BATON ROUGE - The Louisiana Supreme Court reinstated a truck driver's award of over $10 million from a 2018 crash that left him partially disabled after the state Supreme Court previously reduced the damages by nearly 75%, according to The Advocate.

The award, which initially totaled almost $19 million adding consortium to the trucker's wife and children, was reduced to $5 million to the driver, Frank Cushenberry, and $600,000 to the family by the Louisiana Supreme Court on June 28. However, the court reinstated the initial $10.75 million awarded to Cushenberry and raised the $600,000 consortium to over $2 million.

Cushenberry was a St. Gabriel man who drove for Capitol City Produce, a Baton Rouge distributor. Cushenberry was critically injured after his box truck flipped over on I-10 on March 27, 2018.

He was driving eastbound on the interstate in LaPlace when a contractor working on a Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development project veered his pickup truck slightly into Cushenberry's lane, according to the lawsuit. Cushenberry struck the side of the pickup, overcorrected, lost control of his truck, and overturned into the woods on the side of the interstate.

He suffered injuries to his face, neck, shoulder and spine and had to undergo numerous corrective surgeries to repair the damage to his frame. He also suffered a traumatic brain injury and remains slightly disabled from the crash. His attorneys said within the first three years of his recovery, he had over 300 doctor's visits.

Cushenberry sued the contractor, Barber Brothers Contracting Company, and an East Baton Rouge jury in 2020 found the company solely at fault. The jury awarded Cushenberry $10.75 million in general damages, $2.7 million to cover medical expenses and lost wages, and awarded his wife and two children a total of $5.5 million.

However, when the company appealed to the state Supreme Court, justices decided by a 5-2 split that the trial jury's verdict was excessive. They noted that Cushenberry failed to see the contractor's pickup truck slowly backing up toward him on the right shoulder of the interstate as construction crews were removing cones and found Cushenberry to be 20% at fault for the crash.

The ruling cut the total damages, outside of medical expenses and lost wages, from $16.2 million to less than $5 million. The reduction was largely based on a ruling the Louisiana Supreme Court made in October 2023 saying appellate courses needed to review general damages awarded in previous cases with similar injuries so trial juries didn't abuse their discretion.

“Unlike the majority on rehearing, I believe that the jury’s general damage award was ‘the result of passion or prejudice,’” Justice John Weimer said, citing a precedent set by the court in 1993. “The jury’s award of $10,750,000 in general damages, in my opinion, is so high in proportion to Mr. Cushenberry’s injuries that it shocks the conscience.”

However, after re-hearing arguments on Dec. 19, the court restored Cushenberry's general damages and raised the total loss of consortium for his wife and two children in a 4-3 decision. Weimer, alongside Justice Jay McCallum and William Crain, disagreed with the increases. Weimer believes the amounts initially set in the first ruling "sufficiently [accounted] for the negative impact Mr. Cushenberry's extensive injuries have had and will have on his family," according to his dissent.

The court's majority said the previous ruling that reduced the award failed to give appropriate weight to the detrimental effects Cushenberry's injuries had on his personality, lifestyle, identity and self-image; prior to the crash, he was a 37-year-old with a physically demanding job who coached his son's Little League teams and loved to play sports.

The accident left him partially disabled, mentally debilitated, and with scars that he conceals with caps and hoodies in public.

The Advocate talked with Lewis Unglesby, the Baton Rouge attorney who represented Cushenberry. He said it’s the largest individual damages amount for a person that the state Supreme Court has upheld. Unglesby credited attorney Peyton Murphy with insisting the plaintiffs continue and press on through the appeal process.

Murphy, a Baton Rouge attorney, told The Advocate that Cushenberry was in an induced coma for a week after the crash and has grappled with a "cascade of injuries" for the past six and a half years.

"It gives a lot of credibility to our jury system," Murphy said.