A Pulaski County jury has awarded more than $630,000 to the family of a 98-year-old widow said to have frozen to death in a west Little Rock retirement complex during the 2012 Christmas ice storm that ravaged the capital city and central Arkansas.
Jurors, concluding a six-day wrongful-death trial on Monday, found that negligence by the owners and operators of Andover Place retirement facility on Andover Court off Cantrell Road caused Dovie Jewell Davis' death from hypothermia.
Davis, who had to rely on a wheelchair to get around, was "trapped" for 36 hours in the facility after a power failure Christmas evening knocked out its heating system and elevators, said lawyer Greg Campbell, who represented the Davis family with attorney John Hout.
The lawyers said the storm dropped 10 inches of snow on Little Rock and disrupted electrical services for more than 180,000 area residents. The emergency room doctor who treated Davis after rescuers got her to the hospital on Dec. 27, 2012, testified that she had the coldest body temperature of any living person he had seen, Campbell told jurors.
"This did not have to happen. It's negligence pure and simple," he said in closing statements. "She froze to death. In this day and age, she froze to death."
Andover Court operators knew losing heat and elevators made conditions at the facility particularly risky for their tenants like Davis who had mobility issues, Campbell said. But they waited 19 hours after the heat went out to fill out the forms necessary to bring in the needed electrical equipment from Texas to restore normal operations, he said.
"They failed miserably during this 19 hours," Campbell told jurors. "You can't exercise ordinary care when you do nothing."
Davis died on New Year's Day 2013, five days after she'd been discovered cold and unconscious by her personal aide in her two-bedroom apartment at the complex off Cantrell Road.
Campbell said the defendants failed to perform the "frequent safety checks" facility operators were contracted to provide because the worker whose job was keeping an eye on tenants was asleep next to a warm gas furnace.
Andover promised tenants to "promote" their health and wellness, despite the fact the facility provides nothing that could be considered medical service, including helping fallen tenants who cannot get back on their feet or assisting them getting out of their wheelchairs, Campbell said.
Defendants were the retirement facility on Andover Court, formally known as Little Rock Retirement Residence Limited Partnership, and the companies that had operated it, Harvest Management Sub LLC and Harvest Management Sub TRS Corp.
The verdict was reached by a 10-member majority agreement of the 12 jurors after about four hours of deliberations. In civil proceedings, only a nine-member majority is sufficient for a verdict.
Jurors awarded Davis' family $630,479, also by a 10-member majority, and ordered each of the companies to pay a third of the judgment.
Campbell did not ask for a specific amount, although he suggested $10 million for what the woman had to endure at the end of her life. He also asked that jurors consider an order that the family be reimbursed for the $2,722 per month rent she had paid over the last year of her life.
"What's it worth to freeze to death, for your bodily organs to shut down?" he said.
The sum of $400,000 is compensation for Davis' death, pain and suffering, with another $200,000 to be split by her two children for their pain and suffering at the loss of their mother. The rest of the money, $30,479, is for the medical and funeral expenses.
The lawsuit, filed in July 2013, had also sought punitive damages from the defendants, but Pulaski County Circuit Judge Mary McGowan ruled that the plaintiffs had not shown sufficient evidence to seek those damages.
The defendants included Lynn and Althea Murdock, the husband and wife who were the on-duty managers the day the power went out. The majority panel cleared Lynn Murdock of any wrongdoing. Jurors found Althea Murdock had been negligent but not to a level that she had any responsibility for Davis' death.
Jurors unanimously rejected accusations that Andover Place and the management companies had used deceptive marketing to dupe Davis into believing Andover operators would keep her safe and secure.
Andover attorney Kirkman Dougherty told jurors that Davis' death was tragic, but that she had a "fiercely independent" spirit and made her own decisions, including twice choosing to live at Andover. Her first stay was only a few months until illness forced her to seek a facility that offered the medical care that Andover does not provide, he said.
He disputed the defendants were negligent, arguing that they could not have foreseen how devastating the storm would be. The facility had brief power failures before, but the last significant power failure had been 12 years earlier, Dougherty told jurors. Experts described the 2012 storm as "massive" and a "snowmaggedon," he said.
The Andover defendants acted prudently, Dougherty said, telling jurors to judge their responses by considering what they knew at the time.
"The standard is, did they act reasonably under the circumstances, not with the benefit of hindsight."
Davis had also declined suggestions that she stay with other tenants in a meeting room that had gas heat, Dougherty told jurors. The night before she was found stricken by the cold, she had also chosen to wear a nightgown instead of the heavier clothing her aide recommended, he said.
The onset of hypothermia can be hard for untrained observers to see because the cold can affect a person in subtle and different ways, depending on age, medication, and sensitivity to temperature, he said, citing medical testimony. An employee who checked on her about nine hours before she was found unconscious had touched her leg but found no signs she might be in distress, Dougherty said.
In 2012, Davis had been a tenant for more than three years and loved living there because of the community of peers and social opportunities the complex provided, said Dougherty, who was assisted by attorney Jeff Hatfield.
"When it was time for Ms. Davis to decide what's next, she chose Andover, knowing fully well what amenities Andover provided," he said in his closing statement. "The evidence was Ms. Davis loved living there. It was her home and she enjoyed it very much."
She came to act as an ambassador for the facility, showing off her apartment to prospective tenants, and inviting her friends to join her, Dougherty told jurors.
Davis and her children, Danna Davis of Little Rock and Ron Davis of Quitman, knew Andover did not provide any medical services as evidenced by their decision to hire an aide to help Dovie Davis with her medications and perform light chores, he said.
Metro on 09/21/2017