Tuesday, May 16, 2006
On Friday, LaDonna Davis was sentenced to four months of prison shock time for her role in the death of Kansas City firefighter Gerald McGowan on Sept. 5, 2004.
As reported by Kansas City Star reporter Joe Lambe, the single mother of two was driving without a license or insurance when she failed to pull over that day for an oncoming fire truck. Instead, she turned into its path, causing the pumper to spin into her car, swerve left and crush another car that had pulled over to the side of the road. The truck finally came to rest after severing a telephone pole and smashing into a tree. McGowan died, and the driver of the crushed car, Terry Ray Toellner, suffered crippling injuries.
More than three years earlier, on May 27, 2001, Davis had been cited in another accident for careless driving - driving while intoxicated and leaving the scene of an accident. She was later convicted of driving while intoxicated and sentenced to 180 days in jail.
In that accident, Davis collided with a vehicle that was driven by Larry Richardson. Richardson's wife, Beth, was in the passenger seat, and the couple's son and daughter were in the back seat. The force of the collision knocked the Richardsons' car off the road, where it rolled over several times before coming to rest in a drainage culvert.
The older Richardsons suffered severe injuries. As a result, Larry Richardson took early retirement from his job as a stockbroker, and Beth Richardson, a volunteer nurse, quit her job.
Because Davis was uninsured, the Richardsons sought compensation for their injuries, medical costs and property damage from their uninsured-motorist carrier, American Family Mutual Insurance Co. The couple had paid premiums to the insurer for more than 25 years, according to Beth Richardson, and had never filed a major claim.
"We had lived up to our end of the bargain and had paid our premiums on time," she said. "We expected them, in turn, to live up to their end of the bargain."
But though their medical costs had run into the tens of thousands of dollars, American Family only offered Larry Richardson a paltry $6,000 and Beth Richardson $47,000. The company had sent their medical records to an orthopedic surgeon who concluded that Larry Richardson's back injuries and Beth Richardson's post-accident epileptic seizures were not related to the accident. Although the surgeon recommended that American Family seek another opinion from a neurologist, the insurer never did.
So the Richardsons sued, seeking compensation for their uninsured-motorist claim and for the insurer's allegedly vexatious refusal to settle the case in good faith.
The trial began on March 27 in Jackson County Circuit Court. On the third day of trial, American Family's attorney, Keith Cary of Franke Schultz & Mullen, offered to settle the case for $500,000, close to the limits of the policy. The Richardsons accepted, though that meant giving up their vexatious-refusal claim.
"$500,000 is what we had asked for from the very first day," Beth Richardson said. "By settling, we lost that other claim. But emotionally, it just needed to be settled. If they would have done that originally, there would have been no lawyers' costs involved."
The settlement did not quite mark the end of the case. The Richardsons had also sued Davis, who failed to show up for the trial. Following the settlement, the Richardsons put on additional evidence and the judge entered a default judgment against Davis in the amount of $7.5 million - $2.5 million for Larry Richardson and $5 million for Beth Richardson.
Although the Richardsons recognize they're not likely to recover much, if anything, from Davis, their attorney said they were determined to make a point.
"We wanted to send a message, first of all to (Davis), that she caused harm above and beyond the sentence she got in municipal court," said the attorney, John Parisi of Shamberg Johnson & Bergman. "And frankly, we were hoping to get some publicity that other people might think before they drink and drive, and that it might save somebody else from going through the same thing that Larry and Beth went through."
Kansas City Star, Tuesday, May 16, 2006
By DAN MARGOLIES, Columnist
