photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

The Douglas County Judicial and Law Enforcement Center is pictured on Sept. 4, 2024.

One rainy November evening nearly five years ago, a driver in a Honda Civic rear-ended a Nissan at the intersection of 23rd and Massachusetts streets.

The two drivers pulled over to assess the damage and to see if either man was injured. The accident happened at a relatively low rate of speed in what both drivers dubbed a “fender-bender.” They walked around the cars, took pictures of some dents and buckles and went their separate ways.

They did not call police but simply — as many drivers do — exchanged contact information and drove off. Neither man claimed to be injured.

Nine months later, though, the Civic driver, Dana Laberge, received a text from the Nissan driver, Sean Lefler.

“Hey Dana. This is sean Lefler. Do u remember me by chance?”

The name didn’t ring a bell, but it soon would — and for years to come.

“It’s been a while, I can’t remember where we met, remind me if you can?” Laberge replied.

“We had a fender bender in Lawrence last November. How are u?” Lefler asked.

Laberge replied “Okay yeah.” He did remember the 2021 accident, and he engaged in some brief pleasantries with Lefler.

Then came the real reason for the text exchange: “I was hoping you could maybe help me out from our fender bender,” Lefler wrote. Turns out, he needed money for knee surgery and had not been able to afford it.

Laberge, believing the accident to have been a noninjury affair from nearly a year prior and believing that he didn’t owe Lefler anything, didn’t respond. He would later insist that the accident wasn’t really his fault. True, he had hit Lefler from behind, but it was dark and raining heavily that night. He believed Lefler’s car was not stopped at a red light, as Lefler had claimed, but was turning left onto south Massachusetts Street and was partially straddling the straight-ahead lane on 23rd Street, he said. When he swerved to avoid a wreck, he clipped the right rear of Lefler’s car with the left front of his car, he said.

A year after the foreboding text request and nearly two years after the accident, Lefler sued Laberge in 2023. Another three years after that, Laberge found himself in a Douglas County courtroom defending a lawsuit by Lefler, whose attorney, Michael Lester, told a jury that Laberge should pay at least $315,000 — some of that for medical bills but also $225,000 for pain and suffering. Lester, who specializes in car accident litigation, got the latter number by figuring that Lefler was owed $150 per day for the 1,500 days he had been in pain because of Laberge’s conduct.

Though he had indicated he was fine at the time, Lefler told jurors this week that during the fender-bender his seat belt must have had slack in it and that his left leg was slammed into the dash so forcefully that it tore the meniscus in his knee, leaving him in frequent excruciating pain when he tried to walk and curtailing the activities he had previously enjoyed with his family. He said he noticed the injury the day after the accident and, though he had not mentioned it Laberge, had thereafter sought treatment by a chiropractor and medical doctors.

At trial, the jury watched video depositions from several medical professionals who said Lefler had told them the knee pain originated from the car accident, but on cross-examination they acknowledged that there was no way to know what had actually caused the meniscus tear or when precisely it had occurred. They said they were going off what Lefler had reported to them. Jurors also heard that Lefler, in his early 50s, had existing degenerative joint disease in the knee.

Lefler said the knee injury exacerbated injuries he had sustained from a similar rear-end collision in Johnson County about a week prior to his accident with Laberge. On top of that, he had to have a quadruple bypass and his injured knee kept him from doing the exercises he needed to do for his heart health, contributing to his suffering.

Laberge’s attorney, Adam Hall, told the jury that causation was key to the defense. Was Laberge’s alleged negligence in causing the accident the direct and proximate cause of Lefler’s claimed injuries? He argued it was not. At most, he said, the jury should contemplate awarding $15,000 if they found Laberge at fault for the fender-bender.

Court records indicate that Lefler had also sued the Johnson County driver from the earlier collision, but he dropped that course of action last year. Hall had suggested that Lefler’s knee injury possibly came from that accident, which was a higher-speed collision and in which Lefler said he was turned to his right in the driver’s seat, making it easier for his left knee to hit the dash.

After two days of testimony and about three hours of deliberation, the jury on Wednesday found that both men bore some fault in the accident — assigning 75% blame to Laberge and 25% blame to Lefler. They determined that the damages to Lefler were $26,700 for medical and $1,000 for noneconomic losses, commonly known as pain and suffering, and nothing for “future” losses, for a total of $27,700 — an amount that is less than 10% of what Lefler had requested and that will be reduced by 25% for his own share of the fault.

In a civil trial, the plaintiff’s burden of proof is a preponderance of the evidence, and only 10 of 12 jurors need to agree. Jurors are not required to elaborate on how they arrived at damage amounts.

Lefler’s case was set to go to trial last month but was evidently delayed because he was incarcerated at the time in the Johnson County Jail for 60 days after pleading guilty to dealing drugs and receiving three years of probation. The jury in the civil case was not allowed to hear of the drug convictions because they are not crimes deemed to involve dishonesty or false statements.