Jury Awards Record $150B in Boy's Burning Case; Family Says Prosecution, Not Money, Is What's Needed
Updated: The parents of a young man who was severely burned at age 8 and died of a related skin cancer 13 years later won $370 million in compensatory damages and $150 billion in punitive damages from a Texas jury this week.
The amount is a record in a personal injury case, substantially exceeding the $145 billion, since reversed, that was awarded in a Florida tobacco class action, according to the Nation Now page of the Los Angeles Times.
But the massive damages award against Don Wilburn Collins, who was found civilly liable for sexually assaulting Robbie Middleton in 1998 and setting him on fire a couple of weeks later, wasn’t about the money, the plaintiffs in the Fayette County case said.
Middleton’s parents stand little chance of collecting any money from Collins, but hope the tort case could lead to criminal charges against their son’s attacker, according to the Corpus Christi Caller-Times and KHOU.
Although Collins hasn’t been criminally prosecuted in the Middleton attack, he is currently serving a sentence related to the aggravated sexual assault of another 8-year-old. He faces a possible September parole date in that case.
Sico White Hoelscher & Braugh represented the plaintiffs.
Updated at 3:40 p.m. to include information from Los Angeles Times.
