinion at 631 F.3d 724 (2011) before certifying the constitutional question to the Mississippi Supreme Court, which declined to answer it (No. 2011-FC-00143-SCT, 95 So. 3d 633 (Miss. 2012)). The Fifth Circuit then upheld the cap against the jury-trial and separation-of-powers challenges and affirmed on February 27, 2013, revised March 20, 2013 (No. 09-60651, 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.
- 1.Learmonth v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 710 F.3d 249 (5th Cir. Feb. 27, 2013), No. 09-60651: the opinion, setting out the $4,000,000 general verdict, the district court's interpretation of the noneconomic component, the reduction to the $1,000,000 cap, the rejection of the constitutional challenge, and the affirmance
- 2.Learmonth v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 95 So. 3d 633 (Miss. 2012), No. 2011-FC-00143-SCT: the Mississippi Supreme Court's response to the certified question, confirming the Southern District of Mississippi Eastern Division venue and the single plaintiff, and carrying the counsel block naming Robert Kevin Hamilton, Joe Clay Hamilton and Robert S. Peck as attorneys for the appellee
- 3.National Law Review: the Fifth Circuit upholds the constitutionality of Mississippi's statutory cap on noneconomic damages, confirming the exact final figure of $2,781,094.40
Related car accident verdicts
On December 7, 2021, a Nueces County jury in Corpus Christi returned $1.04 billion in actual damages and $300 billion in exemplary damages, about $301.04 billion in total, against Beer Belly's Sports Bar and its owner for overserving a driver who killed Tamra Kay Kindred, 59, and her 16-year-old granddaughter in a 2017 crash. It was reported as the largest jury verdict ever recorded, and the honest frame is that it was built to be symbolic: the bar had closed in 2019, Texas does not require bars to carry liquor liability insurance, and the family and its lawyers said openly that they expected to recover nothing and sought the number as a public statement against drunk driving. John Flood of Flood Trial Lawyers was lead counsel, with Sico, Hoelscher & Harris LLP as co-counsel; Craig Sico delivered the closing argument that asked jurors to decide how loudly their voice would be heard.
An Oakland County jury awarded $896.5 million to a young boy who was struck by a prototype test car during a student field trip at a Continental test track, reported as the largest verdict in Michigan history. The award is pre-appeal: post-trial motions are pending, Continental never made a settlement offer, and the amount could still be reduced.
A Bexar County jury awarded roughly $831 million to Blas Mendez Jr., a longtime Seguin ISD special education behavior specialist left partially paralyzed after his motorcycle hit wreckage left in the road by an 18-year-old drunk driver who had been served at Koozies Icehouse & Grill in New Braunfels. Todd A. Hunter of Hunter Trial Law tried the dram shop case with E. Chevo Pastrano and Ginna G. Pastrano of The Pastrano Law Firm. The honest frame: the award was reported as the largest verdict ever returned by a San Antonio jury, and the bar had already closed by the time it came in, so the family is not expected to collect most, if any, of it.