Register today for “Admitted Liability, Contested Everything Else: How we got $5.3M for an Invisible Brain Injury” on Wednesday, September 23, 2026 from 3:00pm-4:30pm ET – Eastern Time
Geoff Hamby, Esq. with Oliver Law Firm in Rogers, AR had the honor to be lead counsel for a $5,300,000 jury verdict in Portland, OR. He said it was a dream come true to team up with Marc Johnston of the Johnston Law Firm to try this case. Their firms and trial teams worked together as one machine to push this case over the finish line.
The case was against the world’s largest for-profit school bus company, First Student. They left a school bus driver behind the wheel after receiving direct notice from the drug testing company that he was on two medications that legally disqualified him from driving a school bus. The next week, he caused this wreck. Geoff used Phillip Miller as their trial consultant and tested the case on almost 600 mock jurors through a series of focus groups, surveys, big data presentations, and mock trials. Unfortunately, their motions judge handed down some very difficult pretrial rulings against us dismissing our punitive damages claim and opening the door to defense admitting liability three days before trial.
When that happened, the judge excluded every piece of evidence outside of the facts of the wreck itself and our client’s injuries. The compensatory damages model was a tough one. Their client is a young lady who was an 18-year-old high school senior at the time of the wreck. She has a brain injury but no accompanying bodily injuries outside of a neck strain that resolved within a couple of weeks. She was on police body cam footage telling the police she was fine after the wreck, did not hit her head, did not lose consciousness, and declined an ambulance at the scene.
When her mom took her to the emergency room a few hours after the wreck, she told the emergency room doctor that the only thing that hurt was her shoulder where the seatbelt had been. The first signs of her brain injury did not appear until she became nauseous and went back to the emergency room the next morning. Defense also made hay on some pre-wreck medical records related to her pre-existing anxiety where she received treatment for many of the same symptoms she was experiencing from the brain injury.
Marc Johnston did an incredible job handling all the before and after witnesses at trial as well as the client and her parents. The stories he was able to guide out of a group of college kids were extremely powerful.
Defense hired a neuroradiologist, an internal medicine doctor, a neuropsychologist, a biomechanist, a neurologist, and a vocational expert to all come into trial and testify that our their did not have a brain injury. They admitted to only what they called “whiplash” injuries that resolved within two weeks of the wreck.
Defense used some very strategic wording in their liability and causation admissions that muddied the waters during directed verdict on what we were actually supposed to prove in our case-in-chief. This trial would have never even gotten to the jury if it weren’t for the additional members of the Oliver Law Firm team….Ryan Scott, Andrea McCurdy, and Marc’s wife Holly Johnston and their brilliant research and legal arguing skills.
The Trial lasted 8 days. The Judge was an incredible trial judge and made very thoughtful rulings. He also gave everyone wide leeway with the use of their demonstratives and visual aids. In the direct exam, the Judge even let Geoff pass a model brain around the jury where the Doctor was marking the different parts of their client’s brain that were injured.
The jury ended up deliberating for just over 10 hours spread between two different days before rendering what our team fully believes is a righteous verdict that will give a young lady the foundation she needs to carry on with the rest of her life.
Their client’s bravery to keep going all the way even after the bad pretrial rulings is the kind of thing that will inspire a trial lawyer to fight for years to come.
Be sure to share this webinar with your colleagues and register today.
