Jan 2, 2017
Nick Rowley became the only attorney to be highlighted twice on the CVN Top 10 Plantiff Verdicts of 2016.
#3: Carter v. Kern County School District – Attorney wears chicken suit and wins millions
Link to video of the trial:
http://cvn.com/proceedings/carter-v-kern-high-school-district-trial-2016-06-13
Why it made the list:
We’ve covered hundreds of trials here at CVN, and we thought we had seen everything.
That was until plaintiff’s attorney Nick Rowley, during his closing argument in a traumatic brain injury case, began putting on a full body chicken costume complete with gloves, rubber webbed feet and a beak.
However this was no mere courtroom stunt. This was a shrewd maneuver employed by one of the most aggressive and sometimes unconventional plaintiff attorneys in the country to make jurors understand the circumstances that led to his client’s injury and ultimately resulted in a liability verdict that set up a $10.5 million settlement, after an initial offer to resolve the case of only $50,000.
Rowley’s client Mitch Carter was mobbed during a high school football rally after dressing up as the mascot of a rival school, using the same costume that Rowley put on in front of the jury. Rowley argued the school district was responsible for creating the unsafe conditions that caused Carter’s head injury, and after the first phase of a bifurcated trial in June a California state court jury agreed.
A $10.5 million settlement, which Rowley told CVN was the school district’s insurance carrier’s full policy limit, was reached during testimony in the damages phase.
Rowley landed a number of other impressive verdicts that CVN filmed in 2016, but this likely “courtroom first” is the one that comes in at number 3 on our list.
#10 Lin v. LA County MTA – $8.35 million awarded to deceased immigrant’s family
Link to video of the trial:
http://cvn.com/proceedings/yaer-lin-et-al-v-la-county-mta-et-al-trial-2016-02-23
Why it made the list:
How much is a human life actually worth? It’s a profound and some would even say insensitive question, yet it is one attorneys in wrongful death trials have to frequently ask jurors to grapple with.
This verdict, reached by a Los Angeles County jury in March, closes out our list at Number 10 and addressed how much the family of Yaer Lin, an immigrant from Vietnam, deserved after he was killed in a rear-end collision with an MTA vehicle.
The MTA admitted liability, but attorneys for the Lin family rejected their pretrial settlement offer of $5 million, which was later raised to $7 million after a jury had been seated. Lin’s children were fully grown and had worked as cooks, leaving jurors to weigh that against the central role a patriarch plays in traditional Vietnamese families.
Nick Rowley, who previously made an appearance in the Number 3 spot on our list, relied on the family’s traditional cultural values to beat the MTA’s settlement offer by $1.35 million while walking the fine line involved in asking a jury to assign a hard dollar amount to a deceased person’s life.
Sep 1, 2016
A Decorah attorney involved in a record-breaking personal injury award in Howard County is hoping it wakes up insurance company executives in the state of Iowa.
The jury recently awarded nearly $1.6 million to Kelsey Bronner of Cresco, who was injured in a one-vehicle rollover accident April 30, 2008, while a passenger in a vehicle owned and insured by Reicks Farms Inc. of Cresco.
The lawsuit maintained the vehicle was negligently maintained and operated.
Bronner was represented by Nick Rowley, a partner at Trial Lawyers for Justice, a law firm headquartered in Decorah that also has offices in California. Other firm members, Rowley’s wife, Courtney Rowley, and Dominic Pechota, also were involved in trying the case. Rod Ritner, another attorney with Trial Lawyers, helped with jury selection.
Rowley said he believes the award is more than the attorney representing the Reicks’ insurance company, who offered a $220,0000 settlement when the trial date was set, expected.
“This was jaw dropping for the insurance company. I think it will have the impact of making insurance companies think a little harder about how they treat people in Iowa … insurance companies might start to value their losses a little better than they currently are,” he said.
Continue reading the full story on DecorahNewsPapers.com
Jun 29, 2016
The Kern High School District agreed Wednesday to pay $10.5 million to a former student injured in a violent dog pile that broke out during a 2010 Bakersfield High School pep rally, cutting short an ongoing civil trial that threatened to cost the district’s insurance company even more money.
The student, Mitch Carter, will use that money for healthcare-related costs, his trial attorney Nicholas Rowley said during a press conference outside Kern County Superior Court.
A jury had already found the district liable for Carter’s injuries, which his lawyers said included brain damage. It was in the process of determining monetary damages and was expected to award more than $45 million, Rowley said based on interviews his side conducted with jurors in court Wednesday.
“They would have given him more, but the school district would have appealed,” Rowley said, adding the appeals process could have lasted years. Carter needs that money now, he said.
Continue reading the full story on Bakersfield.com
Mar 14, 2016
Los Angeles – A California state court jury has slammed the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority with an $8.35 million verdict in a lawsuit filed by the family of a Vietnamese immigrant who died after being rear-ended by an MTA vehicle.
The jury voted 9-3 on March 8 following a three-day trial to award $8.28 million in non-economic damages and $75,451 for medical costs and funeral expenses to Xian Lin’s widow Ma Mei Liao and his adult children, Yaer Lin and Lian Lin, according to an attorney representing the family. The MTA had already stipulated to being responsible for the accident, so the trial was limited to determining non-economic damages.
The award is substantially less than the $80 to $140 million attorney Nicholas C. Rowley of Carpenter Zuckerman & Rowley LLP had asked the jury to award during his closing argument, but it also beat the MTA’s highest pretrial settlement offer of $5 million, Rowley told Courtroom View Network. He claimed the MTA increased their settlement offer to $7 million after the selection of a jury.
Continue reading the full story on CVN.com
Jun 19, 2015
A Riverside couple has won a $40 million award – one of Riverside County’s biggest civil verdicts ever – in a suit over their son’s 2009 stabbing at a TGI Fridays.
Orlando Jordan, a 33-year-old Riverside resident, was stabbed to death at the TGI Fridays at the Galleria at Tyler in January 2009 after a fight with two other men.
Rey and Carmen Jordan sued TGI Fridays and the Riverside restaurant’s operator, New Jersey-based Briad Group, arguing that employees knowingly served alcohol to intoxicated minors, including one of their son’s attackers, said attorney Nicholas Rowley, who represented Carmen Jordan in the trial.
Court records confirmed that a Riverside County Superior Court jury decided in favor of the Jordans on Thursday, June 18, though court documents with more details were unavailable Friday. A court verdict form provided by Rowley showed the jury awarded the Jordans $40 million for the loss of their son’s “love, companionship, comfort, care” and other qualities.
Continue reading the full story on PE.com
