1. Plaintiff wins $9M verdict against N&O

A former state firearms examiner was awarded a $9 million libel verdict against The News & Observer and one of its reporters.

The 2010 article at the heart of the matter was critical of the work of State Bureau of Investigation Agent Beth Desmond. Among other things, the article said that independent firearms experts suspected Desmond of falsifying evidence “to help prosecutors win a conviction in a murder case,” a 2005 case in which a 10-year-old boy was gunned down in a street fight between two groups of Pitt County teens.

Desmond alleged that N&O reporter Mandy Locke misquoted and exaggerated statements from four independent firearms examiners.

The N&O’s executive editor, John Drescher, wrote that the series of stories at the heart of the case “raised important questions about” the SBI and changed how the SBI and state crime lab work.

“We appreciate the hard work the jury did during this trial but we disagree with the the jury’s conclusion as well as the extraordinary damages it awarded,” he added. “The N&O has not, and will not, shy away from reporting on tough issues important to North Carolina.”

Desmond’s attorney, James Johnson of DeMent Askew in Raleigh, believed that the jury wanted to punish the newspaper for bending the facts to fit its agenda.He said the jury’s message to the paper was not to misrepresent what sources say “just write the story as it is” rather than what it wants it to be.

Johnson said Desmond developed post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of Locke’s reporting, had trouble testifying in court and eventually had to be transferred out of the crime lab and relocated to another section of the SBI.

“After all this came out she was just a wreck,” said Johnson.

The N&O had offered $30,000 to settle the case, according to Johnson.

VERDICT REPORT – LIBEL

Amount: $1,511,500 in compensatory damages and $7.5 million in punitive damages

Injuries alleged: Emotional distress, mental suffering, post-traumatic stress disorder

Case name: Beth Desmond v. News and Observer Publishing Co. and Mandy Locke

Court: Wake County Superior Court

Judge: A. Graham Shirley

Case number: 12 CVS 16656

Date of verdict: Oct. 19

Highest settlement offer: $30,000

Attorneys for plaintiff: James Johnson and Chyna Smith of DeMent Askew in Raleigh

Attorneys for defendants: John Bussian of the Bussian Law Firm in Raleigh and Mark Prak, Julia Ambrose and Tim Nelson of Brooks Pierce in Raleigh

2. Decedent’s estate awarded $6.13M after fatal heart attack

The estate of a man who suffered a massive heart attack just hours after being sent home from the hospital after complaining of chest pains and tingling in his arms was awarded more than $6 million.

Jon Moore of Brown Moore & Associates in Charlotte was one of the lawyers who represented the estate of 53-year-old Anthony Savino in its medical negligence case against the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Hospital Authority doing business as Carolinas Healthcare System.

According to Moore, there was a failure to communicate between hospital personnel that led to Savino’s death.

“We were able to demonstrate … that had he gone to chest pain unit .. the signs and symptoms of the oncoming heart attack would’ve been visible … and he would’ve had a good chance of surviving,” Moore said.

Moore said that Savino had been experiencing numbness and tingling in his arms for a couple of days when he began having chest pains. His neighbor called 911 and upon their arrival, emergency medical workers initiated their chest pain protocol of aspirin, nitroglycerin, and an IV before taking Savino to the defendant hospital.

According to the plaintiff, paramedics informed an on-duty nurse that they responded to a call involving chest pains and that their protocol had relieved the pains in route to the hospital.

The nurse reportedly denied getting that information from the paramedics and despite signing a registration form on which the information was listed, said she didn’t know what condition Savino arrived with or what treatment he received.

The information was not passed along to the physician, Moore said, and after several tests, Savino was discharged. He died from a heart attack five hours later.

Moore said that the physician, who was dismissed as a defendant, said in a deposition that had she known about the information in the report, she would likely have admitted Savino to the hospital’s accredited chest pain unit.

