The Six Million Dollar Man

Friday, November 18th: I drive downtown midmorning to poke my head into the courthouse just to see if there’s any activity going on. Before I can get there I spy plaintiff’s team members Patty Blum, Matt Eisenbrandt, and Almudena Bernabeu walking up Main Street so I pull the car over and shout Patty’s name. Almudena says, “Oh hey, still no verdict, I’m completely frazzled, we’re getting coffee.” So I go home for a little while and later I go to work. It sounds like there is no chance for a verdict today and believe it or not the deliberations will creep into Thanksgiving week. Such was not the case…

Late Friday afternoon the jury awards 6 million dollars to 4 plaintiffs. $500,000.00 in compensatory (actual) damages and $1,000,000.00 in punitive (intended to punish) damages were awarded to each of the following plaintiffs: Erlinda Franco, Francisco Calderon, Cecilia Santos, and Daniel Alvarado. Judge McCalla declared Ana Patricia Chavez’s case a mistrial when the jury was unable to reach a verdict. Chavez may re-file the case in the future. Fargarson told the Commercial Appeal (the local newspaper) that Colonel Carranza had spent nearly everything he had defending himself in this case. Fargarson vowed to appeal the judgment against his client. We’ll see…