$3 Million Settlement After Interstate Rear-End Crash Ejects Stranded Driver

A 22-year-old man from Indiana was working in West Virginia and driving back to his hotel with a coworker when one of his tires went flat on the interstate. He swapped the flat for the spare donut, and before long that tire failed too. With no place he felt he could safely pull off, he kept the car creeping along at about 9 mph on the bare rim, hazard lights flashing, hoping to reach an exit.

Another vehicle came up behind him and struck the rear of his car. The force of the collision threw him out of the vehicle and onto the roadway. He was taken to Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital in Roanoke, Virginia, with extensive injuries, and during his hospitalization he needed multiple surgeries.

He sued the driver who hit him in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia, Beckley Division. Fault was contested from the start. The defense argued that the plaintiff brought much of the harm on himself by driving on a flat donut at an extremely low speed on a live interstate, instead of getting off the road or waiting on the shoulder for help. Under West Virginia's comparative fault rules, a jury that assigned the plaintiff a large enough share of the blame could have reduced his recovery or cut it off entirely.

Richmond attorneys John C. Shea, Tara A. Enix, and Roger T. Creager of Marks & Harrison pressed the opposite reading of the facts. A slow car with its hazard lights on was plainly there to be seen on the roadway, and the driver coming up behind carried a duty to keep a proper lookout and to avoid striking what was in front of him. To get a jury ready for the medicine and the mechanics of the crash, the team prepared medical illustrations and other demonstrative exhibits, then tested its themes with a focus group before any trial.

The two sides went to mediation with Doug Adkins of Cyrus & Adkins in Huntington and reached terms before a verdict. Because the figure was negotiated rather than handed down by a jury, it was not subject to later appeal, reduction, or remittitur. Virginia Lawyers Weekly listed the result among the year's million-dollar-plus settlements and credited the Richmond trial team. The settlement totaled $3 million.