A Marion County Jury's $52 Million Verdict for an Ocala Family Hit at a Red Light
Won by Colson Hicks Eidson.
After a speeding BMW rear-ended a mother and her four children stopped at an Ocala red light, a Marion County jury awarded the family nearly $52 million, reported as the largest verdict in the county's history.
What happened
On December 6, 2013, Yolanda Aldana was driving her 2011 Nissan Sentra with her four young children riding as passengers. She had come to a stop at a red light on Southeast Maricamp Road at the SE 31st Street intersection in Ocala. Nathan Pyles, behind the wheel of a 2012 BMW, was traveling at a high rate of speed and never braked. He hit the back of the Sentra so hard that the car stood up on its front bumper before sliding forward into a Dodge Caravan that was also stopped at the light.
All five people in the Sentra were hurt. Four of them were children under the age of 12, and the youngest was a toddler who was not yet two years old. Aldana, then 39, suffered a concussion and a traumatic brain injury, a hip fracture, several broken ribs, a lacerated spleen, and blunt force trauma to her chest and abdomen. Her children were left with permanent, life altering injuries, including brain and spinal damage, fractures, and internal organ injuries that called for multiple surgeries and long term rehabilitation.
The family brought an auto negligence suit against Pyles, the driver who failed to stop. They were represented by Ervin A. Gonzalez and Patrick Montoya of Colson Hicks Eidson, the Coral Gables firm, who tried the case in the Fifth Judicial Circuit court in Marion County. Over a six-day trial, the plaintiffs' team laid out the mechanics of the collision and the full scope of the injuries, showing how a single high-speed impact at a stoplight had reshaped the lives of an entire family.
The jury deliberated for roughly two hours before returning its verdict in 2017. It awarded the Aldana family $51,813,592, a figure rounded in coverage to about $52 million. One of the family's attorneys said he believed it was the largest verdict ever returned in Marion County.
After the verdict, Gonzalez said, "We can't bring back the health of this family who suffered devastating injuries, but at the very least, we can bring them some dignity." The independent verdict tracker TopVerdict ranked the result the second-largest car accident verdict in Florida for all of 2017.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.