John P. Sheehy: Fast Becoming Minnesota’s Multi-Million-Dollar Man

Date: February 16, 2004
By Michelle Lore - Minnesota Lawyer

The year 2003 marked the fifth and sixth times Minneapolis attorney John Sheehy has procured jury verdicts in excess of $3 million during his legal career.

In March, Sheehy tried a case involving the death of a 22-year-old motorcyclist with no dependents, obtaining a $3 million loss of companionship award for the man’s family. Six months later a jury awarded $11.3 million to a Sheehy client who suffered a moderate brain injury when his car was struck by a semitrailer truck.

Sheehy says his trial strategy is simple — getting to know the people he represents and presenting to the jury the significance of the injury or loss to those involved.

“I think that the main thing is recognizing that these are really devastating tragedies to these families,” Sheehy says. “It’s my strategy to understand how it affected them and who the person was in the family. You get into these cases involving death [or serious injury] and what you find is that ... it affects a lot of people.”

A special kid

Discussing the case involving the death of the young motorcyclist, Sheehy says that the decedent, Brian Smith, was riding eastbound on Highway 144 when an unsecured wooden pallet flew from a container transported westbound by Christian Builders, Inc. Smith was struck in the head and died instantly. He was survived by his parents, two older brothers and several nieces and nephews.

One of the most significant issues in the subsequent wrongful death action was the fact that Smith had no dependents so there was no economic loss claim. (In Minnesota, economic damages, such as lost income, are only available in a wrongful death case when there are surviving dependents.)

However, after 2 1/2 days of deliberation, a Hennepin County jury determined in March 2003 that the loss of companionship to the man’s family was worth $3 million.

“That was a pretty large verdict for an emancipated child with no economic damages,” Sheehy notes, adding that the award was warranted. “This kid was a very special kid in his family.”

The defense offered to settle the matter for $500,000, but the plaintiffs declined, instead demanding the company’s $2 million policy limits. Sheehy says that he believed a jury would easily award a million dollars for someone’s life, so the offer didn’t provide much incentive to settle.

Confident on the liability aspect of the case, Sheehy’s primary strategy during the 3 1/2-day trial was to present to the jury exactly what the young man meant to his family and what kind of person he was. His death affected a lot of people, Sheehy observes.

Many of the deceased’s family members testified as to his character, his propensity for hard work (he held three jobs at the time he was killed) and his capacity to care for others.

“He did a lot of thoughtful things — just the kind of stuff that you hope your children will do when they grow up,” Sheehy says. “He had several relatives who were in nursing homes that he would visit frequently. ... He’d shovel the sidewalks for the old people in the neighborhood; he worked really hard.”

Career loss

Just six months after the $3 million verdict, Sheehy procured an $11.3 million award for a 43-year-old man who suffered a brain injury when his minivan was hit by a semitrailer truck.

The crash happened at an intersection where a storm had knocked out the traffic lights during rush hour. Jeffrey Foust, who is married and has three children, suffered numerous broken bones in addition to the brain injury.

“He had what they labeled as a moderate brain injury, which doesn’t make you a vegetable,” Sheehy says. “You’re functioning, it’s just that it affects things like new learning, speed of processing and other things.”

Sheehy explains that his client suffers from short-term memory loss, difficulty concentrating and an inability to organize. The injury involved the frontal lobe, which is what keeps people from saying everything that pops into their minds and acting inappropriately, Sheehy says, adding that Foust also continues to suffer from serious depression.

“That’s one of the things about brain injuries,” Sheehy says “People who have brain injuries remember who they were and they can tell what their limitations are.”

Sheehy says his client’s career as a director of international marketing for ADC Telecommunications was ruined because of the accident. “He’s a great guy, it’s just that his career is wrecked. ... It’s a big tragedy to him and his family.”

Sheehy’s strategy from the damages standpoint was to show how successful his client was in his career and prove that he’ll never be able to work in a similar capacity again.

“The thing about mild and moderate brain injuries is that they are very subtle and sometimes lawyers are not successful in presenting these cases because the person appears to be OK,” Sheehy observes. “The part of [Foust’s] brain that holds knowledge was not injured ... so even though he has skills and intelligence, he doesn’t have the [ability to] focus and remember and things of that nature, so it makes him effectively not employable.”

According to Sheehy, the defense tried to show that because Foust was still intelligent, he was not brain injured — a theory the plaintiffs strongly disputed.

“Our doctors were very clear that intelligence, IQ testing, is not a very good measure of a brain injury in a moderate to mild [case], especially when you are talking about a frontal lobe injury,” Sheehy says. “But the other aspects of it are debilitating and make employment extremely unlikely.”

The defense also claimed that it should have been apparent that the truck wasn’t going to stop and Foust shouldn’t have pulled out, Sheehy explains, adding that the jury did find his client 20 percent at fault for the accident. The defendants have appealed the verdict.

Inalienable rights

Sheehy believes that verdicts like these are significant to plaintiffs not only because they compensate them for their injuries but also because they are symbolic of the devastation they have experienced.

“Our country was founded on a proposition that was dedicated to certain inalienable rights — life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” he says. “These cases go right to the heart of that proposition. You can’t do anything worse to somebody than to take their life or destroy their opportunities or cause serious problems with them every day.”

Sheehy was also an Attorney of the Year in 2002, when he procured a $35.3 million verdict for a 32-year-old factory worker who suffered a massive brain injury when his skull was crushed by a box-stacking machine.

Article originally appeared in Minnesota Lawyer http://www.minnlawyer.com/story.asp?storyid=3252