State Farm Fought the Sadowskis' Own Uninsured-Motorist Claim. A Shelby County Jury Found the At-Fault Driver 85 Percent Responsible.

On March 11, 2012, Emil and Kathryn Sadowski were driving their Lexus on Highway 64 near the Wolfchase Galleria in east Memphis when a modified Subaru driven by Chamroerun Kheiv slammed into their car. Kheiv carried no auto insurance.

Emil, who was 90, spent nine days in the hospital and then moved to long-term care. His wife, Kathryn, suffered catastrophic injuries. She lingered about 60 days before she died from those injuries in May 2012.

The Sadowskis had bought uninsured-motorist coverage for a day like this one. State Farm Fire and Casualty had $2.5 million of that coverage in force when the crash happened. Rather than pay the claim, State Farm Mutual and State Farm Fire stepped in to defend the uninsured driver at trial. State Farm did not dispute that it had sold the coverage. It disputed that it owed anything, arguing that Emil, at 90, had caused the wreck and broke the law in doing so, and it made no offer to settle before the case reached a courtroom.

R. Sadler Bailey of Bailey & Greer, the Memphis firm now known as Greer Injury Lawyers, tried the case with Nashville co-counsel Donald Capparella. The trial took place before Judge Jerry Stokes in Shelby County Circuit Court, Division 6. The contest was over fault: State Farm blamed Emil, and Bailey argued that Kheiv caused the collision and that the coverage the Sadowskis had paid for should answer for it.

In late November 2013, the jury sided with the Sadowskis. It found Kheiv 85 percent at fault and Emil 15 percent at fault, and it set the total damages above $3 million. Under that allocation, roughly $2.7 million of the award fell on the uninsured driver's share, the portion the Sadowskis' policy was meant to cover.

Two things reduced the final number. The 15 percent of fault assigned to Emil came off the top, and a Tennessee statute that took effect in 2011 capped noneconomic damages, the pain-and-suffering part of the award, at $750,000. Together they brought the judgment to just over $2 million. When WREG examined the case in early 2014, State Farm still had not paid the family.