Jury Awards $10.2M To Dirt Bike Rider For Knee Injury

A superior court jury in central California has awarded a man $10.2 million in damages that resulted from dirt bike collision in 2007 with another vehicle.

Attorneys for Stockton resident Daniel Nixon, 50, say he received what they believe to be one of the largest personal-injury verdicts in Stanislaus County history on Thursday, the Modesto Bee reported.

The case was Nixon, D Vs. Snoke, S. The August 2007 incident occurred when Nixon was riding his dirt bike along an unpaved road and crashed into an oncoming pickup. A lawsuit was filed against the truck’s driver, Susan Snoke, 52, of El Dorado County. Nixon’s attorney argued that Snoke was in the wrong lane, causing them to collide.

Also named in the case was Yamaha of Modesto.

The crash separated Dixon’s knee, damaged the muscle and nerves in his leg, and ruptured the artery that supplies blood to his lower leg. After hospitalization and rehabilitation he returned to his job climbing and servicing wind turbine towers. But one of Nixon’s treating physicians expects that within 20 years he will need an above-the-knee amputation because of damage done in the crash, according to the Modesto Bee report.

The suit against Yamaha of Modesto, as well as one against one of his treating surgeons was dismissed.