In addition to finding corporate and administrative negligence, the jury found that the hospital acted with reckless disregard, exempting the award from the statutory cap of $515,000 on noneconomic damages.

VERDICT REPORT – MEDICAL NEGLIGENCE

Amount: $6.13 million

Injuries alleged: Wrongful death

Case name: Estate of Anthony Savino v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Hospital Authority dba Carolinas Healthcare System

Court: Cabarrus County Superior Court

Case number: 16 CVS 000303

Judge: Julia Lynn Gullett

Date of verdict: Nov. 15

Most helpful experts: Dr. Dan Mayer, Albany Medical Center in New York and Dr. Andrew

Selwyn, Brigham and Women’s Medical Center in Boston

Attorneys for plaintiff: R. Kent Brown, Jon Moore and Paige Pahlke of Brown Moore & Associates in Charlotte

Attorneys for defendant: Kimberly Sullivan and Russ A. Brinson of Horack Talley in

Charlotte

3. CooperRiis to pay $4M in wrongful termination case

In what is being called the largest jury verdict for wrongful termination in state history, an Asheville-area therapist was awarded $3.6 million after she was allegedly fired for reporting patient neglect at a mental health community. The case later settled for $4 million to resolve additional claims of punitive damages.

Laura Haas accused CooperRiis of retaliating against her after she alerted management about employees illegally administering medicine to patients, overdoses resulting from patients’ self-administration of medicine, and prescription refill problems.

According to Haas’ 2012 complaint, she began alerting CooperRiis management of the alleged neglect in 2008 and 2009 but was told to simply “play the game.” But the warnings given to Haas allegedly gave way to retaliation after one of the patients she was monitoring committed suicide.

As part of a state investigation into the suicide, Haas was interviewed by officials from the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services and allegedly reported a number of actions taken by CooperRiis employees that she said amounted to neglect. One of her attorneys, Harvey Kennedy of Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy & Kennedy in Winston-Salem, said that shortly thereafter, Haas was approached by a CooperRiis executive who allegedly told her she had “let the whole team down.”

Court records say that following that meeting, CooperRiis management began retaliating against Haas by manipulating her work schedule and by moving her around the company’s three locations in the Asheville area. She was also allegedly subjected to harassment.

Haas was ultimately fired in 2009 and claims that she developed post-traumatic stress disorder that left her unable to work in the mental health field. At the time of the verdict, she was working as a waitress.

SETTLEMENT REPORT – WRONGFUL TERMINATION

Amount: $4 million, including a jury verdict of $3.6 million

Injuries alleged: Wrongful termination resulting in post-traumatic stress disorder

Case name: Haas v. CooperRiis

Case No.: 12 CV 000394

Judge: Thomas Davis of the Eighth Division of the Superior Court

Date of settlement: March 9

Attorneys for plaintiff: Harold Kennedy and Harvey Kennedy of Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy & Kennedy in Winston-Salem

Attorney for defendant: by Joy McIver of Adams Hendon Carson Crow & Saenger in Asheville

4. Jury awards $2M to businessman who sued ex for slander

A Mecklenburg County jury awarded Sam Khashman, president and CEO of Charlotte-based business software company Technology Partners Inc., $2 million after finding that his ex-wife, Candace Khashman, slandered him.

Of the award, $1.2 million was punitive, plus $600,000 for presumed damages and $200,000 in actual damages.

Mr. Khashman’s attorney, Dan Boyce of Raleigh, said that Mr. Khashman had spent nearly a decade “trying to move forward” and was forced to sue his ex to stop her repeated attempts to destroy his reputation.

Mr. Khashman alleged that after he and Mrs. Khashman emerged from a bitter divorce in 2008, ending eight years of marriage, she falsely accused him of statutory rape, conspiracy and solicitation to commit murder and arson, bribery, fraud, identity theft, forgery and other felony offenses. She also filed a series of fraud lawsuits against Mr. Khashman that have been dismissed.

