Oklahoma Supreme Court Restores Abel Law Firm's $15 Million Crane Verdict and Strikes the State's Damages Cap

James Todd Beason was working at an Oklahoma oil-well site when a crane operated by an I.E. Miller Services employee tried to move an 82,000-pound mud pump. The operator attempted the lift with a single crane, without the second crane or vehicle the job called for. The boom came down and struck Beason.

The crush injury cost him part of his arm, which surgeons removed in two amputations. Beason and his wife, Dara, sued I.E. Miller Services, the company whose employee was running the crane, in Oklahoma County District Court in Oklahoma City. Dara Beason brought her own claim for the loss of her husband's care and companionship.

The Abel Law Firm team of Ed Abel, Lynn B. Mares, Kelly S. Bishop, and T. Luke Abel tried the case. The jury found I.E. Miller responsible and returned $15 million: $14 million to Todd Beason, with $5 million of that for pain and suffering, and $1 million to Dara Beason. Combined, the noneconomic damages came to $6 million.

Then the award shrank. A 2011 statute, 23 O.S. Section 61.2, capped noneconomic damages in injury cases at $350,000 per plaintiff. Applying it, the trial court cut the $6 million in pain-and-suffering damages to $700,000 and entered judgment for $9.7 million.

The firm challenged the cap on appeal. In Beason v. I.E. Miller Services, Inc., 2019 OK 28, decided April 23, 2019, the Oklahoma Supreme Court held it unconstitutional. Justice John Reif wrote for the court that the cap was a "special law" barred by Article 5, Section 46 of the Oklahoma Constitution, because it limited recovery for people who survived their injuries while families in wrongful-death cases faced no such limit. "The failing of the statute is that it purports to limit recovery for pain and suffering in cases where the plaintiff survives the injury-causing event, while persons who die from the injury-causing event face no such limitation," Reif wrote.

The court reversed the reduction and sent the case back for entry of judgment on the full verdict, restoring the $15 million the jury had awarded. The cap had been part of Oklahoma's 2011 tort-reform package, and the ruling voided it for personal-injury plaintiffs across the state.