Johnston County Jury Awards $5.1 Million for Clayton Wrongful Death After a 40-Minute Deliberation

On June 26, 2023, Joan Drake was turning left off U.S. 70 Business in Clayton, North Carolina, into a Walmart parking lot. A car traveling east struck her vehicle at 98 miles per hour. Drake died at the scene from multiple blunt force injuries.

The driver, Malakhi Holt, had been moving at nearly 100 miles per hour on a commercial stretch of road lined with storefronts, signals, and turning traffic. Evidence developed in the case indicated that Holt was either caught up in a road rage incident or racing a second vehicle that was never identified. What the jury heard was a picture of a driver who treated a busy business route like a track.

Drake was the mother of two adult sons. Her estate retained Coleman Cowan and Donald Clack of the Law Offices of James Scott Farrin, who brought a wrongful death claim and tried it in Johnston County Superior Court, case number 23 CVS 6650, before Judge Paul Holcombe.

The way the firm proved damages set this trial apart. Cowan and Clack put on no medical bills, no funeral expenses, and no claim for lost income. North Carolina's wrongful death statute allows a jury to award the monetary value of the care, comfort, and guidance the deceased provided to her family. The lawyers asked the jury to weigh exactly that: what Joan Drake had meant to her sons across their lives. The trial centered on her role in the family rather than on a ledger of economic losses.

That approach carried real risk. Damages awards often lean on hard numbers like hospital charges and lost wages, and the plaintiff offered none of them here. The jury was left to assign a dollar figure to a relationship.

It did so quickly. On April 23, 2025, after about 40 minutes of deliberation, the Johnston County jury returned a verdict of $5.1 million in compensatory damages. With interest and costs added by the court, the total judgment came to more than $5.6 million.