Henson Fuerst Wins Record $40 Million Drunk Driving Verdict
Won by Henson Fuerst, Attorneys at Law.
A Franklin County jury returned $40 million against an intoxicated driver and the owner who let her drive, and the Court of Appeals affirmed every dollar in 2024 as the largest drunk driving verdict in state history.
What happened
On the evening of September 18, 2020, Shemaro Deann Webb was driving a Nissan Altima south on U.S. Highway 401 toward Raleigh. She had been drinking. In a no-passing zone, she pulled out to pass another car, crossed the center line, and struck Susan Renee Chappell head-on as Chappell drove north. Chappell died of her injuries that night.
The Altima did not belong to Webb. It belonged to LaDorothy Breanna Foreman, who was riding in the car while Webb drove. A state trooper who worked the scene later testified that she saw open beer cans inside and outside the vehicle and smelled a strong odor of alcohol before she even leaned in. Sandra Chappell, administrator of the estate, brought a wrongful death case.
Thomas Henson Jr. of Henson Fuerst tried the case with co-counsel from White & Stradley. The claim against Webb was straightforward negligence. The harder claim was against Foreman, for negligent entrustment: letting a person she knew was drunk drive her car. The defense argued there was no proof Foreman ever handed Webb the keys. The trial team showed the jury that Foreman had at least impliedly consented to Webb driving, and that she knew how much Webb had been drinking.
The Franklin County jury found both defendants jointly and severally liable for $15 million in compensatory damages. It then added punitive damages: $5 million against Webb, and $20 million against Foreman, the owner who let her drive. The total reached $40 million.
The defendants appealed, arguing that Foreman should not have been held liable for negligent entrustment and that the award was excessive. On August 6, 2024, the North Carolina Court of Appeals affirmed the verdict in full. The panel held that implied consent was enough to support an entrustment claim, and that the jury was entitled to "speak loud" with its punitive award. Nothing was reduced or remitted.
News coverage and the appellate judges described the result as the largest drunk driving verdict in North Carolina history. Webb is serving a 13 to 16 year prison sentence for the crash.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
More proven verdicts from Henson Fuerst, Attorneys at Law
All Henson Fuerst, Attorneys at Law proven verdicts →A North Carolina nursing home placed an 89-year-old man in a room with a resident it knew to be violent, and within three days the roommate beat him to death.
A federal jury in Raleigh awarded $5.2 million for three residents who died at the Blue Ridge Health Care Center after its operators cut staffing and supplies, an award later limited to about $3 million once North Carolina's punitive cap was applied.
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 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 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.
A Harris County jury awarded Mary Johnson $557 million against Union Pacific for a 2016 Houston train strike that cost her a leg, several fingers, and left her with a brain injury, a figure the trial court later cut and an appeals court reversed for a new trial.