A Denver Jury's $18.8 Million Verdict for a Disabled Passenger Paralyzed in a Rear-End Crash
A developmentally disabled man left with a brain injury and quadriplegia after a commercial pickup rear-ended his car won $18,809,431 from a Denver jury in May 2024, ranked the sixth-largest Colorado verdict of the year.
What happened
On March 25, 2022, Michael Hastings was a passenger in a car traveling on Tower Road near East 40th Avenue in Aurora, Colorado. He was 47 years old, developmentally disabled, and on his way to an adult day program. The driver, Daniel Achin-Mensah, was transporting him for a service run by a company called Venezia Innovative Services. A 2010 Ford F-150 driven by Alfredo Velasquez struck the car from behind. Velasquez was working for En Route Logistics, Inc. at the time.
The crash caused a traumatic brain injury. He survived, but the injury left him a spastic quadriplegic. His mother, Monica Hastings, brought suit on his behalf as his next friend, naming Velasquez, En Route Logistics, and Achin-Mensah as defendants.
The case went to trial in the spring of 2024, running from April 29 to May 3. Paige Singleton and Jessica McBryant of Ramos Law, also listed in coverage as The Ramos Injury Firm of Northglenn, represented the family, with Randal Manning on the plaintiff's team. They faced a defense fielded by several firms, among them Hall & Evans and Ross-Shannon and Proctor.
The central fight was causation. Defense lawyers argued that Hastings' brain injuries were not caused by the collision and that his preexisting condition already gave him a shorter life expectancy. The plaintiff's attorneys answered with family members, friends, and others who knew him, showing how he lived and functioned before the crash. They built a life care plan detailing the cost of the round-the-clock care he would now need.
On May 3, 2024, the jury sided with Hastings. It returned $18,809,431 in total damages: $15,809,431 for economic losses and $3,000,000 for physical impairment. The jurors assigned 100 percent of the fault to Velasquez and En Route Logistics, and zero percent to Achin-Mensah and to the nonparty day-program operator.
TopVerdict.com ranked the award the sixth-largest Colorado verdict of 2024, and Law Week Colorado included it in its annual roundup. Law Week noted that post-trial motions were still pending when it reported the result. As of this writing, no public record shows the verdict being reduced on appeal.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
Related car accident verdicts
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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.