Was a South Carolina Amazon driver watching a porn video on his cellphone when he pulled in front of a motorcycle last year, causing severe injuries to the rider?
A jury in a civil case was told that just before the Sept. 24, 2021, collision, the driver “used his cellphone to access a pornographic web site while he was in the course and scope of his job driving the Amazon van,” according to evidence in the case.
Jurors ended up awarding the motorcycle rider $44.6 million.
That includes $30 million in punitive damages, with most of the rest going for past and future medical expenses for the injured motorcyclist, Shannon Shaw, 45, of Summerville. At the time of the crash, he made approximately $88,000 a year working as a maintenance network technician for Comcast.
The porn video evidence, accessed from the Amazon driver’s cell phone, was admitted over the objections of Amazon lawyers. They are now trying to get trial Judge Maite Murphy to reduce the size of the award because, they say, testimony indicating the driver was watching porn on his cellphone played to the jury’s passions.
“Evidence of Mr. Blekicki’s accessing pornographic websites was meant to inflame the jury and cause it to infer that Mr. Blekicki was viewing the content while driving or even at the time of the accident,” Amazon’s lawyers wrote in a post-trial motion.
And, “there was no evidence that Mr. Blekicki was distracted by his phone or for any other reason at the time of the accident,” Amazon’s lawyers added.
But one of Shaw’s attorneys, David Yarborough, told The State Media Co., “This was a case largely about distracted driving. Everything was supported by the evidence. The driver admitted on the stand he was engaged in distracted driving on the day of the incident.”
Shaw sustained a traumatic brain injury, numerous broken bones, a double-crush injury to his hands that required surgery, a neck injury, a broken back in three places, a change in personality from happy and confident to depressed and withdrawn and tempermental, Yarborough said. He also suffered a massive rotator cuff tear in his left shoulder.
“There was a faceprint on the side of the van where his head impacted the van,” Yarborough said.
Among the more than a dozen plaintiff’s witnesses who testified were Shaw’s back surgeon, shoulder surgeon and neurologist.
During the four-day trial overseen by Judge Murphy, the jury heard uncontested evidence about how Shaw was driving on his Harley Davidson motorcycle on the Orangeburg Road at 45 mph in Summerville on Sept. 24, 2021.
At 4:34 p.m. that afternoon in clear daylight conditions, as Shaw was headed east, Blekicki was stopped at a stop sign when he “suddenly and without warning pulled out in front of” Shaw, failing to yield the right of way, according to evidence in the case.
“They (defense lawyers) tried to suggest his injuries weren’t as bad as his doctors had said they are,” Yarborough said. Also representing Shaw were William Applegate, Alexandra Heaton and Nick Clekis.
Defense lawyers did not respond to requests for comment.
They were Mitch Brown, Matt Bogan and Morgan Spires of the Nelson Mullins law firm in Columbia. They also included Jeremy Stephenson, Rebecca Raynor and Stephanie Mascella, all from the WilsonElser law firm in Charlotte, and Francis Ervin, a Charleston attorney.
According to the verdict form, Amazon was hit with $30 million in punitive damages.
Shaw’s $14.6 million award for actual damages includes $453,728 for past medical expenses, $9,339,251 for future medical expenses, $210,761 for lost wages, $1,108,407 for future loss of earning capacity and $3.2 million for non-economic damages. including pain and suffering.
The trial shone a light on Amazon’s practice of contracting with independent companies that then hire drivers who use the trademark Amazon blue vans to deliver packages, according to court records.
Amazon denied liability for the crash, saying that Blekicki was an employee of the independent contractor and, therefore, not an agent of Amazon, according to court records.
Shaw’s lawyers countered that despite the purported independent status, Amazon controlled numerous aspects of its drivers’ working shifts, designing the daily routes, assigning the packages to be delivered and tracking the driver’s performance in areas such as speeding, hard braking and distracted driving events.
Amazon controls the recruitment, hiring and training of all the drivers who work for the companies in Amazon’s delivery networks. It also determines the make, model and style of the delivery vans, sets uniform standards and determines numerous other facets governing drivers, vans and deliveries, according to evidence in the case.
Amazon also knew that Blekicki had a record of distracted driving, Shaw’s lawyers argued to the jury.
Amazon did not respond to a request for comment.
The issue of a driver distracted by porn video is likely to loom large in appeals, especially with such a large verdict.
“Without the introduction of such inflammatory and prejudicial evidence related to material on Blekicki’s personal phone, a reasonable jury would not have awarded damages in the amounts rendered against Amazon, including the punitive damages award,” a motion filed earlier this week by Amazon’s lawyers with Judge Murphy said.
The motion asked the trial judge to amend the verdict “to the extent that the Court determines the verdict was due to an impassioned jury as a result of the erroneously admitted pornography evidence.”
Shaw’s lawsuit described Amazon as “reportedly the world’s largest internet-based seller, with revenues of more than $470 billion in 2021 and more than 1.6 million employees. The online retail giant has 41% of the e-commerce market in the nation and created its own massive delivery and logistics network called Amazon Logistics Inc. Some 275,000 people are drivers for Amazon, the lawsuit said.
Defendants in the case were Amazon.com Inc., Amazon.com LLC, Amazon.com Services Inc., Amazon Logistics Inc., MJV Logistics LLC, and Blekicki.
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