Prompt Investigation Results in
$1 Million Award to Alabama Couple

By Hal Lewis, Firm Partner

This certainly proved to be the case for our client, Billy Joe Sale. Mr. Sale, 68, and his wife Peggy, live outside of Dothan, Alabama. For many years, Mrs. Sale owned and operated a mobile home moving business in the South Alabama and North Florida area. On June 2, 1994, Mr. Sale suffered serious, permanent injuries from a traffic accident that forced him to retire, leaving Mrs. Sale responsible for generating enough income to run the household. Fortunately, on April 15, 1999, a jury in Washington County, Florida made sure that justice was done and awarded compensation of $1,122,000 to the Sale family. This award insured that Mr. and Mrs. Sale would be "made whole" from the terrible losses they incurred due to this accident. Firm partner, Halley B. Lewis, III, had the honor of representing the Sale family.

The accident occurred on County Road 280, a narrow two-lane blacktop road near Chipley, Florida. Mr. Sale, driving his 1980 GMC tractor-trailer, successfully passed a large truck that was coming from the opposite direction. After passing the truck, Mr. Sale's tractor-trailer crossed slightly over the center line and struck a second truck head-on, killing its driver instantly. Because he was knocked unconscious in the collision, Mr. Sale had no memory of the wreck and could offer no reason why his truck crossed the center line. Accordingly, the Florida Highway Patrolman investigating the scene charged Mr. Sale with having caused the accident.

Within days of the accident, Fonvielle Lewis Foote & Messer was hired to determine whether or not the accident was truly Mr. Sale's fault. He had driven this same truck in that area for years and never had any other problems. We suspected something must have happened to cause him to suddenly lose control of his vehicle just before the collision took place.

Robert L. Parke, a licensed Certified Legal Investigator, immediately initiated a thorough investigation. Mr. Parke's findings shed an entirely different light on the fact surrounding the accident.

As it turned out, the accident occurred in an area where a natural gas pipeline was being installed underground alongside a small stretch of County Road 280. More importantly, photographs taken on the day of the accident, and shortly thereafter, indicated that pipeline company tractors traveled across the road in the days prior to the wreck, leaving substantial amounts of dry red clay in the roadway. This led Mr. Parke to believe that a large dust cloud must have kicked up from the first large truck when it passed through the area, blinding or startling Mr. Sale so that he veered slightly across the center line

Mr. Parke reviewed the Florida Highway Patrol's witness statements and conducted more detailed interviews of witnesses including the driver who was following behind Mr. Sale at the time of the accident. After these interviews Mr. Parke was able to confirm that the dust cloud was indeed what had caused the accident to take place.

 Because the pipeline construction company had an undeniable duty to keep the road clean and free of dirt and debris, suit was filed against the company for breaching that duty and thereby causing the injuries to Mr. Sale. A claim was also brought on behalf of Mrs. Sale for her loss of support and consortium. The injuries to Mr. Sale were severe, including facial fractures, the loss of use of most of his left arm, and a closed head injury. Therefore, it was obvious from the outset that the difficult part about winning this case would be convincing a Chipley jury that the highway patrolman, who is also from Chipley, was incorrect in his opinion that the dust cloud "was minor and played no part whatsoever in causing the accident."

The three-day trial was presented before Judge Russell Cole. The pipeline construction company was represented by the senior partner from one of North Florida's largest insurance defense firms. In addition to putting on testimony from the highway patrolman, the defense also brought in three additional experts who all agreed that Mr. Sale's 1980 truck was in a "state of disrepair" so that there would be "an excessive amount of slack or play in the steering wheel." Their position was simply that Mr. Sale has momentarily committed "driver error" that caused his truck to drift to his left, and that he was unable to correct it in time due to the worn steering components. The defense even went so far as to bring the worn parts of the truck into trial so that the jury could see and touch them.

On cross-examination, however, Mr. Lewis was able to show that the first expert auto mechanic had been completely wrong in his initial beliefs, and, while forming his opinion about the accident, the highway patrolman relied upon these incorrect assumptions. In addition, another one of the defendant's experts admitted that Mr. Sale's truck, in spite of how bad they wanted it to look, really handled no differently than the expert's own car, a brand new Dodge Diplomat with power steering.

The defendant also put on testimony stating that the road had just been cleaned prior to the accident. Given the photographs showing dirt on the road, and given that this testimony was from employees of the pipeline company, Mr. Lewis was able to convince the jury that these were all simply self-serving statements and that this testimony should be discounted as unbelievable.

After a little more than an hour of deliberation, the jury returned a verdict of $1,000,000 for Mr. and Mrs. Sale's pain and suffering, with an additional $122,000 for Mr. Sale's past medical bills. And in spite of the defendant's best efforts, the jury apportioned 90 percent of the blame for the accident on the pipeline construction company, and only 10 percent on Mr. Sale, thus reducing the total verdict by 10 percent for a final judgement of $1,009,800. The pipeline company had ample insurance, and the judgement has been satisfied.