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.
Top Comments
Totally reasonable to sue. He didn't contribute to the accident at all.
I remember when I was at school a mother and her daughter were in a car accident and the daughter had to sue her mother to get the $ needed for her rehabilitation. That's the whole point of insurance.