What is the right size of a verdict?
For insurance companies, the value of a human life is a cost that can be measured and calculated.
After the trial, a juror stands in a hallway outside the courtroom, leaning against a wall. She and the rest of her jury had just ordered a trucking company, and unknowingly their insurance company, to pay millions and millions of dollars for the death of a young woman — the largest jury verdict ever in this courtroom.
The defense lawyer, who the insurance company paid to represent this trucking company, walks up in his blue suit with his collar unbuttoned and an undone red tie around his neck and asks, “Why so much? That doesn’t seem right.” The juror steps forward away from the wall, looks the defense lawyer in the eyes, and says, “What we say in our verdict says more about who we are and what we value than what your client did to that young woman.”
What is the right size of a verdict? How much is the life of a woman worth? Or the brain of a young boy who will never again speak or read? The spine of a father who can no longer walk and lives in constant pain?
Gerry Spence once supposedly said, “Help me understand, make me feel, make me care. That way, I know what the value is.”
But the insurance industry that hides from juries behind the defendants they protect believes the value of a human life is a cost. They believe it is a claim to be measured, calculated and placed in the “expense” column. It is a burden for them for which they make risk evaluations.
They pay defense lawyers and expert witnesses millions of dollars a year to do anything and everything to try to distract attention from what their client did to one of us. They refuse to be responsible. They blame anyone and everything to avoid accountability. They try to convince us that a person’s life is worthless.
It’s amazing how their policies and procedures are just suggestions. Rules and regulations are guidelines that can be ignored because their truck drivers are “experienced” and know best. Training and supervision are too difficult and expensive to do all the time. And they can’t possibly be everywhere at once.
For some reason, the injured or deceased plaintiffs always turned into the 14-foot-high, 80-foot-long truck, stopped short for no reason, or a phantom car nobody else saw caused everything.
Incredibly, everybody they hurt had a preexisting condition that is the real source of chronic pain or brain damage. The force of the crash wasn’t hard enough or, if it was, couldn’t possibly have caused “this type” of injury. And 95% of brain injuries resolve in three months, or the surgery should have fixed them — so this person must be faking! “They’re malingering!”
And what happens when a jury sees through these lies and issues their order in the form of a verdict holding the defendant accountable for what they did? The insurance industry labels it a “nuclear verdict,” call it unfair, raises premium rates, and threatens to refuse to insure trucking companies unless the laws change — so they can keep more money.
Who caused this? Why did they “lose” all that money? Whose fault is it?
I imagine that juror standing in the hallway in front of that defense lawyer in his blue suit with the red tie undone changing that article to say, “Since 2018, trucking companies have maimed and killed people all across this country due to their neglect, their carelessness, and their attitudes, and juries have held those trucking companies accountable for around $1.8 billion.”
I can almost hear her pointing with disgust to one of the hundreds of egregious facts we’ve encountered over the years as the cause of the crash her jury just decided, like a company not changing brake fluid on their truck for over 104,000 miles or hiring a driver with over 40 DOT violations because they are a “second chance company,” or maybe a driver that keeps two log books so he can drive over the legal limit and then falling asleep on the highway or taking methamphetamines to stay awake.
And before the defense lawyer could say anything in response, the juror turns and walks down the hallway out the front door of the courtroom and disappears into a crowd of people.
Without accountability, there is no justice. Without justice, there is no freedom. A rightsized verdict is one a jury determines will hold accountable those who refuse to be responsible.
Ilya E. Lerma is a trial consultant with Trial Structure, where she focuses on representing brain-injured victims. Charles “Chuck” Bennett is a consultant with Trial Structure. He has tried cases to verdict for personal injury plaintiffs, criminal prosecution and criminal defense. The opinions expressed here are the authors’ own.
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