Car crash victim compensated with $2.1M verdict

On the eve of trial, plaintiff's lawyer Mark W. Dana of Providence received a $550,000 settlement offer on behalf of his client, a 42-year-old father of two whose leg was crushed in a pickup truck accident.

Dana rejected the half-million-dollar sum - a decision that, in retrospect, proved to be right on the money.

On Sept. 22, a Providence County Superior Court jury returned a $2.1 million verdict on behalf of Dana's client - one of the largest that Rhode Island has seen in the past five years. It tops 2005's biggest verdict and is among the top three this year.

According to Dana, the defense never disputed during the five-day trial that its client was at fault. Rather, it questioned the extent of the plaintiff's injuries, especially in light of his ability to return to work following the collision.

But Dana points out that he never denied his client - who has a desk job and owns his own company - can work. What he did argue was that the plaintiff still suffers a "significant loss of use" that impacts his interactions with his children, prevents him from ever running again and affects his ability to bend over.

"I wanted the jury to take into account the loss of use - past and future -because he'll get arthritic. I also asked them to take into account past suffering. He was trapped in the car for 45 minutes while the jaws-of-life tried to get him out," Dana says, adding that his client faces future pain and suffering as well as future medical expenses.

"All those things, in my estimation, were worth more than the $550,000 they put on the table," the plaintiff's lawyer remarks.

Attempts by Lawyers Weekly to contact defense attorney Michael R. DeLuca of Providence were unsuccessful. According to an Associated Press report, DeLuca plans on requesting that the amount of the verdict be reduced.

Mangled leg

The case stemmed from a 2003 accident involving plaintiff Wayne DeMarco, a passenger in a pickup truck driven by defendant Leo Doire. The truck, which hit two telephone poles, was owned by co-defendant Virginia Transportation Corp.

Charged with driving under the influence and driving to endanger with personal injury resulting, Doire ultimately received a 10-year probationary sentence.

The defense did not dispute that Doire had been responsible for the accident.

That left the issue of the injury for Dana to put on trial.

"We built the case up from the time of the accident, and we took the depositions of the EMT worker who described the injury, holding [the plaintiff's] leg in his hand, concerned that if he let go a portion would fall off," recalls Dana.

The most helpful witnesses in the plaintiff's case proved to be the four surgeons who performed eight different surgeries on the victim, including reconstruction of his limb and an eleven-hour procedure in which an abdominal muscle was removed and used for muscle in the patient's leg.

Dana says the plaintiff's trial presentation focused on his 22 percent full-body impairment rating. "I used state-of-the-art software called 'Trial Director,' which displays various demonstrative evidence on a big screen [like] X-rays and graphics. Every document has a bar code on it, and you scan it and the image comes up on the screen."

He also used Providence-based "Powershowz" for visual presentations during the trial.

"That assisted the jury," he explains. "They looked at the amount of breaks in the tibia. He had six breaks below the knee. His heel was crushed. So [the surgeons] tried to rebuild the heel. [One of the doctors] thought it was such an amazing break he took a picture of it. There was a real concern about whether this bone would be viable . [Now he] does have use of it, but he has a significant limp."

Meanwhile, the defense offered no witnesses.

"They crossed our medical witnesses, suggesting that he has more use [of his leg], that it is not that bad, and that his pain in the hospital and during the course of our surgeries was not quite of the extent that we said that it was," Dana recounts, adding that the other side also crossed his client and the doctors on the issue that the plaintiff is able to work.

'No choice'

Dana says his client's medical expenses exceeded $250,000 and that he originally demanded $1 million, the cap on the defendant's liability insurance.

Despite his attempts to settle the case, Dana says he received no offers, possibly because there was another passenger in the car who was also injured and the insurer was struggling with resolving both claims.

"As recently as August, we were demanding the policy limit and we never got a response. We weren't given a number. So we felt we had no choice but to try the case."

When a last-minute offer of $550,000 came in, Dana rejected it because "it wouldn't have made my client whole."

The jury deliberated for slightly less than two hours, returning a verdict that included loss of consortium claims for the plaintiff's wife and his two young children.

Including interest, the award totals $2.8 million.