ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, August 9, 1996 TAG: 9608090053
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
A Roanoke jury has awarded $554,500 to a Virginia state trooper who was struck by a flatbed truck while investigating an accident on Interstate 81 3 1/2 years ago.
The jury decided the driver of a truck owned by Virginia-Carolina Belting Inc. of Roanoke was negligent, which resulted in the award to Trooper C.D. Jessee.
Jessee was near Exit 141 in Roanoke County on Feb. 22, 1993, when snow and ice had made driving hazardous. He was attending to a woman whose car had slid into the median.
A Virginia-Carolina truck driven by Larry Weeks began to slide on an icy bridge as it approached the accident scene, hitting a guardrail and careening out of control. Jessee looked up from checking the woman's pulse and saw the airborne truck headed toward him.
"The truck struck the lady's vehicle, went airborne, rolled over me and drove me into the ground," Jessee said in a newspaper interview several weeks after the accident.
Jessee spent more than a week in the hospital, where he was treated for multiple broken ribs, a punctured lung and torn muscles.
"He was incredibly lucky to come out of it alive," said Richard Cranwell, a Vinton lawyer and legislator who represented Jessee during a three-day trial that ended Wednesday night in Roanoke Circuit Court.
Jessee has returned to work, but a medical expert testified that his injuries may force him to retire 10 years sooner than normal.
Cranwell argued that Weeks was driving too fast; some witnesses estimated his speed at about 70 mph.
But Bobby Turk, a Radford lawyer who represented Virginia-Carolina, said the driver could not have done anything more to prevent the accident on icy roads.
LENGTH: Short : 42 linesby CNB