Winner of Nationwide Suit Takes Reduction in Stride
BOARDMAN, Ohio -- People who don’t know Christine Lucarell well are surprised at her serenity about Judge Thomas J. Pokorny’s reduction of the $42.8 million in damages a Mahoning County Common Pleas Court jury awarded her to $14.6 million plus attorney's fees and interest.
“Money has not been my paramount concern,” the former agent for Nationwide Insurance says. Her suit against her former employer, Lucarell elaborates, “was about much more than a dollar figure. [During the 11-day trial last October and November,] we’ve exposed Nationwide for what they’ve been doing [to agents like her] over several years -- and continue to do.”
In her suit, Lucarell accused Nationwide of setting her up to fail and then taking over the business she developed. During the trial, she said that what happened to her was happening routinely to 400 other “scratch” agents across the country, that the insurance giant set impossibly high goals for them to meet, no matter how hard they worked, and then took over their clients when they failed.
Lucarell said her suit “is about justice and the lives that have been adversely affected by the actions of Nationwide Insurance.” As news of the jury decision spread last November, the phones of Groedel & Associates rang much more often, Ries said, as 60 to 70 other Nationwide agents and former agents expressed interest in having the firm represent them. Ries raised the possibility of filing a class action suit against Nationwide.
The jury of eight men agreed with the plaintiff’s characterization of Nationwide’s agency executive program and how it hurt her emotionally and financially when they awarded her $42.8 million Nov. 5. Nationwide appealed and Pokorny, formerly of the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas bench, ruled Monday that tort reform capped the damages allowed in some categories. He also awarded her attorneys, Caryn Groedel and Mathew Ries, fees in the amount of $187,546.50 and expenses of $21,557.64.
Groedel and Ries took Lucarell’s case on contingency and will receive 40% of the sum Lucarell wins after Nationwide’s appeal goes to the Ohio 7th District Court of Appeals.
In the wake of Pokorny’s ruling, a spokeswoman for the insurance company issued this statement: “While Nationwide is pleased with the trial court’s reduction of the award by more than half the amount, it continues to disagree with the verdict and believes that errors were made at trial, which improperly affected the outcome of the case. Nationwide will be filing an appeal in the 7th District Court of Appeals and is confident that its claims will be ruled upon favorably.”
Lucarell expressed confidence in Pokorny’s fairness and thoroughness, saying she understands he followed and applied the law after reviewing her case and listening to oral arguments Feb. 19 and 20.
The judge denied attorneys for Nationwide a new trial, saying the only aspect he would consider for a new trial was on the issue of punitive damages, which he capped at $10.8 million, and then only if Lucarell contests that figure. She is not, she emphasized.
As to other matters Quintin F. Lindsmith and his team of attorneys from Bricker & Eckler raised, Pokorny rejected their arguments. Lindsmith repeatedly accused Lucarell and Shelley Aaserud, the expert witness who testified in her behalf, of perjury. The judge labeled Lindsmith’s characterization of Aaserud as “unfounded in the record. The expert was subjected to extensive discovery depositions and cross-examination at trial. … The defense was given ample opportunity to discredit her. The jury apparently found her credible.”
As to Lucarell’s testimony, “The Court finds no support in the record that plaintiff’s testimony was untruthful ….” Lucarell was particularly upset at accusations that she had converted funds that Nationwide advanced her to build her practice to her personal use, including fertility treatments.
“He [Lindsmith] said many things that weren’t true,” Lucarell said. “I could not wait to get up on the witness stand. I was looking forward to it.”
She had had difficulty conceiving, she told a reporter, but as a devout Roman Catholic, did nothing out of the ordinary to become pregnant. She and her husband “prayed with our priest” and made trips to the National Shrine in North Jackson. “I ended up being blessed by this baby,” she said in her dining room.
Her daughter, who turned 2 last Jan. 31, is “a gift from God,” Lucarell said. “I feel God answered my prayers with the baby.”
As she prepared for trial and during the trial, Lucarell said, she prayed again for strength and is grateful that, as Pokorny wrote, “The jury has apparently viewed the defendant’s acts with a high degree of reprehensibility.” While he appreciated the jury’s point of view, Pokorny found the economic damages of $5.7 million the panel awarded “exceeds the amount a jury could reasonably find to be compensatory. The court finds no evidence in the record supporting an award of $100,000 for ‘costs to defend’ the retaliation claim. These awards are therefore excessive.”
He reduced the economic award to $2.817 million.
As to how Nationwide treated Lucarell in the agency executive program, Pokorny wrote, “This conduct reaches the level of reprehensibility sufficient to warrant a punitive damage but does not represent a higher degree of reprehensibility nor grave harm occasioned to plaintiffs as seen in other cases.”
Lucarell says this was the point she was most concerned about, that the agency executive program continues unchanged. “I hope to see other people receiving justice for what they’ve been through,” she said. “I hope I opened the door for them and that I can cheer them on.”
Copyright 2013 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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