Jefferson County Jury Awards $18 Million to Afghanistan Combat Veteran Struck on I-22 Shoulder After Insurer Offered $12,500

Around 10 p.m. on November 16, 2015, Zachary Lucas's motorcycle ran out of gas on Interstate 22 outside Birmingham. Lucas, a U.S. Army veteran who had served in combat in Afghanistan, did what drivers are told to do: he got the bike onto the shoulder, out of the travel lanes. While he was on foot checking the motorcycle, a van driven by Michael Cannon came off the roadway and struck him.

The impact fractured Lucas's skull and caused brain hemorrhages. He survived, but the injury left him with permanent physical and cognitive impairments, the kind of damage that follows a person into every job application, every relationship, and every ordinary day for the rest of his life.

Cannon was insured by Progressive. Before any lawsuit was filed, the company's response to a catastrophic brain injury claim was an offer of $12,500. Brandon Bishop, one of the Alexander Shunnarah Trial Attorneys lawyers who handled the case, later said the insurer's message was plain: take the token offer or go to trial against the company's lawyers.

Lucas chose trial. Bishop and Andrew Moak of the Shunnarah firm tried the case over four days in Jefferson County Circuit Court in Birmingham, presenting the evidence of how the crash happened and what the brain injury had taken from a young veteran who had come home from a war zone intact only to be run down on a highway shoulder in his own state.

On Thursday, November 7, 2019, the week before Veterans Day, the jury returned a unanimous verdict of $18 million, one of the larger injury verdicts reported in Alabama that year. The number the jury put on the case was 1,440 times what Progressive had offered to close the file.