$3.8 Million D.C. Jury Verdict for IT Security Professional with Brain Injury in Rear-End Crash
After trial: McKesson appealed, then settled through the court's mediation program for the full jury award, and the Court of Appeals dismissed the appeal. We have not seen the settlement terms beyond that the amount matched the verdict.
In 2012 a McKesson Corporation employee rear-ended Roger Tovar's stopped car, leaving the information technology security professional with a traumatic brain injury that ended his career. A D.C. Superior Court jury awarded $500,000 for bodily injury and $3,297,573 in lost wages in June 2018. McKesson appealed and then settled for the full jury award.
What happened
In 2012, an employee of McKesson Corporation drove into the back of Roger Tovar's car while it sat stopped at a red light in the District of Columbia. Mr. Tovar worked as an information technology security professional. The collision left him with a traumatic brain injury.
The brain injury brought cognitive impairment, short-term memory loss and chronic fatigue, along with other physical complaints. During his treatment the symptoms grew worse, and he reached the point where he could no longer do his work. His later court filings described the brain injury as permanent and said it would require medical care for the rest of his life. The employer was a large national company, and its driver had struck a car that was not moving.
Mr. Tovar sued McKesson and its employee in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia and retained Regan Zambri Long. Paul Cornoni of the firm developed the litigation strategy and tried the case for him. The claim put two categories of loss in front of the jury: the bodily injuries Mr. Tovar had already suffered, and the wages he would lose for the rest of his working life because he could no longer hold his career.
In June 2018 the jury returned its verdict. It awarded $500,000 for the bodily injuries and $3,297,573 for lost wages, a total of $3,797,573. The wage award was the larger part by a wide margin, which tracks the way the case was tried: a skilled professional whose capacity to work had been taken from him.
McKesson appealed to the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. Before the appeal was decided, the parties went through court-connected mediation and reached a settlement for the full amount the jury had awarded. The Court of Appeals dismissed the appeal on that basis, so McKesson paid the jury's number rather than a discounted figure.
The case surfaced in the appellate record again years later, when the D.C. Court of Appeals decided a separate matter between Mr. Tovar and his lawyers on June 27, 2024. That opinion recites the trial, the verdict and the full-value settlement as background, and records that a satisfaction of judgment was filed on May 7, 2019.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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