Audi SUV Strikes Visiting Pedestrian on Charleston Sidewalk; Permanent Brain Damage Settles for $3.5 Million
Won by Joye Law Firm Injury Lawyers.
A St. Louis man who suffered permanent bilateral brain damage after an Audi SUV ran him over on a Charleston sidewalk in 2017 settled the resulting federal lawsuit for $3.5 million in July 2020.
What happened
On a Friday morning in 2017, a husband and wife from St. Louis were walking along a sidewalk near a South Carolina shopping center. The driver of an Audi SUV initially reversed to let them pass, then suddenly accelerated forward and struck the husband. The vehicle came to rest on his leg before he could get clear.
First responders rushed him to the hospital. He had sustained multiple skull fractures and damage to his ear canal. Doctors confirmed cerebral hemorrhages and a midline shift of the brain caused by intracranial pressure, and he remained hospitalized for six days before he was stable enough to travel home. An MRI taken in April 2018 revealed bilateral encephalomalacia in both hemispheres, a condition in which brain tissue dies and liquefies permanently. His ability to work, maintain relationships, and function day-to-day was significantly diminished. His wife also sustained a torn MCL in the collision.
The case was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina. Surveillance footage from a nearby business captured the moment of impact, and multiple 911 calls from witnesses established that the defendant failed to yield the right of way to the pedestrians. The plaintiffs engaged experts in neurosurgery, neuropsychology, accident reconstruction, and orthopedics. A federal judge struck the defense's human factors expert entirely and sharply curtailed the opposing accident reconstruction testimony before trial. A scheduled March 2020 trial date was postponed.
At mediation, the defense opened at $1 million, with signals that $2 million represented a potential ceiling. The plaintiffs' team pressed further. The mediator proposed a double-blind offer: each side would independently commit to a figure it could accept, and if both numbers matched, the case would settle on the spot. Both sides independently agreed on $3.5 million. The settlement was finalized in July 2020, with the defendant's identity kept confidential under the agreement's terms.
Mark Bringardner of Joye Law Firm in Charleston co-led the representation alongside Kenneth E. Berger and Brad Lanford of the Law Office of Kenneth Berger in Columbia, and Chris Finney of Finney Injury Law in the St. Louis area. Documented special damages totaled $148,601.20.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
More proven verdicts from Joye Law Firm Injury Lawyers
All Joye Law Firm Injury Lawyers proven verdicts →A federal jury awarded $262.5 million after finding that a defective rear liftgate latch on a 1985 Dodge Caravan caused a six-year-old boy to be ejected and killed in a 1994 crash; the punitive damages were later reversed on appeal and the case settled confidentially in 2001.
A federal jury awarded $17 million to the surviving relatives of a Canadian Army private, his wife, and their infant son killed when an XPO Express 18-wheeler plowed into slowed construction-zone traffic on Interstate 95 near Florence, South Carolina.
A Berkeley County apartment complex that failed to equip its pool gates with code-required latching hardware settled the wrongful death claim of a three-year-old boy's family for six million dollars.
Joye Law Firm recovered $5 million for the estate of a Goodwill custodian killed when a terminal tractor with broken headlights made an illegal U-turn and struck her in a Joint Base Charleston parking lot.
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.