Duval County Jury Awards $11.6 Million After Rear-End Crash Left Driver with Lasting Knee and Neck Injuries
A Duval County jury returned an $11.6 million verdict for James Lightfoot after Marilyn Hunt rear-ended him in 2011, with $10 million of the award covering pain and suffering; the Florida First District Court of Appeal affirmed the damages in 2020.
What happened
On a Jacksonville road in 2011, Marilyn Hunt rear-ended James Lightfoot's vehicle. Lightfoot initially described only minor knee and neck pain, telling himself he would be fine. Over the months that followed, his injuries proved far more serious, requiring ongoing medical treatment and leaving him with chronic limitations that his attorneys would later present in detail to a Duval County jury.
Lightfoot filed suit in 2012. The litigation stretched through years of contested discovery, including a pre-trial appellate fight over surveillance footage that reached the Florida First District Court of Appeal in 2018. Hunt's defense declined a $1.3 million proposal for settlement in 2015, a decision that would later carry significant financial consequences under Florida's offer-of-judgment statute.
At trial in 2019, the jury found Hunt solely at fault and awarded Lightfoot $11,622,673. Of that total, $10 million represented non-economic damages for pain, suffering, and loss of enjoyment of life. The scale of the non-economic award reflected what the jury concluded Lightfoot had lost in daily function and quality of life since the 2011 crash.
Hunt challenged the verdict on appeal, arguing the damages were excessive. The First District Court of Appeal affirmed the judgment in October 2020, applying the standard that a verdict should not be disturbed unless it shocks the judicial conscience. The damages award remained intact.
A second appeal in 2022 addressed only the attorney's fee judgment, not the underlying verdict. The First DCA reversed the fee award, finding that Hunt's 2015 rejection of the settlement proposal had not been made in bad faith as required by the statute. The $11.6 million damages verdict was unaffected by that ruling.
Joseph Camerlengo and Gregg Anderson of Camerlengo & Anderson, now branded The Truck Accident Law Firm, represented Lightfoot, with Howard Coker of Coker Law and appellate counsel Rebecca Creed of Creed & Gowdy also on the case. The case ranked eighth on TopVerdict's list of the Top 100 Motor Vehicle Accident Verdicts in Florida for 2019.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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