Virginia Lawyers Weekly

A circuit judge has refused to set aside a $280,000 verdict for a car crash victim who incurred less than $800 in initial medical expenses. Upholding the verdict in Showker v. Kratzer, Rockingham County Circuit Judge James V. Lane rejected a challenge to a punitive damages award that was two-and-a-half times the amount of the jury’s compensatory damages award.
The plaintiff was a 16-year-old girl injured in a crash caused by a driver with multiple prior DUI convictions and a blood-alcohol concentration of 0.32%.

Virginia Lawyers Weekly reported on the verdict in its Dec. 22 edition.

In an opinion denying the defendant’s post-trial motions, Lane said $200,000 in punitive damages “appear to be proportional to the compensatory award and do not shock the conscience of the Court as being excessive.” (VLW 009-8-039).

Defense counsel complained that the punitives award would destroy the defendant financially, but Lane found the evidence lacking. The defendant showed that his current salary was less than $33,000, but presented no additional evidence of his net worth, according to Lane’s opinion letter. “The punitive award strikes the court as a significant punishment but not one that will lead necessarily to the Defendant’s financial ruin, especially absent evidence to the contrary,” the judge wrote.

The $80,000 compensatory award was 7.3 times the special damages, but Lane held that the amount was not excessive considering evidence of the plaintiff’s mental anguish. Lane also refused a challenge to a chiropractor’s testimony about the prospect of $10,000 in future medical treatment because the testimony was unrefuted by a defense expert.

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