Franklin County Jury Awards $10 Million to Woman Abused as a Child by a Family Stonemason
After trial: No appeal of the verdict itself was found. The Massachusetts Appeals Court affirmed post-judgment reach-and-apply orders in 2023, which allowed Doe to reach only part of the one federal judgment known to belong to the defendant.
A Franklin County Superior Court jury awarded $10 million in November 2021 to a young woman who testified that a stonemason employed by her father sexually abused her for three to four years, beginning when she was 8. The defendant had been acquitted of criminal charges in 2018. It was the largest verdict in the county's history, and with interest the Greenfield Recorder put it at about $12 million. The plaintiff sued under the pseudonym Jane Doe.
What happened
On November 19, 2021, a jury in Franklin County Superior Court in Greenfield, Massachusetts, returned a $10 million verdict for a woman who sued as Jane Doe. The Greenfield Recorder reported that it was the largest verdict in the county's history, three to four times the next largest, and that interest would bring it to roughly $12 million.
The plaintiff was 22 at the time of trial. She grew up in Deerfield and by then lived in Connecticut. She testified that Jampa Gonpo, a former Tibetan monk now in his early 50s, sexually abused her repeatedly over three to four years, starting when she was 8 years old. Gonpo worked as a stonemason for her father from 2008 to 2015, which gave him regular access to the family's home and property.
The civil case came after a criminal one. In 2018, Gonpo was tried on charges of rape and abuse and was acquitted. The civil action proceeded separately, where the question for jurors was whether the plaintiff had proved her claims by a preponderance of the evidence, a lower standard than the proof beyond a reasonable doubt required in a criminal trial. The jury found for her on her claims of sexual assault and the emotional distress that followed.
Thomas T. Merrigan tried the case for the plaintiff, with his brother James M. Merrigan as co-counsel. Judge Francis Flannery presided. The defense was led by attorney Jeffrey Brown, who did not respond to the Recorder's request for comment after the verdict.
After the verdict, Thomas Merrigan told the Recorder that the result was 'a powerful encouragement and a victory for abused women' and, for his client, 'a complete validation of her history of abuse.' He said she was absolutely thrilled with the outcome.
The case did not end with the verdict. Doe later moved to collect, and in 2023 the Massachusetts Appeals Court reviewed the Superior Court's post-judgment orders in Doe v. Gonpo. Those orders let her reach and apply part of a federal wage judgment that Gonpo had won in a separate lawsuit, while recognizing the superior claim of his federal lawyers to the portion of that judgment covering their fees and costs. The Appeals Court affirmed those orders. The verdict itself was not the subject of that appeal.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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