A FULTON COUNTY jury awarded more than $15 million to the parents of a young man killed when the car in which he and other members of a wedding party were riding was slammed from behind by a speeding drug-company representative with a long history of speeding tickets and other traffic offenses.
The verdict included $10 million for the life of 22-year-old Kaleo Hewlett, the best man in the ceremony, and $5 million for his pain and suffering before dying.
The verdict reflected the jury’s assessment of Hewitt as “an exceptional young man,” said lead plaintiffs’ attorney Katherine McArthur of the four-lawyer Law Firm of Kathy McArthur in Macon. “They knew he was not an average person. I think it was a just verdict.”
The driver of the car that caused the wreck, a sales rep for pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca, admitted liability before trial, McArthur said. The drug company’s last offer to settle pre-trial was for $4.5 million, she said, and the defense turned down an offer to settle for $10 million the day before trial. AstraZeneca’s lead attorney, Billy Gunn of Weinberg, Wheeler, Hudgins, Gunn & Dial, said he had expected a hefty award for Hewitt’s life, but he was unprepared for the $5 million pain and suffering assessment.
“While I’m disappointed with the rest of the verdict, I can’t say it shocked me,” said Gunn. “But I think the pain and suffering award was way out of line.” Gunn said he plans to file a motion asking Fulton County State Court Judge Patsy Porter to grant a new trial or to reduce the award in the coming days.
McArthur noted that she will square off with Gunn’s firm again next month over the same wreck. She represents the man driving the car Hewlett was in; he suffered injuries to his shoulders, back and ribs. A trial is set for May, again before Porter.
The wreck occurred in August 2008, when Hewlett and four other passengers were packed into a Kia following a wedding at the Mormon Temple in Atlanta, McArthur said. Hewlett’s group was on its way to a reception in Houston County, and he was in the back seat with two of the bridesmaids.
The driver, Loren Noel, started braking for a traffic light at the intersection of Highway 247 and Green Street, near the entrance to Robins Air Force Base. The Kia was traveling at about 15 to 20 miles per hour, McArthur said, when a Ford Five Hundred sedan driven by Richard Brown slammed into its rear. A black box recorder and accident-reconstruction placed the Ford’s speed at 70.2 mph, she said.
The impact, she said, knocked the Kia through the intersection and almost the length of a football field. “It demolished the rear end, and knocked the trunk into the back seat.” she said. All of the passengers were seriously injured. Hewlett suffered a dislocated neck and transected spinal cord, a “hangman’s fracture,” and died at the scene, said McArthur.
McArthur said the other the three passengers in the car have settled their suits. They, too, were clients of her firm. Brown, she said, was not seriously injured, and he subsequently pleaded guilty to vehicular homicide, serious injury by vehicle, speeding, running a red light and following too close. He was sentenced to 90 days in jail, 10 years’ probation and a $1,000 fine. Brown’s driving record was “horrendous,” McArthur said, including 15 speeding tickets since 1995, a dozen of which he got after joining AstraZeneca in 1999.
“The black box showed he’d been gradually speeding up as he approached the light,” McArthur said. “My theory all along was that he saw it turn yellow and thought, ‘I bet I can make it,’ and just sped up more. There was no braking or swerving.” Brown said he didn’t remember anything about the accident, McArthur said. In 2009 McArthur filed a wrongful death suit on behalf of Elwynn and Susan Hewlett naming Brown and AstraZeneca as defendants.
The wreck occurred on a Saturday when Brown was returning home after a trip to the gym, McArthur said, and the drug company argued that even though Brown was driving a company car, he was off-duty and that AstraZeneca bore no liability. The plaintiffs’ position was that AstraZeneca knew about Brown’s driving record and should have removed him from behind the wheel of a company car years earlier, McArthur said.
The company’s policy doesn’t require any disciplinary action against drivers of their fleet cars until infractions are reported on a state’s motor vehicle report, but that drivers are supposed to tell their supervisors about any tickets within 24 hours. In Brown’s case, she said, several speeding tickets had never been reported. He also had his license suspended and had been ticketed for a minor rear-end collision in 2007.
The month before the fatal wreck, Brown notified his supervisor that he’d received two tickets within four days-one for going 75 in a 55 mph zone, another for going 85 in a 65 mph zone-but she testified that she didn’t discipline him because the tickets had not yet been reported on the state report. After two mediations, the plaintiffs’ lowest offer was $14.5 million, and the defendants’ highest was $4.5 million, said McArthur. On April 1, the case went to trial with McArthur and associates Laura Hinson and Caleb Walker for the plaintiffs.
Gunn and associate M. Allen Holcomb represented AstraZeneca, and Weinberg Wheeler partners Frederick Sager and Lindsay Gatling represented Brown. Plaintiffs’ experts included accident reconstruction specialist Heath Stewart and Georgia State University economist Bruce Seaman, McArthur said. The plaintiffs also introduced video depositions from AstraZeneca driver supervisors and other employees concerning their corporate policies, “showing that no reasonable company would have kept this man behind the wheel of a car,” said McArthur.
The defense, she said, did not dispute the speed of Brown’s vehicle or call any counterexperts. “AstraZeneca’s defense was that he was on personal time,” she said. Brown’s lawyers argued that the pain-and-suffering claims could not be verified because nobody saw Hewlett move or breathe after the accident, she said. ”
We said the nature of the injury was that he couldn’t move or breathe because of his injuries,” she said. On April 5, the panel of six men and six women, nine of whom were white and three African-American, took four and a half hours to find AstraZeneca negligent in entrusting the vehicle to Brown.
The jury awarded $10 million in compensatory damages and $5 million for pain and suffering. The panel also found both Brown’s and AstraZeneca’s actions constituted “conscious indifference to consequences” and thus warranted punitive damages. Rather than have a trial on the amount of punitives, the defense stipulated to the statutory cap of $250,000, McArthur said, and the final draft judgment includes another $13,000 for funeral expenses, for a total of $15,263,000.
In post-trial conversation, McArthur said the jurors said they had increased the life-value offered by the plaintiffs’ expert for the expect- ed lifetime earnings of an average person with a bachelor’s or master’s degree in economics to $10 million because “they knew Kaleo was not an average person, that there was a lot of potential there.”
Gunn said he asked why the pain and suffering award was so high.
“I never could get any direct response to that question,” he said. “My guess is the jury came up with a number and found a way to allocate it.”
