Leon County Jury Awards $4.44 Million to Man Struck by Motorized Security Shutter at Tallahassee Store
After trial: The verdict was entered in June 2026, and we found no post-trial motion or appeal as of this writing, though it is too recent to be final. We could not confirm whether the defendants have paid or what insurance applies.
Won by Morgan & Morgan.
On March 25, 2023, Justin Huber was leaving Parkside Food and Gas in Tallahassee when a store employee activated a motorized security shutter that came down on his head. He suffered cervical spinal cord compression and needed a spinal fusion. In June 2026 a Leon County jury awarded him $4,440,958.42 after the defense disputed how much of his condition the incident caused.
What happened
On March 25, 2023, Justin Huber stopped at Parkside Food and Gas, a convenience store at 1417 S. Monroe St. in Tallahassee. As he walked out, an employee triggered the store's motorized storm shutter, a device that doubles as a security gate. The shutter came down and struck Huber on the head.
The blow compressed his cervical spinal cord. Huber went through medical treatment and ultimately underwent an anterior cervical discectomy and fusion, a surgery that removes a damaged disc and joins the vertebrae above and below it. Spinal cord compression is a serious injury because the cord carries signals between the brain and the rest of the body. He was left with continuing pain and limits on what he could do at work and at home.
Huber sued the store's operator, Jayram, Inc., along with Moses Mark Tackett, in the Second Judicial Circuit in Leon County (Case No. 2024-CA-0922). His claim was that the store was responsible for an employee bringing a powered shutter down on a customer who was still walking out of the doorway.
The defense did not dispute that the shutter hit him. It argued instead that his neck problems came from conditions he already had, not from the incident, and asked the jury for a minimal award. Huber was represented by Morgan & Morgan attorneys Corey Portnoy, Dustin Middleton and Andrew Paladino, who tried the case before Circuit Judge Joshua Hawkes.
The trial ended in June 2026, in Judge Hawkes's courtroom in Tallahassee. The jury rejected the pre-existing condition argument and returned a verdict of $4,440,958.42 for Huber. Published reports on the case did not give how the jury divided the award between medical costs and other damages, or how any fault was allocated.
After the verdict, Portnoy said businesses have a responsibility to protect their customers from preventable hazards and that the jury's decision fully accounts for the harm Huber suffered. Law360 and a Tallahassee news report both covered the result in the days that followed. Law360 listed Morgan & Morgan PA and Pennington PA as the firms involved in the case.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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