CASPER, Wyo. — After eight days of testimony, a Natrona County jury has awarded $6.1 million to a Casper man for damages following a traffic collision on CY Avenue and Southwest Wyoming Boulevard on Sept. 9, 2019.
The jury delivered its verdict in the civil case Wednesday evening.
Nicholas Skalicky, a former volunteer firefighter and coal plant tech, began suffering debilitating back pain and nerve flare-ups after the accident, his attorney, Jason Ochs, said at trial.
The man who hit Skalicky was George Dickerson, who was working for Magic City Stoves at the time. He had just picked up the owners’ tractor-trailer combo from Tire-Rama, where it had been brought in for brake service.
Dickerson testified that he had “no brakes” and had tried everything to stop for a quarter-mile distance leading up to the impact.
Tire-Rama’s defense counsel, Scott Klosterman, said that that testimony was implausible given that Dickerson said the brakes worked fine when he dropped the truck off, and that the service records showed the shop’s employees hadn’t worked on the braking system at all except to replace one shoe while fixing a seal leak, Klosterman said.
Klosterman blamed Dickerson for causing the wreck as an inattentive driver.
The jury found that Dickerson was 85% responsible the wreck and that Tire-Rama was 15% responsible. That means Tire-Rama is responsible for about $960,000 of the civil judgement. Skalicky’s wife was also awarded $300,000 for damages related to her husband’s symptoms.
Ochs said the shop’s employees failed to meet the “standard of care” to ensure that all brakes were functioning before releasing the vehicle on the day of the crash. Until recently, Dickerson and Magic City Stoves also named defendants, with filings saying Dickerson also had a duty to make sure the brakes were operable before leaving the shop.
“I still believe Tire-Rama triggered the avalanche and Dickerson got caught up in it,” Ochs told Oil City News on Friday. Though the jury ascribed only 15% liability to Tire-Rama, Ochs said that’s enough to put the shop on notice that the work performed that day fell well short of the generally recognized standard.
Though the jury’s breakdown of liability — and the final amount awarded to the plaintiff — diverged somewhat from the assertions of his case, Ochs said, “I give the jury full credit in terms of their efforts to be thoughtful, deliberate and attentive throughout this case.”
More about the first two two days of the trial can be found here.
