Jury awards woman $19.5 million
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by butch mabin
A Lancaster County jury Friday returned what is believed to be the largest-ever monetary award in Nebraska to a Lincoln woman severely injured when the Chevrolet sport-utility vehicle she was a passenger in rolled over.
The District Court jury, after deliberating 5½ days, awarded $19.562 million to Penny Shipler, a 36-year-old mother left paralyzed from the neck down in the 1997 accident.
"I'm glad something positive happened," Shipler said in an interview outside her Air Park home after the verdict.
"I live with (the accident's consequences) every day. It's devastated my life."
Shipler suffered "complete spinal cord" injuries, according to court documents, when the vehicle rolled several times. Her attorneys, including a California lawyer who has won similar cases in that state as well as billion-dollar judgments against the tobacco industry, argued at trial she would have escaped the injury had General Motors' Chevrolet division built the vehicle with a sturdier roof.
"GM's attitude is, 'If you're in a rollover it may be just your tough luck,'" Los Angeles attorney Mike Piuze said in an interview after the verdict. "'There's nothing we can do to help you.'
"Well that's false," he said. "You can prevent injury."
Meanwhile Friday, the auto manufacturer defended the Blazer and said it would appeal the verdict.
"GM is very disappointed with this result," company spokeswoman Brenda Rios said in a prepared statement. "The 1996 Blazer is a good vehicle and has a good roof design and strength."
The jury award was made jointly against GM and Kenneth Long, who was driving the 1996 Chevrolet Blazer when the vehicle traveled off U.S. 34 near Northwest 27th Street around 11:30 p.m. on Sept. 11, 1997. Long, 65 at the time, sustained broken ribs and other injuries. Authorities later charged him with driving while intoxicated.
His attorney, Gail Perry of Lincoln, could not be reached to comment.
Shipler, a former day-care operator, photo technician and bartender, filed suit against the company and Long in Lancaster County District Court in October 2000.
The jury trial began Aug. 18 before Judge Steven D. Burns, lasted some five weeks and included testimony from several experts on both sides of the case.
One of those experts, Donald Friedman of Goleta, Calif., said the Blazer roofs were too weak but could have been made stronger easily and cheaply, Piuze said.
Friedman was a senior executive at GM in the 1960s. Later, he helped develop the NASA moon rover, Piuze said.
Lincoln attorney Dan McCord, who also represented Shipler at trial, said other evidence indicated the company could have strengthened the Blazers' roofs for a mere $20 for each vehicle.
He said in an interview Friday that studies have shown that SUVs are 2½ times more likely to roll over than passenger cars. And a recent report by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety ranked the Blazer among the least-safe SUVs on the road, he said.
McCord said an estimated 6 million Blazers, including pickup trucks, are in use.
Rios, the GM spokeswoman, said the company's own studies have shown that neck injuries in rollover accidents occur "before any deformation of the roof" and that greater roof strength offers no protection.
"Studies show that greater roof strength does not benefit occupants, such as Ms. Shipler, who are at the point of impact in rollover crashes," she said.
But Piuze after the verdict questioned how Long, who is 6-foot-1, could have suffered relatively minor injuries, while the injuries to Shipler, at 5-foot-6, were catastrophic, if roof strength played no role.
"The roof crushed on Shipler, not on Long," he said.
McCord said Judge Burns could reduce the award if he decides the jury was swayed by emotion or passion in rendering the verdict. But he said he did not expect that outcome.
"The facts of the case were pretty clear," he said.
The award won Friday by McCord and Piuze - who in 2001 and 2002 got two verdicts totaling more than $25 billion in lawsuits against tobacco companies in California - is thought to be the largest ever in Nebraska.
Lincoln attorney Vince Powers said the judgment exceeded a roughly $6 million award returned by a federal jury in Omaha a few years ago.
A state court in 1996 awarded the estate of murder victim Candice Harms $35 million, but that judgment was considered largely symbolic. The judgment was against her killers, Roger Bjorklund and Scott Barney, who received death and life sentences respectively for the 1992 murder.
McCord said the amount awarded Shipler was for compensatory damages and did not include punitive damages. The amount is close to the expected lifetime medical expenses Shipler will have because of the accident, he said.
She has already had an estimated $700,000 in medical expenses.
"My medical bills are just crazy," she said Friday. "What it takes to live a month, the public has no idea."
She would without hesitation trade the money for the ability to walk again.
"Yes, I would," she said. "I want to be able to play basketball with my son, instead of just watching him."
Reach Butch Mabin at 473-7234 or at bmabin@;journalstar.com.
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