A $350,350 Douglas County Verdict in the Rear-End Case Hannasch v. Hurlbut

The case began with a rear-end collision in Douglas County, Colorado. One vehicle struck another from behind. That kind of crash sends force through the neck and spine of whoever is sitting in the car that gets hit. The driver who caused the impact was named Hurlbut. The injured motorist, identified in the court file as Hannasch, brought the lawsuit that followed.

The collision left the plaintiff with a spinal injury. Damages in a case like this turn on the cost of medical care and on how far the injury keeps affecting the person long after the wreck. Those questions, not the fact of the impact, became the heart of what a jury would later weigh.

Ramos Law did not build the case around the driver alone. The complaint named more than one defendant, and the firm pressed two added theories of responsibility: negligent entrustment and vicarious liability. Negligent entrustment asks whether the owner of a vehicle handed the keys to someone the owner had reason to know was unfit to drive it safely. Vicarious liability asks whether a second party, such as an owner or employer, is answerable in law for the driver's conduct. Both theories let the plaintiff reach past the driver to the party who put that driver on the road.

Jessica Schlatter, a litigation director at Ramos Law, tried the case in Douglas County District Court. The defense disputed both who was at fault and the size of the claimed harm. The matter went to a jury rather than settling out of court. To win on the added theories, the firm had to connect the vehicle's owner to the choice to let Hurlbut drive, then tie that choice to the injury Hannasch suffered.

In 2023 the jury sided with the plaintiff and returned a verdict of $350,350. The award put the case at number 39 on TopVerdict.com's list of the top 50 Colorado verdicts for that year, a ranking drawn from civil judgments across the state.