Latest Personal Injury Verdict News from Oklahoma

$126 Million Verdict in Oklahoma Police Crash That Killed Teen on Her Way to Take the ACT

A federal jury has awarded $126 million to the family and estate of Emily Gaines, an 18-year-old Moore High School senior killed in December 2019 when an off-duty Moore police sergeant drove his personal vehicle at nearly twice the posted speed limit through an Oklahoma City intersection and struck her car. The verdict, returned in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma, is one of the largest civil judgments in the state's history involving law enforcement conduct.What Happened on December 14, 2019 At approximately 7:45 a.m., Sgt. Kyle Lloyd of the Moore Police Department left his home in his personal vehicle after receiving a call from an on-duty colleague, Officer Kyle Wagner. Wagner had locked his keys in a police car at a Chick-Fil-A while participating in the department's annual "Shop with a Cop" event. Wagner asked Lloyd to bring a spare key and asked him to hurry. Lloyd was off-duty. He was driving his personal car. He was not responding to an emergency. Traveling at 94 to 96 miles per hour in a posted 50-mph zone, Lloyd blew through the intersection of South Sooner Road and SE 134th Street in Oklahoma City. He struck the vehicle of Emily Gaines, a Moore High School senior who was on her way to take the ACT college admission exam that morning. The impact caused Emily's vehicle to roll. She died from her injuries. An Oklahoma City police crash investigator testified that Emily had committed no wrongdoing and would have cleared the intersection safely had Lloyd been traveling at the posted speed limit.Criminal Conviction and What Followed Lloyd was charged with first-degree manslaughter. In 2021, he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to nine years in prison with nine years suspended by Cleveland County Judge Jeff Virgin. Prosecutors had asked for an 18-year sentence to match Emily's age at the time of the crash. Assistant District Attorney SuAnne Carlson told the court: "I want that number to be significant to Mr. Lloyd for the rest of his life." The criminal case exposed additional troubling details. Court documents showed that Lloyd had requested and received his own discipline file from a Moore Police Department records clerk just two days after the crash. That file was shredded.The Federal Civil Case Bryan and Dana Gaines, Emily's parents, filed a federal lawsuit against the City of Moore and Kyle Lloyd in 2020. The case, Gaines v. City of Moore, Case No. 5:20-cv-00851, was litigated before Chief Judge Timothy D. DeGiusti. Attorneys Chris J. Hammons, Jonathan R. Ortwein, and Jason Michael Hicks represented the Gaines family. The lawsuit argued that the City of Moore bore responsibility for Lloyd's conduct because he had been acting within the scope of his employment when he left home to assist a fellow officer at an official department event. It also alleged that Lloyd's history of unsafe driving was known to the department and that the city's disciplinary policies effectively tolerated repeat traffic violations by its officers.The Verdict The jury returned a $126 million judgment structured in two parts. Jurors awarded $36 million to the Gaines family for their grief and the loss of Emily's companionship. They awarded an additional $90 million on the Fourteenth Amendment claim, finding that Lloyd had acted "with reckless and callous indifference to Emily Gaines' constitutional rights." The jury ruled that the City of Moore was liable for Lloyd's negligence because he had been acting within the scope of his employment at the time of the crash. Emily Gaines was 18 years old. She was, by all accounts, a student with her whole future ahead of her. She never made it to her ACT exam.What This Verdict Signals The scale of this award reflects a jury's willingness to hold a municipality accountable not just for what an officer does on duty but for the institutional decisions that enabled the conduct in the first place. The plaintiffs successfully argued that Moore's approach to officer discipline created conditions where dangerous driving went unchecked. Civil rights verdicts of this magnitude against municipalities remain relatively rare, which makes this outcome particularly significant for plaintiff attorneys tracking law enforcement liability cases in Oklahoma and across the country. Cases involving off-duty officer conduct and municipal liability are among the most complex in civil litigation. They require proving not just that an officer acted wrongfully but that the city's policies, training, or supervision were a contributing factor. That the jury returned a $90 million constitutional damages award signals that it found the city's failures to be serious and deliberate.Attorneys and Firms Documenting Verdicts Like This Plaintiff attorneys who achieve results like the one in Gaines v. City of Moore deserve to have their work recognized publicly. Major Verdict is a national platform where plaintiff personal injury and civil rights attorneys can showcase their trial verdicts and notable settlements to prospective clients and the broader legal community. If you represented a plaintiff in a significant verdict and want that result documented, create a free profile on Major Verdict and start building your public trial record today.