Ingmar Goldson, along with Lorraine Lawrence-Whittaker and Edward “Bud” Brown represented their client and secured a large jury verdict for their client in a battery and false imprisonment case against Rite-Aid.
A six-member Maryland jury unanimously ruled in favor of the Plaintiff following a 4-day trial and found Rite Aid Corporation and one of its pharmacists liable for both battery and false imprisonment. The jury returned a verdict including $311,988.43 in actual damages and $20,000,000 in punitive damages.
In her Complaint, the Plaintiff alleged that she was attempting to fill a prescription at a Rite Aid on August 10, 2017 and ended up leaving the store with a serious and permanent thumb injury. The Plaintiff alleged that Muraguri permanently injured her thumb when he attacked her and tried to snatch her phone out of her hand. An expert witness in the case testified that her thumb did indeed suffer a permanent injury that will only get worse over time. According to the Complaint, Muraguri also instructed Rite Aid employees to lock her in the store after the attack and the Plaintiff managed to escape before the police arrived.
Maryland attorney Lorraine Lawrence-Whittaker, lead counsel for the Plaintiff, said, “Here is a case where a customer was treated horrendously by an employee of a national company.”
The significance of the charges against a company with more than 2,000 locations across the country is staggering, added co-counsel Ingmar Goldson, “I’m proud of the results. I hope the verdict does what the jury intended it to do and will deter similar corporate misconduct.”
Lawrence-Whittaker sees local and national meaning in the outcome. “This jury was invested in justice,” she said. “My experience with Prince George’s County juries is that they look past superficial differences to get to the core of a controversy. This jury certainly lived up to those standards.”
Ingmar Goldson joined Lorraine Lawrence-Whittaker and Edward “Bud” Brown to form the trial team that secured the verdict.
