$60 Million Verdict for San Antonio Man Hurt When Drunk Driver Blew a Red Light at 78 MPH
Won by Thomas J. Henry.
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.
What happened
On a May 2016 afternoon on Southwest Military Drive in San Antonio, Nydia Pena was driving at more than 78 mph in a 40-mph zone while intoxicated and distracted by a child in her vehicle. She blew through a red light and slammed into the car carrying 23-year-old Armando Guerrero III.
The impact left Guerrero with serious facial and abdominal injuries. He required surgery to repair a broken jaw and to address damage to his spleen, along with other injuries sustained in the collision.
Thomas J. Henry represented Guerrero at trial in the 166th District Court before Judge Laura Salinas. The jury heard evidence of Pena's speed, her intoxication, and her decision to disregard the traffic signal. It found her conduct sufficiently egregious to support a substantial punitive award on top of compensatory damages.
The jury returned a $59.8 million verdict, which included $50 million in punitive damages, $7.5 million for physical pain and mental anguish, $1.625 million for physical impairment, $550,000 for disfigurement, and approximately $81,000 in past medical expenses. Judge Salinas subsequently converted the verdict into a formal judgment of $60,086,578.32, adding pre-judgment interest. The court also noted that the judgment could not be discharged in bankruptcy.
Pena appealed. The Texas Fourth Court of Appeals issued its memorandum opinion on December 9, 2020, affirming the trial court judgment in full. The mandate issued February 25, 2021. At the time of the verdict, it was reported to be the largest jury verdict ever awarded in San Antonio.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.Southwest Ledger: Judge Converts Drunk Driving Verdict into $60 Million Judgment (Oct. 29, 2019)·Archived copy
- 2.Judyrecords: Nydia Pena v. Armando Guerrero III, Case No. 04-19-00874-CV, Texas 4th Court of Appeals (affirmed Dec. 9, 2020)
- 3.Justia: Nydia Pena v. Armando Guerrero III, Texas 4th Court of Appeals (2020, Case No. 04-19-00874-CV)
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 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.
On December 10, 2021, a federal jury in Pensacola awarded Army veteran Theodore Finley $22.5 million against 3M and its Aearo subsidiaries. Finley developed bilateral tinnitus and noise-induced hearing loss while wearing the Combat Arms Earplug Version 2 during service from 2006 to 2014. The jury found the earplugs defective and awarded $7.5 million in compensatory damages and $15 million in punitive damages. It was the largest verdict to that point in the bellwether series.
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.