$13.28 Million Verdict for 19-Year-Old Left with Permanent Brain Injury in Farmersville Head-On Crash

On a two-lane road in Farmersville, California, a nineteen-year-old woman was driving in one direction when a series of events on the opposite side of the road set a collision in motion. Wes Storms, who was driving his father's vehicle, had slowed to a near-stop at an unmarked intersection while waiting to turn left through oncoming traffic. Garland Slover, following behind Storms, could not stop in time and rear-ended Storms's vehicle. The force of that impact pushed Storms's car across the center line and directly into the path of the young plaintiff.

The head-on crash left the woman with a traumatic brain injury and permanent hemiparesis, a partial paralysis affecting one side of her body. At nineteen years old, she faced a lifetime of neurological deficits and the loss of physical function she would have had for decades.

After the crash, Storms's insurance carrier denied any liability for its insured, taking the position that Slover bore sole responsibility for causing the initial rear-end impact. The defense argument required the jury to place all fault on Slover and none on the driver who entered the intersection and stopped in a travel lane.

Ryan Harris tried the case in Tulare County Superior Court in Visalia. The jury rejected the insurer's liability argument and returned a verdict of $13,284,363 on December 23, 2009. The Recorder, which publishes California's annual Million Dollar Verdicts survey, ranked the result number 23 among the top California verdicts of that year. VerdictSearch, a staffed editorial verdict-reporting service, also published a case summary identifying Ryan D. Harris of Harris Personal Injury Lawyers as plaintiff's counsel.