$67.47 Million Verdict for Passenger Paralyzed in Oilfield Company Crash, Limited to $9 Million
After trial: A pre-agreed high-low cap limited the actual recovery to $9 million.
Won by Thomas J. Henry.
A Nueces County jury awarded $67.47 million to Christopher Arnold, paralyzed from the waist down after a Weatherford US oilfield employee rear-ended the vehicle he was riding in on FM 624 near Calallen; a pre-agreed high-low cap limited actual recovery to $9 million.
What happened
On August 28, 2012, Christopher J. Arnold was riding as a passenger on FM 624 near Calallen, Texas, when the vehicle he was in made a U-turn and was struck by a second vehicle. Moments later, Robert Earl Sims, driving a 2009 Chevrolet Silverado on behalf of his employer, oilfield services company Weatherford US L.P., collided into Arnold's vehicle a second time. The chain reaction left Arnold with cervical and thoracic vertebral fractures, a spinal cord injury, a brain bleed, a collapsed lung, a lacerated spleen, and multiple rib fractures. He has been paralyzed from the waist down since the crash.
Arnold retained Thomas J. Henry and co-counsel Roger L. Turk, among others at the firm, to pursue Sims and Weatherford for negligence and gross negligence. Liability was disputed. The defense attributed primary fault to the driver of the vehicle Arnold was riding in and contended that Arnold's own seatbelt use was in question.
At trial in Nueces County Court at Law No. 4, the firm demonstrated two things that proved central to the verdict. First, that Sims failed to keep a safe following distance before the collision. Second, and critically, that Weatherford US L.P. had no written company policy on safe following distance at all. The absence of a policy helped establish gross negligence against the corporate defendant.
The jury found both Sims and Weatherford liable. On the verdict form it awarded Christopher Arnold $67,470,000, which Texas Lawyer (ALM) reported in naming Henry and co-counsel litigators of the week.
Before the verdict was returned, the parties had entered a high-low agreement. Under its terms, regardless of the jury's number, Weatherford's recovery exposure was capped and Arnold's minimum recovery was set; the agreement limited Arnold's actual collection to $9 million. The published verdict figure of $67.47 million reflects the jury's full damages finding, not the amount Arnold received under the high-low.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
More proven verdicts from Thomas J. Henry
All Thomas J. Henry proven verdicts →In February 2022, a federal judge ordered the United States to pay $230 million to survivors and families of the 2017 Sutherland Springs church shooting after finding the Air Force 60 percent liable for failing to report the gunman's criminal history to the federal background check system.
A Bexar County jury returned a $59.8 million verdict, later converted to a $60.09 million judgment, for 23-year-old Armando Guerrero III after a drunk driver ran a red light at nearly twice the posted speed limit on Southwest Military Drive.
A Bexar County jury in November 2017 returned a verdict reported at $43.5 million for Jenny Hennes of Lytle, who was rear-ended on I-35 in San Antonio in 2015 by an SUV that belonged to oilfield services company JC Fodale Energy Services and was driven by its employee Mickey Hunt. Jurors heard that Hunt had texted more than 2,000 times while driving in the five months before the crash. The award included $30 million in punitive damages against the company and $2.5 million against Hunt. While the defendants' appeal was pending, the parties settled on undisclosed terms that released the judgment, and the appeal was dismissed in January 2019.
A Nueces County jury awarded Vanice Chatman-Wilson $24 million, including $10 million in punitive damages, after a Coca-Cola employee on a hands-free business call turned left into oncoming traffic and crushed Chatman-Wilson's car at a downtown Corpus Christi intersection.
Related car accident verdicts
On December 7, 2021, a Nueces County jury in Corpus Christi returned $1.04 billion in actual damages and $300 billion in exemplary damages, about $301.04 billion in total, against Beer Belly's Sports Bar and its owner for overserving a driver who killed Tamra Kay Kindred, 59, and her 16-year-old granddaughter in a 2017 crash. It was reported as the largest jury verdict ever recorded, and it was built to be symbolic: the bar had closed in 2019, Texas does not require bars to carry liquor liability insurance, and the family and its lawyers said openly that they expected to recover nothing and sought the number as a public statement against drunk driving. John Flood of Flood Trial Lawyers was lead counsel, with Sico, Hoelscher & Harris LLP as co-counsel; Craig Sico delivered the closing argument that asked jurors to decide how loudly their voice would be heard.
An Oakland County jury awarded $896.5 million to a young boy who was struck by a prototype test car during a student field trip at a Continental test track, reported as the largest verdict in Michigan history. The award is pre-appeal: post-trial motions are pending, Continental never made a settlement offer, and the amount could still be reduced.
A Bexar County jury awarded roughly $831 million to Blas Mendez Jr., a longtime Seguin ISD special education behavior specialist left partially paralyzed after his motorcycle hit wreckage left in the road by an 18-year-old drunk driver who had been served at Koozies Icehouse & Grill in New Braunfels. Todd A. Hunter of Hunter Trial Law tried the dram shop case with E. Chevo Pastrano and Ginna G. Pastrano of The Pastrano Law Firm. The award was reported as the largest verdict ever returned by a San Antonio jury, and the bar had already closed by the time it came in, so the family is not expected to collect most, if any, of it.
A Harris County jury awarded Mary Johnson $557 million against Union Pacific for a 2016 Houston train strike that cost her a leg, several fingers, and left her with a brain injury, a figure the trial court later cut and an appeals court reversed for a new trial.