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Nationwide Appeals Lucarell's $42.8M Verdict
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio -- Accusing Christine Lucarell of perjury and seeking to depose one of her lawyers, Caryn Groedel “as to her involvement in the fraud upon the jury,” Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. seeks to have the $42.8 million verdict in favor of Lucarell set aside and a new trial.
And challenging her expertise, Nationwide also asked that the testimony of the expert witness Groedel brought in on her client’s behalf be thrown out.
Nationwide filed the appeal Dec. 20.
Last Nov. 5, a Mahoning County Common Pleas Court jury of eight men awarded Lucarell of Boardman, a former insurance agent for Nationwide, $42.8 million for its actions while she was in its employ.
The jury awarded her $5.7 million in lost profits, $1 million for emotional distress, $100,000 for retaliation and $36 million in punitive damages.
During the 11-day trial, Groedel and her associates, Matthew Ries, argued that Nationwide set impossibly high sales goals for their client to reach, no matter how hard she tried, and that she was set up to fail. Lucarell resigned in July 2009 rather than be fired after borrowing $290,000 from Nationwide Bank to set up her business and signing two contracts with the insurance giant. With the second, she borrowed an additional $50,000 in an effort to reverse her fortunes.
Ries says the appeal is baseless, that the issues Nationwide raises were brought up during the trial and dismissed.
In its appeal, which runs some 500 pages of legal pleadings and supporting documents, Nationwide’s lead attorney, Quintin F. Lindsmith of Bricker & Eckler LLP, Columbus, says his firm has uncovered perjury about the nature of her employment since she resigned in July 2009 and about how her car came to be repossessed.
“Lucarell gave perjured testimony and committed a blatant fraud upon the jury and upon [Judge Thomas J. Pokorny, retired from the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas],” Lindsmith begins.
Lucarell testified that her experience with Nationwide has ruined her credit and left her unable to secure a similar position at any other insurance company. She also said she has been employed by Huntington Insurance 3½ years as a clerk, or as Lindsmith writes, “[H]er career as an insurance agent was destroyed because she could not get appointments from insurance carriers. … [S]he has been reduced to being essentially a lowly clerk, being paid $44,000 per year, plus family health insurance coverage, to make copies and staple papers.”
At present, Lindsmith states in the appeal, Huntington is paying Lucarell a salary and benefits of “over $55,000. During that time, she has applied for and secured three appointments with insurance companies.” Nationwide counsel seek to have her superiors at Huntington Insurance subpoenaed.
Two months before she left Nationwide, Lindsmith says, she had at least 20 active appointments from at least 12 insurance companies and all active “only two months before trial,” information she “concealed from the jury. … She is able to write multiple categories of insurance, including casualty (auto) property (homeowners}, life, accident & health, and variable annuity.”
She knowingly lied, Lindsmith pleads, when she told the jury, “My reputation has been destroyed professionally,” “They won’t even appoint me with an insurance appointment to sell insurance and do my job,” and “I type certificates of insurance for people who do what I once did.”
“Perhaps of the greatest interest concerns that appointment Lucarell received on Aug. 14, 2012, from Liberty Life Assurance Co. of Boston,” Lindsmith writes, and asks the judge to subpoena the company to produce all records related to that appointment, and suggests that Groedel should have known enough to ask her client about any appointments she received. Counsel for Nationwide allows that one insurance company would not appoint her as they iterate “she actually had 20.”
Her testimony about thinking her car had been stolen when it was repossessed was “another fabricated story” to win sympathy from the jury, Lindsmith writes. She knew it repossession was imminent and the Boardman Police Department had no record of her calling to report her car was stolen.
Last, Nationwide counsel pleads that the expert witness Groedel and Ries summoned to testify in their client’s behalf about Lucarell’s future earnings, “Shelley Aaserud, was no expert and not qualified, and did not even know what methodologies or principles to apply, relied on undisclosed authorities, and then lied to the jury.” Lindsmith asks that he testimony be thrown out.
EARLIER COVERAGE:
Lucarell Jury Award May Lead to Class Action Lawsuit
Copyright 2012 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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