$33 Million Verdict for Mother of Engineer Killed by Driver Going 99 mph in a 35 mph Zone
Won by Anderson Hemmat.
Chad Hemmat and co-counsel secured a $33 million wrongful death verdict for the mother of a 30-year-old Aurora engineer killed when a driver traveling nearly three times the posted speed limit ran a red light and T-boned his car at an I-225 interchange.
What happened
On September 1, 2019, Justin Gorodess, a 30-year-old nuclear chemical engineer who lived in Aurora, was exiting the I-225 on-ramp onto southbound Yosemite Street when a Toyota SUV driven by Sherozjon Vahobov slammed into the driver's side of his car. Vahobov had been traveling at 99 mph on a stretch of Yosemite where the posted speed limit is 35 mph. He ran a red light and, even after braking, was still doing approximately 55 mph at impact. Gorodess died at the scene.
Vahobov did not appear for the civil trial. Prosecutors had separately charged him with vehicular manslaughter, but he left the country for Uzbekistan before those proceedings concluded. With no defense presented, the jury heard the full account of how recklessly Vahobov had driven in the seconds before the collision.
Chad Hemmat of Anderson Hemmat LLC, working alongside Greg Gold of The Gold Law Firm, represented Beata Gorodess, Justin's mother, in her wrongful death claim. The jury awarded $33 million in noneconomic damages, along with a separate economic judgment of $436,070. Law Week Colorado ranked it the second-largest verdict in the state in 2021, and it was reported to be the largest wrongful death jury verdict in Arapahoe County's history.
The outcome did not hold at that level without a legal fight. Under Colorado statute, noneconomic damages in wrongful death cases are subject to a cap. Arapahoe County District Court Judge Elizabeth Beebe Volz applied the cap and reduced the award sharply, declining to lift it on the grounds that Vahobov's conduct did not meet the definition of a 'felonious killing.' In October 2022, a three-judge Colorado Court of Appeals panel reversed that ruling. Writing for the panel, Judge Christina F. Gomez concluded that 'traffic offenses like excessive speed and failure to obey traffic signals may, depending on the circumstances, support a finding of a substantial and unjustifiable risk,' and ordered Judge Volz to hold a new hearing on whether the cap should be lifted.
The case number in Arapahoe County District Court is 2019 CV 32268.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.