$11M settlement sparks $13.1B suit against American Family Insurance

What began as a personal injury case with a $30 million jury verdict that was ultimately settled for $11 million has yielded more litigation yet. A new complaint accuses American Family Insurance, law firm Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz, and a private investigation company of illegally surveilling and video-recording the plaintiff and her family.

Fittingly, the new complaint seeks big money: more than $13.1 billion in punitive damages. Plus attorney fees.  

Attorney Ben Brodhead, who represented plaintiff Luisa Mezquital in the original lawsuit and filed the recent complaint in Georgia’s DeKalb County State Court, said the complaint speaks for itself and declined to discuss its particulars.

But he said the damages he is seeking are not so “outlandish” when one considers the annual revenues AmFam and Baker Donelson generate. 

“When a company brings in $12.2 billion a year, you need to get their attention,” said Brodhead, who filed the complaint with Brodhead Law colleagues Ashley Fournet and Michael Arndt. 

The complaint was filed after AmFam sued Mezquital in Georgia’s Northern U.S. District Court last month seeking to head off her lawsuit, which Brodhead had threatened with a January letter demanding $50 million to settle “claims of invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress” related to the surveillance, which the complaint said occurred in 2019 after the first verdict was reversed but before the case settled in December of that year.  

And AmFam is still embroiled in separate litigation against the at-fault driver it blames for having to defend and settle Mezquital’s claims. In June 2021, the insurer filed a new federal action against Mezquital in an effort to halt the surveillance suit. 

The case’s originations

The convoluted case began in 2012 when a Jeep driven by Abdulmohsen Almassud crossed the centerline and hit Mezquital’s car, mangling her hand and arm.

A Fulton County jury awarded Mezquital $30 million at the close of a 2016 trial, but the Court of Appeals reversed and remanded the case, finding that the trial judge failed to charge the jury on Almassud’s claim that a co-defendant garage had botched the installation of off-road steering gear on the Jeep.

The Georgia Supreme Court declined to hear Mezquital’s appeal. 

In the meantime, AmFam filed a declaratory judgment action against Almassud and Mezquital in the Northern District, arguing among other things that it should not be liable for the award because Almassud falsely told its investigator he was not off-roading the vehicle prior to the wreck.

In December 2019, the underlying case settled for what was later revealed to be $11 million, according to a filing in the federal litigation. The case continues to generate related litigation in federal court.

Earlier this year, U.S. District Judge Richard Story ruled that AmFam could not dodge liability for paying the settlement because it agreed to defend the case. Story allowed AmFam’s claims against Almassud to proceed but said the insurer was only entitled to  recover “nominal damages sufficient to cover the costs of bringing the action.”

AmFam filed a renewed complaint against Almassud last December, in that case, asserting claims including breach of contract and fraud, which remain pending. 

Brodhead’s July 7 complaint names AmFam, Baker Donelson and former partner Robert Shannon Jr. and associate Logan Owens (both of whom are now with Carlton Fields), along with Loganville-based Martinelli Investigations and owner Robin Martinelli and four of her employees as defendants.

It said that the lawyers hired the PI firm, at AmFam’s behest, to install surveillance devices around Mezqutal’s property and on family vehicles throughout the month of October 2019, or thereabouts. 

“The AmFam defendants’ directions to the Martinelli Investigations Defendants included the mandate to have the investigators do whatever they needed to do to get surveillance of the plaintiff,” it said. “This direction was passed on to the Martinelli Investigations defendants by the Baker Donelson defendants.”

The PI defendants “unlawfully entered” Mezquitals’ property and “placed various electronic devices” on her property and two vehicles “to unlawfully record the activities of Plaintiff and her minor children. The electronic devices included at least one hidden video camera and multiple GPS tracking devices.”

The complaint said the PI team strapped a Spypoint Link-Dark “trail cam” digital camera, which is to a tree positioned to “capture plaintiff’s house, vehicles, and a portion of Plaintiff’s driveway. “The view provided by the Spypoint Link-Dark camera is not possible to obtain from a public road or from any other public property, it said. The “unlawful recordings were made without the consent of all persons observed and included photographs, videos, and electronic recordings of the activities of plaintiff and her minor children in a private place that was out of public view.”  

The complaint includes claims for invasion of privacy, trespass to realty, trespass to personality, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligence and punitive damages and seeks joint and several liability for all the defendants. 

A media representative for Baker Donelson did not respond to a request for comment, but attorney Shannon said the complaint “contains significant falsehoods and misrepresentations.”

“Mr. Broadhead certainly doesn’t have clean hands,” said Shannon via email. “His attempts at deception created a need for the surveillance he complains of.”

[Brodhead] brought his accusations before the presiding judge seeking sanctions and redress of his false allegations,” but the court “did not find I or Ms. Owens engaged in the conduct he alleges,” he said. “He moved to exclude the use of the surveillance, and I agreed to it.”

The surveillance was a “nonissue,” Shannon said. “He didn’t feel the jury selection was in his favor, and he settled the case prior to his opening. He made the decision to settle the case and release the parties.”

Brodhead “knows that I personally had no direct involvement in directing the surveillance team,” but “now wants to use the legal process in a manner to exact revenge against Ms. Owens and myself,” Shannon said. 

An AmFam spokesman said the suit “is without merit and the request for damages is outlandish. The complaint was filed after we filed a complaint against the plaintiff in federal court in Georgia.”

Robin Martinelli said the allegations were “outlandish, disheartening, and we will probably be countersuing.”

“I was doing my job, and my entire investigation staff and contractors were doing their job,” she said. “Trackers are legal in the state of Georgia, and Martinelli Investigations did nothing illegal.”

Mezquital and her lawyers “are being vengeful and vindictive,” she added. 

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