Independence Firefighter and His Wife Awarded $6.4 Million Over Ambulance Gurney Fall
After trial: Reduced by comparative fault. The $8 million gross verdict was cut to $6.4 million net after the jury's 20 percent fault finding against the firefighter, not by a cap or remittitur.
Won by Playter Trial Lawyers.
A Jackson County jury awarded an Independence firefighter and his wife a combined $6.4 million net verdict against an ambulance company after he was hurt keeping a patient from falling off its gurney during a 2017 call. Buddy Montgomery tore his shoulder, herniated a neck disc, and later developed hydrocephalus from a preexisting congenital cyst that the incident triggered. Jurors found Medevac Medical Response 80 percent at fault and Montgomery 20 percent at fault on an $8 million gross award, reducing the recovery to $4.8 million for Montgomery and $1.6 million for his wife's loss of consortium claim. No appeal has surfaced since the January 2026 verdict.
What happened
On January 11, 2017, Independence firefighter Buddy Montgomery and a partner responded to a call for an unresponsive person in an apartment parking lot. An ambulance crew from Medevac Medical Response, identified in the verdict report as AMR, arrived with a gurney to move the patient. As Montgomery and the other firefighter lifted the patient onto it, the gurney shifted under him. Montgomery held on and pulled the patient upward to keep him from falling to the pavement, straining his own body in the process.
The effort tore the labrum in his right shoulder, a SLAP tear, and herniated a disc at C6-C7 in his neck. Three weeks later, doctors found Montgomery had developed hydrocephalus, a buildup of fluid in the brain, traced to a blockage from a congenital colloid cyst he had carried since birth without symptoms. He needed treatment to relieve the pressure and ongoing follow-up care for all three injuries.
Montgomery and his wife, Stacy, sued Medevac Medical Response for negligence, arguing the company's gurney and the way its crew handled the transfer put a responding firefighter in the position of catching a falling patient. The case went to a jury in Jackson County Circuit Court in Independence, before Judge Kenneth Garrett III.
On January 14, 2026, the jury returned a verdict of $6 million for Buddy Montgomery and $2 million for Stacy Montgomery on her loss of consortium claim, an $8 million total. Jurors found Medevac Medical Response 80 percent at fault and Montgomery 20 percent at fault, which reduced the awards to $4.8 million and $1.6 million, a combined net verdict of $6.4 million. The jury's $6 million gross award to Montgomery broke down to $478,000 for past medical expenses, $2.4 million for lost wages and lost household services, and $1.7 million for future supervision and caregiving, with the remainder for pain and suffering.
Montgomery was represented by Brett Burmeister and Kristi Burmeister of Burmeister Gilmore in Blue Springs, along with Eric Playter of Playter Trial Lawyers in Kansas City. Medevac Medical Response was defended by Stephen Fields and Emily Lavine of Brinker and Doyen in St. Louis, and Daniel Huff and Michelle Salandy of Huff Powell Bailey in Atlanta. No appeal has turned up in Missouri's appellate records in the months since, and the verdict stands as reported.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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