Boyce also told jurors that an attorney who’d dated Mrs. Khashman had a similarly unpleasant experience with her after they broke up. She allegedly emailed defamatory statements about the attorney to his law partners, leading to his eventual discharge from the firm.

Mr. Khashman argued that Mrs. Khashman’s actions were slanderous per se and had harmed his personal and professional reputation.

In determining presumed damages, Boyce said jurors can “estimate — even without evidence of actual harm to a plaintiff — how much they think the defamatory statements may have harmed the plaintiff.”

And they have equal leeway when calculating punitive damages.

“These standards leave a lot of room for jurors to award large damages verdicts to a sympathetic plaintiff in this type of case,” Buchan said.

VERDICT REPORT —DEFAMATION/SLANDER PER SE

Amount: $2 million

Case name: Sam Khashman and Technology Partners Inc. v. Candace Khashman, et al.

Court: Mecklenburg County Superior Court

Case No.: 14 CVS 21105

Judge: Jesse Caldwell

Date of verdict: June 9

Attorney for plaintiff: Dan Boyce of Nexsen Pruet in Raleigh

Attorney for defendants: Kyle Frost of Arnold & Smith in Charlotte

5. Bank hit for $1.15M for lack of fair dealing

In October, a Mecklenburg County judge awarded $1.15 million to the former landlords of a commercial property in Charlotte. The court found that Capital Bank had violated its obligation of good faith and fair dealing by misleading the landlords into believing the note on the property would be extended once the tenants renewed their lease, and by failing to help resolve a minor defect in the chain of title before it foreclosed on the property. The court awarded the plaintiffs treble damages under the state’s unfair and deceptive practices law.

The plaintiffs, Prosperity-Heath, posted the property, which consisted of two units in a larger business park, as collateral for a loan extended by Capital. The loan was a balloon payment note, meaning that most of the principal was still due when the loan matured three years later. Prosperity alleged that Capital promised to extend the note if Prosperity’s tenant extended their lease, and to assist in clearing the title, before the note on the property came due for second renewal in 2012.

Prosperity’s tenant, Novant Health, renewed its lease for five additional years. Capital contended, however, that the fair market value of the property had sunk below the value of the loan and that this constituted a default. Capital foreclosed on the property in October 2012 and acquired the property in a 2013 foreclosure sale. Shortly thereafter, Capital for the first time submitted a title claim to Investors Title regarding the apparent title defect, which the insurer then agreed to insure against.

Capital sued Prosperity and its guarantor for a deficiency judgment, at which point Prosperity learned that Capital had never submitted a title claim prior to foreclosing. The trial judge in that case denied Capital’s claim, finding that the bank had violated its obligation of good faith and fair dealing. Prosperity then filed a new suit against Capital for bad faith and unfair and deceptive trade practices.

In the judgment, Judge W. Todd Pomeroy found that Prosperity was entitled to $384,350 in compensatory damages, the difference between the fair market value of the property at the time of the wrongful foreclosure and the amount Prosperity had outstanding on the loan. Pomeroy found that the bank’s acts constituted unfair and deceptive trade practices and trebled the damages. Prosperity will also be able to recoup its attorneys’ fees.

VERDICT REPORT – UNFAIR AND DECEPTIVE TRADE

Amount: $1,153,051

Injuries alleged: Breach of implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, unfair and deceptive trade practices

Case name: Prosperity-Heath, LLC, Virginia S. Heath and William Heath v. Capital Bank, N.A.

Court: Mecklenburg County Superior Court

Case number: 14 CVS 12773

Judge: W. Todd Pomeroy

Date of judgment: Oct. 31

Most helpful experts: Damon Bidencope, commercial real estate appraiser in Charlotte

Attorneys for plaintiff: Derek Adler and Fred DeVore of DeVore, Acton & Stafford in Charlotte

Attorneys for defendant: John Honeycutt of Asheville