$91 Million Verdict for Man Left With Brain Damage After Baseball-Bat Attack Outside Convenience Store

Late on the night of November 4, 2015, William Tisdale pulled into a Union 76 gas station on Pacific Avenue in Parkland, Washington. The store was controlled by APRO LLC, a convenience-store operator. The moment Tisdale walked in, the clerk quietly asked him to call 911. An armed robbery was in progress inside.

Tisdale stepped back outside to make the call. As the robber, Terrence Sablan, fled the store, he began rifling through Tisdale's unlocked car in the parking lot. Tisdale confronted him. Sablan responded by repeatedly striking Tisdale in the head with an aluminum baseball bat. The beating left Tisdale with multiple skull fractures, severe brain bleeding, and permanent neurological damage including seizures. Sablan was later found not guilty by reason of insanity and committed to a psychiatric facility.

The civil case centered on what APRO knew and failed to do. The store sat in a high-crime corridor. Plaintiff's counsel argued that APRO had a duty to provide adequate security at a location it knew, or should have known, exposed customers to a serious risk of violence. PCVA partners Darrell Cochran and Christopher Love worked alongside lead counsel Eric Fong and Emma Aubrey of Fong Law PLLC throughout the proceedings.

In June 2021, the Pierce County jury returned a verdict of $91 million, at the time the largest single-plaintiff personal injury verdict in Washington State history. The jury assigned APRO 90 percent of the fault and Tisdale 10 percent, reducing APRO's share of the damages to $81.9 million.

APRO appealed. In December 2022, the Washington Court of Appeals, Division 2, upheld the finding that APRO was liable and left the jury's 10 percent contributory-negligence allocation undisturbed, but it vacated the damages award and remanded for a new trial on damages only. The court held that the trial judge should have instructed the jury to segregate the portion of total damages caused solely by Sablan's intentional conduct from those proximately caused by APRO's negligence, sending the size of the award back to a new jury.