Dolan Media Newswires
Daughter to receive $700,000 for wrongful death
of father
Truck, maintenance records were not presented at trial
Emily Umbright
"Compromise" is how defense attorney John Cooney described the $1.4 million jury verdict awarded Oct. 25 to the surviving daughter of a man who rammed his rental truck into the back of an empty school bus.
"You can kind of sense that," he said, "from the amount of the damages they did awarded, and then the 50-50 split and then only being signed by nine jurors."
The St. Louis jury debated about eight hours before reaching its verdict, assessing 51 percent fault to Cooney's client, Ryder TRS, and 49 percent fault to the victim, Paul Cravens of St. Francois County. Cooney said an additional 1 percent was taken off the award because Cravens was not wearing his seat belt at the time of the accident.
"That makes it 50-50," said Cooney, explaining that after offsets, the net judgment will be $700,000.
What began as a products liability suit filed in March 2003 by Cravens evolved into a wrongful death case after Cravens died and daughter Dee Ann Pino was left to pick up the reins.
Multiple abdominal surgeries took its toll on Cravens, who died in January 2004, about three years after the November accident occurred at a Jefferson County highway intersection.
"This guy dies a horrible death," said Cooney, describing this as the Achilles heel in his case. "I don't wish that on anybody."
PRI, doing business as Best Rental, supplied the 1998 Ford E-350 to Cravens, who was driving down Highway 67 near Farmington with a friend when the accident occurred. PRI received the vehicle, with 88,000 miles on it, from Ryder TRS.
As Cravens approached the intersection of the highway and Meyer Road, an empty school bus in front of him slowed.
"Cowboy," his friend testified saying to get the attention of Cravens, who wasn't slowing down. He slammed on the brake, but it was too late. The bus sustained little or no damage, but the Ford E-350 was totaled.
Three months later, as Craven lay in a hospital bed; the truck was sold for $409 in an online auction.
"What complicated this case for everybody was the fact that the truck had been salvaged two years before the case had been filed," said Cooney. "We never go to look at the truck."
The missing truck became a contentious subject after Cravens filed his lawsuit, alleging Ryder TRS and PRI failed to maintain the brakes on the vehicle and failed to warn consumers like Cravens of the dangers associated with its truck.
But the truck wasn't the only thing missing; events at trial revealed neither Ryder TRS nor PRI had maintenance records covering the 88,000 miles of the truck's lifespan.
As the suit pended, PRI sought dismissal, asserting it was just the supplier of the truck and that under its contract with Ryder TRS, it was not authorized to perform maintenance on the vehicles.
But the court allowed the case to continue, and after Cravens death, plaintiff Pino mounted additional claims against Ford, alleging defects arose during the manufacturing of the vehicle. The jury assessed both Ford and PRI's fault at zero.
"Ford never should have been in this case," said Cooney.
At trial, plaintiff attorney Robert Sullivan maintained Ford was trying to cover up its defects and that the company sold Ryder a vehicle with a defective vacuum booster that did not manifest itself until the accident.
"Just because it didn't brake right away doesn't mean there's nothing wrong with it," he said of the device, which powers the brakes. In this case, it contributed to Cravens brakes locking up, he argued. Sullivan of Lexington, Mo., was unavailable for comment.
Ford's attorney, Steven Strauss, told the jury the plaintiffs presented no proof of a product defect and put into question Craven's speed at the time of the braking as well as the lack of problems with the truck prior to his rental.
"Consider the evidence," he said to the jury. "The only thing it tells you is Ford isn't at fault."
To show the truck's rear-brake failures, Sullivan presented interpretations by experts of the skid marks on the road indicating that if the back brakes had worked, there would have been more marks on the road. Instead, he said, there were only marks from the front brakes.
Additionally, he called PRI's no-maintenance agreement with Ryder TRS "unreasonable" and focused the jury's attention on the fact that neither defendant had maintenance records. "Is that reasonable to give people trucks in that condition?" he asked, saying the truck had nearly 90,000 miles on it and the brakes had never been replaced.
After trial, Cooney said if the records had been available, he "suspects" the jury might have reached a different conclusion.
In closing arguments, Cooney emphasized the key piece of evidence - the truck - was missing. "It's not fair to file a suit two and a half years after the accident when the truck's no longer around," he told the jury.
Sullivan responded by alluding to the numerous murder trials where a defendant's life is at stake but the prosecution can't locate the body. Because we didn't have the vehicle, he urged the jury; we have to rely on science.
But science is not what Cooney wanted the jury to base its decision on. Cooney relied solely on eyewitness testimony at trial, enabling him to call into question the financial motives of the plaintiff's experts.
"It was interesting the jury did not ask for a single exhibit put into evidence by any one of the experts," he said afterward. Instead, the jury requested photos of the vehicle, a copy of the police report, a diagram of the scene and the few Ryder maintenance records available during its deliberations.
"I believe that expert witnesses that are too obviously hired guns, I think juries disregard them," he said.
