$84,000 Federal Jury Verdict for Camden Driver Hit by Backing Tractor-Trailer
After trial: The court denied the defendant's motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict and for a new trial on December 20, 1991, leaving the $84,000 judgment in place. We found no appeal or later reported history in the case, and we could not confirm whether the judgment was paid.
Won by Other counsel and The Stanley Law Group.
Blanche K. Scott was driving on Broad Street in Camden, South Carolina, on January 15, 1987, when a Land Span Motor tractor-trailer backed into her car and injured her hand. After a four-day trial in November 1991, the court directed a verdict for Scott on liability and the jury awarded $84,000 in actual damages, $57,000 of it for lost wages. Judge Shedd denied the company's motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict and for a new trial, and the $84,000 judgment stood.
What happened
At about 10:15 on the morning of January 15, 1987, Blanche K. Scott was driving her car on Broad Street, a major thoroughfare in Camden, South Carolina. A tractor-trailer owned by Land Span Motor, Inc. had stopped on the street while its driver, Thomas Mure, went into a nearby post office to ask where he should deliver his load.
When Mure came back, he tried to back the truck across Broad Street. He later admitted there was a blind spot directly behind the truck when he started. Scott's car was in that blind spot, and the truck backed into it. Scott injured her hand in the collision, and she had problems with it from then on.
The hand injury ended up costing her a job. In August 1988 her employer, DuPont, placed her on a 90-day disability leave because she could not perform her work, then terminated her when it concluded she still could not do the job. Scott sued Land Span Motor in federal court in South Carolina, and H. Ronald Stanley of Columbia and Dennis N. Cannon, Jr. of Camden represented her.
The case was tried to a jury from November 5 to 8, 1991. At the close of the evidence, Judge Shedd directed a verdict for Scott on liability, ruling as a matter of law that Mure had violated the South Carolina statute barring a driver from backing unless the move can be made safely. The court cited the state supreme court's description of backing a vehicle as carrying unusual danger to anyone in its path. Only damages went to the jury.
The jury awarded Scott $84,000 in actual damages. Because the defense argued that Scott's earlier statements in a workers' compensation claim and a discrimination charge against DuPont contradicted her lost-wage claim, the court had the jury itemize that part of the award. It answered that $57,000 was for lost wages.
Land Span Motor moved for judgment notwithstanding the verdict or a new trial on three grounds: that judicial estoppel barred the lost-wage claim, that the directed verdict on liability was error, and that causation was unproven or the amount excessive. Judge Shedd rejected each one in an order dated December 20, 1991. He found estoppel did not apply because Scott's earlier positions had not been adopted by the bodies that heard them, and her statements were not necessarily inconsistent with her testimony. He held that causation was a jury question with enough evidence behind it, and that the amount was not excessive. The judgment stayed at $84,000.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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