real life

Two-year-old Makayla died in a head-on car crash. Then, a man received $50,000 for it.

It was a mild, sunny June morning when Amanda Jones and her husband were packing up the car for the drive to Columbia, Missouri.

Their eldest, Makayla, aged two with striking red hair and thick lisp, was waiting patiently to be strapped into her car seat.

“She just gave me the biggest hug,” Amanda recalled to NPR. “And she goes, Mommy, I just love you so much.”

That hug, on June 8 2004, was the last she ever got from her little girl.

In the midst of a sudden downpour Amanda’s husband, Michael Jones, lost control of their green Pontiac Grand Prix. The mother, her baby daughter and Makayla jolted from their nap as the car spun across the median of the four-lane highway and into the path of an oncoming truck.

When the violent collision came to its silent end, the driver of that truck, unharmed, leapt down and ran to wreckage. Michael was trapped under the dashboard, but alive. Amanda was injured, but alive. The baby, alive.

“And that’s when I seen Makayla’s arm hanging there,” truck driver Tommy Jarrett told NPR.

As explored in a stunning episode of NPR’s Invisibilia podcast, what happened in the months that followed, amidst the grief, was an extraordinary legal case that set an astonishing precedent.

Because one day, Amanda got a phone call so strange, she at first thought it was a joke, informing them they were being sued.

Jarrett sued the Jones family – the very family that had just lost their infant daughter – for his pain and suffering. And he won.

In the landmark case in Missouri’s Supreme Court, Jarrett’s lawyers successfully argued that Michael Jones had caused their client psychological trauma as a result of his negligent driving. Jones was going too fast, they claimed, and had not properly maintained his rear tyres.

Listen: Robin Bailey on how to talk about and structure grief. Post continues below…

According to NPR, the Ohio father’s decision to sue came nine months after the accident when he received a diagnosis of PTSD.

ADVERTISEMENT

Plagued by the image of that little arm hanging out of the car, his emotions took hold of his life; he rarely ate, barely slept, he considered himself a “baby killer”. After several months, he wouldn’t leave his house; after seven, he was still not back behind the wheel.

Jarrett reportedly lost $75,000 in income as a result of his disorder. And, as he told NPR, “There for a while, I thought I should die.”

But when the doctor insisted he was not in control of nor responsible for his emotions, he realised that his trauma had been triggered. Ultimately, after a three-year legal stoush, a court agreed and awarded him US $50,000.

The Jones’ were not left out of pocket by the ruling – their insurance company covered the lot – and Jarrett knew that going in. It was never his intention, he said, to harm them.

“It became a principle. That emotional distress is the same thing as physical damage. It can wreak havoc on somebody’s life, and it can destroy them,” he said. “Somebody else causes that, then they should be liable for that.”

More than a decade later, Amanda Thornsberry (she’s since remarried), no longer holds bitterness toward Jarrett.

She said when the lawsuit landed she and her then-husband, who reportedly suffered brain damage in the accident, felt as if the Jarrett was suggesting their emotional injuries were less important.

But after hearing his perspective and the suffering he endured, via the NPR program, the now 36-year-old nurse realised there was more to his story than she was previously prepared to admit.

“I actually teared up when I heard he considered himself to be a murderer,” Thornsberry told The News-Leader. “I wouldn’t want anyone to feel that way. I do not blame him for my daughter’s death at all.”

Featured stock image via Getty.

Season 3 of the podcast Invisibilia is out now.

Tags: