Philadelphia Jury Awards $19.15 Million to Man Who Lost His Right Leg in Two Roosevelt Boulevard Crashes
After trial: The trial judge denied Caruso's post-trial motions in April 2014 and Caruso noted an appeal. We could not confirm how the appeal was resolved or whether the judgment has been paid.
Won by Ross Feller Casey.
A young man helping push a disabled car off Roosevelt Boulevard in Philadelphia was crushed in a second collision in July 2009 and later lost his right leg above the knee. In May 2013 a Philadelphia jury awarded Patrick Hennessy $19,145,904.17 against two drivers and assigned 45 percent of the causal negligence to the driver of the car he had been riding in. In April 2014 the trial judge rejected that driver's post-trial challenges, including his request to reduce the award.
What happened
At about 2:30 a.m. on July 26, 2009, Patrick Hennessy was a passenger in a car driven by Ryan Caruso in the northbound lanes of Roosevelt Boulevard in Philadelphia. Caruso rear-ended a car driven by Bruce Reikow, which was stopped at a red light, and the crash left Caruso's car unable to move. Hennessy and a passenger from Reikow's car began pushing the disabled Caruso car toward the shoulder.
While they were pushing it, a car driven by Shawn Robertson Jr. came up the same lanes, struck the rear of Reikow's car, and spun into the left rear corner of Caruso's car, crushing Hennessy. After several weeks of treatment, his right leg was amputated above the knee on August 24, 2009.
Hennessy sued the drivers and owners of the vehicles involved in the two crashes. He also brought medical malpractice claims against several doctors who treated him afterward; those were consolidated with the case and settled before trial. The remaining negligence case was tried in the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County from May 20 to May 23, 2013, before Judge John Milton Younge. Matthew A. Casey and Roberta A. Golden represented Hennessy. During trial Hennessy dropped his claims against the vehicle owners, and the judge granted a nonsuit in favor of Reikow, which left Caruso and Robertson as the two defendants before the jury.
The jury found both drivers negligent and returned a verdict of $19,145,904.17 for Hennessy. It assigned 45 percent of the causal negligence to Caruso, and the rest of the fault fell on Robertson.
Caruso moved for post-trial relief, arguing among other things that Robertson's driving alone had caused the harm and that the damages were excessive. Judge Younge denied the motion in an opinion dated April 10, 2014. He wrote that a tortfeasor is responsible for the consequences of his tort, and that Hennessy was a young man who suffered an extremely painful above-the-knee amputation that would almost certainly cause complications in the future. The court described continuous phantom pain and an inability to walk properly that Hennessy would carry for the rest of his life, an expectancy of more than 40 years.
Caruso noted an appeal after the denial. The opinion is the last record of the case we were able to locate, so what the appellate court did with it is not reported here.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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