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Naval Officer Awarded $300,000

On April 13, 2004, plaintiff, a US Naval Officer was traveling south on Ocean Highway in Somerset County, Md., on his way to Norfolk Naval Base when a tractor-trailer attempted to make a left turn into the southbound lanes in front of him.

At the place of the collision, Ocean Highway was a 55 mph road with two southbound and two northbound lanes, separated by a 50-foot-wide grassy median. According to an eyewitness, the tractor-trailer crossed over the northbound lanes without stopping at the stop sign, crossed over the median and turned directly into the southbound lanes without yielding to traffic.

Plaintiff was too close to the intersection when the tractor-trailer entered the roadway to avoid a collision with the rear wheels of the trailer, as the trailer straddled both southbound lanes in the midst of its turn. Plaintiff’s car hit and rebounded off the trailer’s tire and was knocked into a water-filled ditch on the side of the highway.

He suffered an annular tear at L4-L5 and chronic myofascial pain in his lumbar spine as a result of the collision. Within a year of the crash, plaintiff was medically discharged from the Navy because he could no longer meet the military’s physical readiness standards.

In addition to the typical claims for reimbursement of medical expenses, plaintiff sued for lost retirement benefits. Plaintiff’s theory was that, although he earned a higher salary as private defense contractor after his medical discharge, he would no longer have the opportunity to earn the valuable military retirement benefits he would have been eligible for had he been allowed to retire from the Navy.

Plaintiff designated economist William E. Cobb of Charleston, W.Va., to testify to the present value of plaintiff’s lost retirement benefits from his eligible military retirement age until the end of his estimated life expectancy.

Defendant’s insurance company defended on the basis of contributory negligence, arguing that plaintiff was either speeding and/or simply not paying attention. The case settled at a court-mandated settlement conference for $300,000.

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