Jefferson Parish Jury Awards $1.58 Million After Distracted-Driving Rear-End Crash

On June 27, 2014, Jasmine Raymond was driving on Interstate 10 eastbound in Jefferson Parish, in heavy morning traffic immediately before the Interstate 10 and Interstate 610 split. Lance Cook, an employee of Rubber & Specialties, Inc., was returning from a business trip in a company truck insured by Depositors Insurance Company. Cook looked down at his phone to check his GPS and struck the rear of Raymond's car as he looked back up. The impact sent her vehicle into the car in front of her, so that her car was sandwiched between the two. Cook admitted to the responding officer at the scene, and later to the jury at trial, that he had been looking at his phone. He also testified that Raymond was visibly shaking when he walked around to the side of her car to check on her.

Raymond was twenty-four years old and had no prior history of back or neck problems. Over the next two years she underwent numerous procedures and surgeries in an effort to relieve severe pain that began after the crash, including a surgery on March 31, 2016. On August 5, 2016, her treating physician, Dr. Rodriguez, diagnosed a recurrent disc herniation at L4-5 with right leg radiculopathy and reported that she was a candidate for lumbar fusion surgery in the future. His opinion, carried into an updated life care plan, was that she would need two lumbar fusion surgeries over the course of her lifetime, one of them right away. A physician retained by the defense had examined Raymond on November 20, 2015 and concluded she had suffered only a soft-tissue injury, and the defense argued her later condition was something new rather than a continuation of the original disc injury. The district court disagreed, denied a trial continuance and a second examination, and let her experts testify.

Trial opened in the 24th Judicial District Court for the Parish of Jefferson on September 19, 2016. After three days of testimony the parties rested, and the district court granted Raymond's motion for a directed verdict on liability. That left the twelve jurors with only two questions: medical causation and damages.

The jury returned eleven itemized awards: $10,000 for past physical pain and suffering, $190,000 for future physical pain and suffering, $10,000 for past mental anguish, $190,000 for future mental anguish, $10,000 for past loss of enjoyment of life, $190,000 for future loss of enjoyment of life, $114,358.87 for past medical expenses, $610,125 for future medical expenses, $55,000 for past lost wages, $30,000 for future lost wages and loss of earning capacity, and $172,916 for disability. Together they come to $1,582,399.87. The district court entered judgment on the verdict on October 11, 2016 and denied the defendants' motion for a new trial the same day it was filed.

Depositors Insurance Company, Rubber & Specialties, and Cook took a suspensive appeal to the Louisiana Fifth Circuit, raising four assignments of error: that late supplemental expert reports should have been struck, that the trial court should have granted a continuance and a second medical examination, that the future medical award was not supported by the record, and that the case should go back to the district court to decide whether La. R.S. 32:866, the state's no pay, no play statute, applied because Raymond was an unlicensed driver. On the afternoon of September 6, 2017, the day before oral argument, the defendants moved to dismiss their own appeal. The Fifth Circuit granted the motion on September 8, 2017 and declined to reach any of the four assignments of error, leaving the trial court's judgment exactly as the jury had set it. The court's counsel listing for Raymond names Edward J. Womac, Jr. and Douglas J. Womac, Jr. of 3501 Canal Street in New Orleans, along with Stephen M. Huber, Brian P. Marcelle, Gina M. Palermo, Thomas M. Flanagan, Andy Dupre and Anders F. Holmgren.