St. Louis Jury Awards $1.16 Million to Driver Left With Brain Injury After Head-On Crash With City Truck

On March 7, 2023, a St. Louis city employee was driving a city concrete truck west on Loughborough Avenue, near Conduit Park, when he lost control. The truck ran off the road, crossed over lawns, snapped a light pole, and drifted across the centerline. It hit Tara Straussner's car head-on, then struck several vehicles parked in a nearby driveway before it came to rest.

Straussner suffered a traumatic brain injury along with a torn meniscus, three herniated lumbar discs, and lacerations that needed sutures. Her attorneys said the cognitive damage was not obvious right away. She kept working until she was demoted nearly a year after the crash, and that was when the full effect became clear. Her doctors documented permanent anterograde amnesia and post-concussive syndrome.

Brown & Crouppen attorneys Lisa Tsacoumangos and Abbey Walquist represented Straussner in St. Louis City Circuit Court, in a trial before Judge Jason Sengheiser. Neurosurgeon Dr. Sean Markey testified for the plaintiff. He pointed to white-matter changes on her brain imaging and to testing showing that neural pathways present before the collision had since died off. Before trial, Straussner's last settlement demand had been $517,306, roughly the amount the city could be forced to pay under the statutory cap.

After a short trial in mid-2025, the jury returned its verdict. It awarded $1,162,229 for Straussner's personal injuries and $6,600 for property damage, a total of $1,168,829. The personal-injury figure included $85,449 in past medical bills and $7,680 in past lost wages.

Because the city is a public entity, Missouri's sovereign-immunity cap applied to the judgment. That statute held the amount the city has to pay to roughly $517,000, well under the jury's full number.

On September 2, 2025, St. Louis City attorney Nathan Puckett filed a notice of appeal with the Missouri Court of Appeals. The city is challenging several trial rulings, among them whether jurors should have heard certain expert and medical testimony, whether Straussner sought more in damages than she had disclosed before trial, and whether closing arguments rested on claims the evidence did not support.