A nursing student, one of two survivors in a multivehicle accident that left five more young women dead, was awarded $15 million by a jury on Friday. A confidential high-low agreement reached while the jury was out means there will be no appeal and moots a separate trial on punitive damages against the tractor-trailer driver who caused the wreck.

Bob Cheeley of Alpharetta’s Cheeley Law Group, who led the team representing plaintiff Megan Richards, said that, prior to the trial, the most the defendants would offer for Richards’ injuries was $1 million.In addition to her physical injuries, Richards’ attorney said she now suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and acute anxiety disorder.“She witnessed three friends burning alive in a car,” said Cheeley. Richards is now “paranoid about driving on the freeway, particularly when a tractor-trailer is on her bumper. She spends as much time looking in the rearview mirror as looking forward.”Lead defense counsel David Dial said his clients “sincerely hope the resolution of this case will facilitate Ms. Richards’ continued healing.” Even so, he said, several of the trial court’s rulings were “contrary to Georgia law” and made it difficult to mount an effective defense.Dial also noted that the plaintiff’s lowest pretrial offer to settle was $22 million. Richards, now 22, was among seven Georgia Southern University nursing students in two cars stopped at the end of a backup of vehicles on I-16 on April 22, 2015. The Ford Escape in which Richards was a passenger carried three others students and was stopped behind a tanker truck; behind it was a Toyota Corolla carrying three more students. At about 6 a.m., a tractor-trailer driven by John Wayne Johnson traveling at what court filings said was 68 miles per hour slammed into the Toyota, shearing off the roof and setting it aflame, then hit the Ford, knocking it into the tanker and rolling it over. Abbie DeLoach, Emily Clark, Morgan Bass, Catherine Pittman and Caitlyn Baggett were killed; Richards and Brittney McDaniel survived. Richards suffered fractures to her spine and shoulder and was later diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury from the shearing, or tearing, of the axons of her brain from the “extremely high change in velocity” she experienced in the multiple collisions, according to the pretrial order. The tractor-trailer was owned by U.S. Xpress and subsidiary Total Transportation. The companies settled claims filed by the dead women’s families and McDaniel last year. The sums were confidential, but an attorney for one of the deceased nurses told the Daily Report at the time that her family had settled for $14 million.During a four-day trial before Superior Court Judge Charles Rose Jr., Cheeley and firm colleagues Patrick Dawson and Keith Pittman represented Richards along with Billy Jones and Carl Varnadoe of Hinesville’s Jones Osteen & Jones.The trucking companies and driver were represented by a team led by Dial of Weinberg, Wheeler, Hudgins, Gunn & Dial and including firm colleagues Richard Hill II and Jackson Dial; Jeffrey Arnold and Andrew Johnson of Hinesville’s Arnold & Stafford; Michael Hostetter and Patrick Arndt of Nall & Miller; and Mark Barber and Suneel Gupta of Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz.Cheeley said a key issue at trial was the brain-shearing, which was discovered when Richards began complaining about being very emotional, having memory problems and post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms. An MRI uncovered the condition, which was classified as a “mild traumatic brain injury.”

A straight-A student with a photographic memory before the wreck, Richards went on to graduate from Georgia Southern with honors, Cheeley said, but had to “really double down on studying” and still has difficulty retaining information. Cheeley said he recommended a minimum of $25 million during closing statements. On Friday, he said the jury took just over three hours to award $15 million and to declare that punitive damages were appropriate against Johnson.Dial claims the verdict was “unduly influenced by three significant rulings made by the trial court.”“First,” he said via email, “the court allowed this matter to proceed on a cause of action not recognized by Georgia law” by permitting Richards to recover for emotional distress as a result of the wreck. “The majority of the evidence concerning the harm suffered by [Richards] focused on the problems she has experienced and is experiencing due to being in the wreck as opposed to those arising from her physical injuries.”“Second,” he said, “the court allowed a punitive damages claim to proceed against Mr. Johnson, the driver. We do not believe this was supported by the facts or the law. As a result, the jury heard about a prior accident Mr. Johnson had in 2011.”“Finally, literally hours before the start of the trial,” said Dial, Richards’ expert witnesses changed their diagnosis to one of “complicated mild traumatic brain injury.”“This had not been part of their opinions prior to the eve of trial,” Dial said. “The court refused to grant the defense a continuance and hamstrung the ability to defend the case.”