$69.6 Million Verdict for Navy Veteran Paralyzed in Kroger Parking Lot Shooting
After trial: The jury awarded $81 million and put 14 percent of the fault on the two gunmen, who were not defendants, leaving $69.66 million against Kroger. The trial court reduced the judgment to $61.4 million in June 2020.
Won by Law & Moran, Attorneys at Law.
A DeKalb County jury awarded $81 million in total damages to LaQuan Taylor, a Navy veteran shot at least 11 times during a robbery in a Kroger parking lot. After apportioning 14 percent of the fault to the two assailants, the judgment against Kroger came to $69,660,000.
What happened
On a January evening in 2015, LaQuan Taylor, a 26 year old Navy veteran, stopped at the Kroger on Moreland Avenue in southeast Atlanta. Two men, Victor Moore and Javon Ross, had been hanging around the parking lot. They demanded his keys and his wallet. Taylor handed both over. Ross then shot him between 11 and 14 times, and the pair drove away in his car.
Taylor survived, barely. He spent two months at Grady Memorial Hospital and endured 14 surgeries, followed by months of rehabilitation. The shooting left him a paraplegic with medical bills that exceeded $4.5 million.
Taylor sued Kroger in DeKalb County State Court, in a case captioned Taylor v. The Kroger Co. The claim was negligent security. Kroger knew the store sat in a high crime area, the plaintiff argued, and it paid for a private security guard inside the store. It placed no guard in the parking lot where customers were most exposed. Peter Law led the trial team from Law & Moran, Attorneys at Law, alongside E. Michael Moran and Denise Hoying. The case had been originated by attorney Joseph Kuveikis, who referred it to the firm.
The case was tried for seven days in April 2019 before Judge Wayne Purdom. Kroger's defense argued that the grocer could not be held responsible for the criminal acts of two armed men, and that the causation theory rested on speculation about what a guard might have prevented. The jury deliberated for about a day and a half. It returned a total damages award of $81 million, including $60 million for pain and suffering, mental suffering, physical injury, inconvenience, and physical impairment, past and future. The jury apportioned 86 percent of the fault to Kroger and 14 percent to Ross and Moore, which reduced the judgment against Kroger to $69,660,000. The Daily Report described it as one of the largest premises liability verdicts in Georgia history.
The post trial record deserves plain statement. In June 2020, the trial court remitted the judgment to $61.4 million but otherwise denied Kroger's motions for judgment notwithstanding the verdict and for a new trial. Kroger then took the case to the Georgia Court of Appeals. Days before oral argument, the parties settled on undisclosed terms, and on February 8, 2021, the appellate court allowed Kroger to withdraw its appeal. The final amount Taylor received has not been made public.
Whatever the settlement figure, the jury's finding stands in the record: the store where Taylor was shot had a duty to protect the people in its parking lot, and a DeKalb County jury valued the breach of that duty at $81 million before apportionment.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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