Indiana Attorney Secures $157 Million Verdict; Largest Single-Plaintiff Award in State History
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – Attorney Mike Phelps of Bloomington, Ind., based Ken Nunn Law Office on Tuesday secured a $157 million judgment for a Lafayette, Ind., woman whose husband died after falling from a defective deer-hunting tree stand.
It is the largest single-plaintiff judgment for a wrongful death ever awarded in Indiana and one of the largest ever in the United States, according to Jury Verdict Research, an industry publication that has tracked trends in jury verdicts and settlements since 1961.
Phelps filed suit on behalf of the plaintiff, Carol Simonton, in February 2006, for the wrongful death of her husband, Timothy Simonton. He was hanged and strangled to death by the tree stand's safety cord, which was designed to prevent injury during a fall.
Each of the potential defendant companies, L&L Enterprises of Hattiesburg, Miss., Ol' Man Tree Stands of Jay, Fla., and TSR Inc. failed to show for the trial, which was held at Tippecanoe Superior Court 1 in Lafayette, Ind.
Jurors reached the default judgment in one hour, awarding Mrs. Simonton $157 million in damages -- $155 million more than the original $6,000 for funeral expenses and $1.5 million for Timothy Simonton's lifetime lost wages that she had originally sued for.
Though the companies involved never responded to the lawsuit, in July 2007 -- more than a year after Simonton was killed -- TSR Inc. recalled 9,000 Ol' Man Tree Stand units and 500 sets of potentially defective replacement pins, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.
"We were very pleased that this jury listened to the evidence and came out with a fair verdict consistent with the facts and evidence presented," Nunn said. "Mr. Phelps did an outstanding job for Mrs. Simonton by helping to remove a poorly designed, defective product from the market, which will prevent tragedies like hers from happening again."