Nebraska Personal Injury Verdicts and Settlements

Billy Moyle, 24, was driving behind a Mack concrete truck on US Highway 75 near Nebraska City on Halloween 2012. The truck moved into the left turn lane and then turned right across his path, running his pickup off the road. He suffered a broken vertebra and a partially severed spinal cord.

On May 5, 2020, Michael L. McCartney was driving a John Deere backhoe across the Indian Creek bridge on U.S. Highway 136 west of Red Cloud, Nebraska, where a construction closure had narrowed the road to one lane and removed a guardrail. A tractor-trailer driven by Lenard D. Zurcher, hauling corn for Scott Kort Trucking, ran into the back of the backhoe, carrying both vehicles into the bridge's concrete barriers and overturning them. McCartney's right leg was amputated below the knee and part of his left foot was also removed. A Webster County jury awarded McCartney $8,464,000 and awarded his wife, Sharon G. McCartney, $3,000,000 for loss of consortium after 49 years of marriage, a combined verdict of $11,464,000. The trial court denied the defendants' motion for a new trial, and the verdict against Zurcher and Scott Kort Trucking was not part of the appeal that followed.

Curt Thege, a BNSF carman at the Havelock Car Shop in Lincoln, was thrown from a scissor lift in June 2019 when an overhead crane hoist moved higher than the operator intended. BNSF admitted it breached its duty of care under the Federal Employers' Liability Act, leaving the jury to decide damages. After a five-day trial the jury returned $9,333,016, and on December 15, 2022 the court entered a $9,295,988.96 judgment after subtracting benefits payments the plaintiff conceded.

Jimmy Rohr Jr., a BNSF carman, was injured in February 2014 at the Havelock Yard in Lincoln when a railcar wheel rolled over his left foot, leading to 13 surgeries and a below-knee amputation. After a trial in January 2019, a Lancaster County jury valued his damages at $7,112,071 under the Federal Employers' Liability Act and assigned him 51 percent of the fault. After that reduction he was left with about $3,485,000, or 49 percent of the verdict.

At about eleven months old, a child suffered brain trauma in an accidental fall at day care, was taken to a hospital in Omaha and discharged without adequate management of her seizures. The seizures continued and caused permanent brain damage. The jury awarded $26.1 million. The statutory cap reduced it to $2.25 million.

A child was born at Bellevue Medical Center in November 2012 after a long labor and was not breathing at birth. She survived with severe brain damage and by trial could not walk or talk and had limited vision. A federal jury awarded $17 million. The statutory cap reduced it to $1.75 million and the Eighth Circuit affirmed.

A family alleged that negligent management of prenatal care during a 1993 pregnancy caused their son's brain injury. The jury awarded $5,625,000 against an obstetrician and her practice. The statutory cap reduced it to $1,250,000, and the Nebraska Supreme Court affirmed against a five-ground constitutional challenge.

The Nebraska Supreme Court affirmed a $34,000 jury verdict for Terry W. Pitt, an Omaha chef who sustained a 20-to-25-percent permanent impairment to his body as a whole after a Checker Cab struck his vehicle while he was making a left turn near 22nd Street and Chandler Road in Bellevue.

The Nebraska Supreme Court reversed a post-verdict judgment for the defense and reinstated a $25,000 jury award for a patron beaten at an after-hours Ranch Bowl dance, holding that a venue with three fights per night cannot call a restroom attack unforeseeable.

The Nebraska Supreme Court reversed a directed verdict for the defense in Mary Cohan's delayed breast-cancer diagnosis case, ordering a new trial against the radiology and OB/GYN providers responsible for misreading her 2009 mammogram.

The Nebraska Supreme Court upheld a permanent total disability award for a truck driver whose 2009 rollover on an Interstate 680 on-ramp in Omaha combined with pre-existing mental and cognitive impairments left him unable to compete in any regular branch of the labor market.

The Nebraska Supreme Court reversed a trial court ruling and held that when an employer denies a workers' compensation claim, the employee is not bound by the normal chain-of-referral rules for choosing physicians, and the employer must pay for all medical treatment later found to be compensable.

The Nebraska Court of Appeals affirmed a three-judge panel's ruling that Gloria Montoya, a Tyson Foods worker, was permanently and totally disabled as a result of injuries sustained on the job, rejecting the company's appeal in full.

Rensch and Rensch won reversal of summary judgment in a legal malpractice case, establishing that owners of a closely held corporation may personally sue the company's attorneys when their financial interests are inseparable from the entity's.