When juries award more than $10 million to plaintiffs, Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse Florida executive director Tom Gaitens said it potentially causes consumers to lose the ability to shop for insurance.
“It's just the largess of it,” he said. “The reason it matters is those large verdicts sometimes put businesses out of business and prevent insurers from staying in a marketplace to provide that service when you have fewer carriers.”
In Branen v La Mesa RV Venter et al, a jury in Florida's Seventh Judicial Circuit found in less than two hours that La Mesa RV and its employee Ronald Scirrotto were responsible for the death of Jacob Brannen, 29, who had been fatally hit while walking to work in Daytona Beach, according to media reports.
Branen, the deceased pedestrian, was not found to be negligent in the accident and his parents were awarded $10,031,536.
As previously reported by CVN, plaintiff attorneys suggested an award of $8 million but instead, each of Branen’s parents received $5 million, which exceeded the defendants’ settlement offer of $1.5 million before trial.
Branen's parents were represented by Searcy Denney’s Brian Denney and Matthew Schwencke while the defendants were represented by Brooks Rathett of Bromagen Rathett Klee & Smith.
“We all want punishment for doing bad things and if the case was adjudicated properly and the right verdict was rendered, we all want corrective measures to play out in the marketplace because it helps the market by getting bad actors out of the way but unfortunately, what it also does, when there’s a nuclear verdict, is create a burden in the system," Gaitens told the Florida Record.
A nuclear verdict is an exceptionally high jury award of at least $10 million and Florida has more per capita than any other state nationwide, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Institute for Legal Reform.
"When you have nuclear verdicts, there are unintended consequences that impact employees of these businesses, families, ancillary suppliers, and customers of those businesses that rely on them," Gaitens said in an interview. "There is a multiplier effect that happens in our marketplace. We're all interdependent, interrelated."
From 2010 through 2019, 213 nuclear verdicts were handed down by Florida juries for a total of $35 billion.
“Insurers will automatically start to increase rates on all of us to help pay for these nuclear claims,” Gaitens added. “These are the things that happen when a business gets punished in a gross way.”