John McClurkin (Mobile, AL) (Personal Injury) defeated an appeal brought by the Plaintiff to the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals, attempting to have the trial jury’s verdict award of $1.00 overturned. At the conclusion of the week-long jury trial in Montgomery County, AL Circuit Court, Plaintiff’s counsel requested to the jury that it return a verdict in the range of $350,000 to $750,000. During the trial, however, Mr. McClurkin had successfully attacked the proximate causation of Plaintiff’s injuries including eliciting testimony on cross-examination from Plaintiff’s medical expert that the specific triggering cause of Plaintiff’s injuries was uncertain.
The primary argument raised by Plaintiff on appeal was that the award of $1.00 was insufficient to compensate for her alleged injuries. In John’s opposition brief, he cited numerous case law supporting the position that a jury has broad discretion in awarding compensatory damages and may award only nominal damages in such cases where the defendant establishes evidence at trial that controverts (i.e. calls into question) the proximate cause of the plaintiff’s injury. Mr. McClurkin also distinguished all of the cases cited by the Plaintiff in her appellate brief as being non-controlling to the question of the sufficiency of a jury award.
The presiding Judge William Thompson, Alabama Civil Appeals Court, wrote the lengthy Opinion which unequivocally affirmed the jury verdict’s award of $1.00. All other four Civil Appeals justices concurred with the Opinion. The published Opinion is cited as Caplan v. Benator, et al, 2018 Ala. Civ. App. LEXIS 44 (Ala. Civ. App. 2018).