Autumn McClain  |  May 21, 2020

Category: Legal News

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semi-truck accident

In 2016, Eric Moutal and his soon-to-be wife were on vacation cycling on I-84 in Oregon when they were involved in a semi-truck accident. His injuries in the crash nearly cost Moutal his leg. Moutal was able to take the trucking company, DHL Supply Chain, legally known as Excel Inc., to court and received a $9.3 million settlement in Dec. 2019. However, DHL attempted to reduce that settlement amount significantly. On May 6 of this year, an Oregon federal judge rejected DHL’s efforts to place a cap on the noneconomic damages awarded in this case, Law360 reports.

The Oregon Supreme Court has found on occasion that non-economic damages should be capped. For instance, in 2016, they placed a $3 million total cap on damages in a case known as Horton. It was this sort of cap which DHL was calling for in this semi-truck accident case.

The Semi-Truck Accident

On Aug. 3, 2016, Moutal and Andrea Newman spent the day brewery-hopping before heading back to their campsite on their bicycles. They were traveling on an interstate located in the Columbia River Gorge when they were in a semi-truck accident. According to eye-witness accounts cited in the suit, the DHL truck veered into the bike lane and nearly into the guardrail. Despite the eyewitness accounts, DHL attempted to claim that Moutal and Newman were riding in the traffic lane at the time of the accident.

While Newman was thrown from her bike but didn’t suffer any major injuries, Moutal nearly lost his leg and now walks with a cane after five required surgeries.

semi-truck accidentAccording to the suit, the driver, Terry Tisdale, didn’t try to help Moutal or Newman after the crash, instead focusing on “tampering with witnesses and interfering with the police investigation” by interrupting witness interviews being taken by the police. After the semi-truck accident, Tisdale, another witness, and a nurse all pulled over. According to Moutal, without the assistance of that nurse, he would have lost his leg.

The semi-truck accident suit resulted in a settlement in the amount of $9.26 million. $1.26 million was calculated for economic damages, $4 million in punitive damages, and another $4 million in non-economic damages. Non-economic damages are awarded for losses that don’t have an exact dollar amount. These sorts of damages include but aren’t limited to pain and suffering, reduced quality of life, and loss of consortium or close relationships.

DHL’s Push to Cap Damages

In court, DHL attempted to call upon a cap on pain and suffering damages passed in Oregon in 1987. That decision capped damages at $500,000, far below the $4 million in non-economic damages awarded to Moutal in the court’s decision. According to Judge Marco Hernandez, this cap hasn’t been revisited since 1987 and doesn’t address inflation or “quid pro quo” benefits for plaintiffs. The judge rejected DHL’s call for this cap.

“On balance, decreasing plaintiff’s award from $4 million to $500,000 would result in a ‘bare reduction in plaintiff’s noneconomic damages without any identifiable statutory quid pro quo or constitutional principle that the cap takes into consideration,'” the judge said.

The judge agreed with Moutal’s argument against DHL. Moutal cited three Oregon Court of Appeals decisions from 2017 and 2018 that found that capping the non-economic damages for “grievously injured” plaintiffs would fall in violation of the remedy clause of the Oregon Constitution.

This case is Moutal et. al. v. Excel Inc, case number 3:17-cv-01444, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon.

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