Passenger Gets $73,000 Verdict After Motorboat Rides Up Onto Stopped Boat on Nebraska Lake

A Nebraska jury awarded Julie McDonald $73,000 for neck, jaw and head injuries she suffered when a motorboat ran into the boat she was riding in on Thomas Lake on July 4, 1989. The Nebraska Supreme Court upheld the verdict in 1994.

McDonald was a passenger in a boat driven by Irvin Vrana. Its owner's son had been water-skiing behind it and fell while the boat passed through a channel, so Vrana slowed, circled back with the ski rope and then stopped, waiting for another boat he saw approaching to go by. That boat was driven by Cheryl Miller. Vrana testified that it kept coming closer with its bow raised in the air, so that he could not see the driver. He stood on the seats in the bow, yelling and waving, and could not get her attention. A witness on the beach, who was also an emergency medical technician, heard the shouting and saw Miller facing sideways as though talking to someone beside her.

Miller told the court that she had slowed from about 30 miles an hour to about 15 when the water turned choppy, which lifted the front of her boat and limited her view. By her own account she did not notice the stopped boat until she was roughly 20 feet away. Witnesses, including a passenger in Miller's own boat, said the Miller boat then rode partway up onto the Marquardt boat, slid across it and dropped back into the water. McDonald, who had turned to look as Vrana began waving, testified that the boat came up over her back and pressed her head and face down into the boat. The beach witness swam out, held her neck steady and immobilized her back until a rescue squad arrived. The squad put her on a backboard and in a neck collar, and an ambulance took her to the emergency room.

Her injuries were soft-tissue and joint injuries. The next day she had a black eye, facial swelling, stiff and sore shoulders and back, and a severe headache. A neurologist diagnosed post-traumatic headaches, later treated her chronic cervical strain with physical therapy, and testified to a reasonable degree of medical certainty that the strain was permanent and caused by the collision. An orthodontist who had treated her years before found pain and popping in both jaw joints in January 1992 and diagnosed temporomandibular joint dysfunction, which he also tied to the accident. A physical therapist said that sitting and looking down for long stretches would aggravate her condition.

McDonald sued Miller in October 1991, alleging that Miller failed to keep a proper lookout, failed to yield and failed to keep control of her boat. The parties stipulated before trial that Miller was operating a boat on the lake, that McDonald was in another, that they collided, and that the medical bills were fair and reasonable. The case went to a jury in the Nebraska district court, which returned a general verdict of $73,000 for McDonald. The record available to us does not give the trial date.

Miller appealed on eleven assignments of error, most aimed at testimony from a state conservation officer, a physical therapist and the orthodontist, and at the admission of the medical bills. Gordon R. Hauptman and Matthew A. Lathrop of Hauptman, O'Brien, Wolf & Lathrop, P.C. represented McDonald on appeal. On June 10, 1994, the Nebraska Supreme Court affirmed in McDonald v. Miller, 246 Neb. 144. It held that any error in the officer's opinion was harmless, that the experts were properly allowed to testify, and that the damages bore a reasonable relationship to the injuries proved.