In conjunction with the themes above, the Plaintiff’s bar actively targets the non-economic damages element of the verdict. The defense is trying to get a discount.The defense refuses to accept responsibility.The defendant placed profits over safety.In taking advantage of the Reptile Theory, the Plaintiff’s bar has increasingly emphasized four main themes in their arguments to get the jury to go “nuclear.” These four themes include: As a result, in a time when society is increasingly being framed as the little guy versus the big company, the mere existence of a trucking company in the lawsuit makes jurors more likely to be emotionally enflamed against the big corporate defendant-a strategy the plaintiff’s bar has been keen on taking advantage of.įraming the trucking company as a greedy corporate defendant invokes what is called the Reptile Theory-intentionally appealing to the juror’s emotions rather than facts and reason. The general theory in which trucking companies are named as defendants relies on allegations that the trucking company negligently hired, trained, supervised and/or retained the negligent driver. This verdict exemplifies the growing and resilient trend of increasing verdicts in the trucking industry.Īccording to John Kearny, the CEO of Advanced Training Systems, the trucking industry litigation environment has drastically changed as plaintiff’s lawyers began to include companies as named defendants in the lawsuits. The verdict was compromised of $150 million in wrongful death damages, $30 million in pain and suffering and $100 million in punitive damages. After just 45 minutes of deliberation, the jury awarded a verdict of $280 million against Schnitzer Southeast and Schnitzer Steel. Most recently, in August of 2019, what is believed to be the largest verdict ever against a trucking company was handed down by a jury in Columbus, Georgia. Just seven years later, in 2013, that number increased by nearly eighteen times, with nearly seventy verdict awards exceeding $1 million. Compare this to 2006 when there were only four cases with awards in excess of $1 million. Fast forward to 2017, the average size of trucking verdicts exponentially grew by 483 percent by 2018. In fact, between 19 the median verdict was $190,000, which represented a 90 percent increase when compared to verdicts between 1985 to 1989. In the modern era of trucking industry lawsuits, these nuclear verdicts appear to be on the rise, and unfortunately, here to stay. A more accurate definition is any award that is significantly disproportionate to what would be expected given the economic damages in the case. Generally, a nuclear verdict is defined as a jury award in which the penalty exceeds $10 million.
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