AUGUST 29, 1991

THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT

WOMAN IS AWARDED $1.8 MILLION FOR LOSS OF LEG IN HORRIFIC CRASH

Outrage on Alcohol:
Large punitive damages for negligence in traffic accidents reflect a turn in public opinion toward tougher punishment of drunken drivers. The Virginia Supreme Court in a 1988 ruling called getting intoxicated "willful and wanton conduct" and "conscious disregard of the rights of others."

By Matthew Bowers, Staff Writer

CHESAPEAKE - After her right leg was torn off in the horrifying crash, Pamela A. Stafford would travel from her Suffolk home to shopping malls in Virginia Beach to practice walking, sometimes twice a day.

She couldn't afford physical therapy. And going to Virginia Beach lessened her chances of encountering someone she knew.

Mercifully, she doesn't remember the accident: A car going 80 mph down the wrong side of divided South Military Highway near Bowers Hill with its lights off slammed into the motorcycle she was riding with a friend the night of Oct. 1, 1988. The driver of the car, Robert L. Robertson, 65 of Portsmouth, had just left a bar two miles away.

Stafford was knocked over the top of a police car that was chasing Robetrson. Her leg was thrown about 100 yards. Her friend also lost a leg.

This week, Stafford received a measure of satisfaction. A Circuit Court civil jury Tuesday awarded the 27-year old woman $1.5 million to compensate her for her injuries.

It also awarded her $500,000 in punitive damages from Robetrson. The judge had to lower that to $350,000 because of a state law capping the maximum allowed.

"The jury cried out yesterday," said one of Stafford's attorneys, Michael F. Imprevento, still emotional about the case a day later.

"We think it reflects the jury's outrage at his conduct and their sympathy at the plaintiff's plight."

Her plight was agonizing. Police Officer David L. Holcombe and a woman passer-by held her hand and commanded her to look only at their faces. They didn't want her to see the stump of her leg and the bleeding.

There was the Nightingale helicopter ambulance flight to Sentara Norfolk General Hospital, where she spent a month. There were three operations, with a fourth scheduled next month, to combat pain from nerve damage and bone spurs. There were ill-fitting prostheses. There was the realization that her biking, softball and beech days might be over.

Punitive damages such as those awarded Tuesday in Stafford's case are still a rare but growing aspect of the law on negligence in traffic accidents, local lawyers said. There were almost unheard of five years ago, before public opinion turned toward tougher drunken-dirving laws and remedies.

But in 1988 the Virginia Supreme Court allowed a jury to consider such an award in a similar wrong-way collision involving alcohol. The court called getting intoxicated "willful and wanton conduct" amounting to a "conscious disregard of the rights of others" that was open to punishment.

Leonard D. Levine, a Virginia Beach personal-injury attorney for more than 30 years, said it now is "almost malpractice" not to ask for punitive damages in lawsuits alleging drunken driving.

"What it reflects is that this campaign, this grassroots campaign to exert pressure against this drunk-driving epidemic, is really working."

Said Chesapeake lawyer John W. Brown: "It sends the word out that when you get these kinds of circumstances, that the jury is not going to sympathize with the defendant so much, and they're going to give out large awards."

The punishment of the car's driver comes too late, Stafford's attorneys say.

Robertson pleaded guilty in February 1990 to reckless driving, was fined $1,000 and ordered to perform 40 hours of community service. Charges of drunken driving and assault and battery were dropped because blood-alcohol tests were conducted by a non-certified person.

Marvin E. Williams, the driver of the motorcycle, died in April at age 29 shortly after an operation.

Robertson declined to discuss the case last year and his attorney could not be reached Wednesday.

Robertson told his week's jury that he had only three Scotch-and-sodas at the bar, that when he left he thought someone was chasing him and that he possibly went into a diabetic coma because he remembered nothing about the collision.

Officer Holcombe vividly recalled the night. He saw Robertson's car with it's lights off going the wrong way down the road. He followed it for almost a mile as oncoming cars veered off the road. Williams also tried to swerve on his Kawasaki 550 but couldn't get out of the way.

At the accident scene, Robetrson fell repeatedly, smelled of alcohol, slurred his words and urinated on himself, Holcombe said. He also refuse all sobriety tests.

"This was more than reckless driving," said Imprevento, Stafford's attorney. "He was a criminal that night."

Imprevento said Stafford was not up to talking publicly about her ordeal but was glad for the chance to tell her story to a jury.

She told the jury one other thing. She said she wished she had died in the accident.

Awarded: $1,800,000