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MyEagleNews.com
Wednesday, May 20, 2020
A9
Record jury award stands in wake of fatal Eastern Oregon road rage crash
By Phil Wright
EO Media Group
Road-raging commercial driv-
ers caused the head-on crash in 2016
near Burns that left Matthew Allison
with serious injuries and took the life
of his wife, Sara Allison. Now the
record jury verdict he won in May
2019 in federal court in Pendleton
remains standing.
Portland-based attorney Tom
D’Amore and law partner Steve
Brady represented Matthew Allison,
27, of Boise and the estate of his wife
in the lawsuit.
“We are proud of the result of this
case,” D’Amore said. “It’s a relief
that the case is officially over and
the defendant cannot appeal again.
There is a feeling that justice has
been done.”
‘Pay the verdict’
The jury awarded a total of $26.5
million to the plaintiffs. But Hori-
zon Transport in July filed a 42-page
motion asking the federal court for
a new trial or to reduce the amount
of the jury verdict. The court denied
both.
“It’s a pretty high standard,
though, to take away a jury verdict or
issue a new trial,” D’Amore said.
The defendants then appealed
to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
Ninth Circuit. D’Amore said the
company wanted to settle, just as it
had wanted to settle at trial.
“We pretty much said no, pay the
verdict,” D’Amore said.
The Ninth Circuit has a media-
tion program, which contacted the
parties and urged them to show up
and participate. They did, D’Amore
said, and the sides resolve the case in
Contributed photo
Matthew and Sara Allison beam in a photo taken in front of Crater Lake, their
last bit of Oregon sightseeing, before leaving to return home to Boise in June
2017.
April — with the $26.5 million ver-
dict intact.
The estate of Sara Allison won
economic damages of of almost $2.4
million and non-economic damages
of $10 million. Matthew Allison won
$600,000 in economic damages and
$7 million in non-economic dam-
ages. The defendants also had to pay
$6.5 million in punitive damages,
with 70% going to the state of Ore-
gon’s Crime Victims Fund to pay for
care for other victims of crime.
But no amount of money,
D’Amore stressed, will make up
for the loss of Sara Allison, who in
2014 worked full time while caring
for her husband when he developed
leukemia.
“Sara was his everything, his
caretaker, the bread winner for the
family, his whole reason for being,”
D’Amore said.
Celebration ends in tragedy
Matthew Allison during the
course of two years overcame the
blood disorder and subsequent health
problems. After completing physi-
cal therapy in April 2016, the couple
took a trip through Oregon.
“It was our way to celebrate hav-
ing got through that tough time
together,” Matthew said at the trial.
“It was a much-needed break.”
They enjoyed a concert in Port-
land, hiked in Mount Hood National
Forest and on June 5 they visited at
Crater Lake before the push home to
Boise. They stopped in Burns to fuel
up their Ford Focus and have Mat-
thew take over as driver. But he tes-
tified his wife saw how exhausted he
was, so she decided to let her hus-
band sleep.
They were on narrow Highway
20 east of Burns when the crash
occurred.
James Decou, Peter Barnes and
Corey Frew were driving semitrail-
ers for Utah-based Smoot Broth-
ers Transportation from Salt Lake
City, Utah, to Eugene, according to
D’Amore, depositions, court doc-
uments and police reports. Near
Mountain Home, Idaho, they had a
run-in with a motorhome driver, Jon-
athan Hogaboom of Taylor, Michi-
gan. He was driving a 45-foot long,
$750,000 luxury motorhome for
Horizon Transport from Indiana
for delivery in Oregon. According
to court records, he cut off Barnes
on the freeway and slammed on the
brakes to shoot for an exit.
Hogaboom and the three truckers
met up again on Highway 20 in East-
ern Oregon. They raced to pass each
other, cut each other off and pulled
in front of each other only to slam on
the brakes. Hogaboom on more than
one occasion blasted the big RV’s
air horn when he was next to one of
the semis and flipped the bird to one
driver.
Decou tried to pass Hogaboom,
who would not let the trucker back
into the westbound lane. Near mile-
post 156, Decou and Sara Allison
saw each other in the same lane. She
jerked the car to the right and off the
road and into the dirt. Decou hit the
brakes, slid and turned to the left.
The semi plowed into the car,
mashing the driver’s side. Sara Alli-
son died in the crash.
Matthew Allison suffered broken
ribs, a lacerated spleen, head trauma
and more. The verdict gives him the
ability to take care of himself med-
ically and even afford a caretaker if
he needs one, D’Amore said, but he
remains “just mentally decimated”
from the death of his wife.
Outcome sends message
The four commercial drivers in
this case, D’Amore said, lost con-
trol of their senses and tempers and
ignored other people on the road.
He and his partner aimed to do more
than win a verdict — D’amore said
they wanted to wake up the trucking
industry to the dangers of road rage.
Judging from industry magazines
reporting the verdict, he said, they hit
that mark.
“They don’t talk about plaintiff
verdicts,” he said. “We tried to make
the point that road rage was getting
worse, and it’s because of these folks
who have commercial licenses and
are trained in this and are on the road
all the time.”
With the legal action at an end,
D’Amore said Matthew Allison is on
a trek to Utah and wants to be alone
for two months.
“He’s been living with this disas-
ter for the past two years or so, and
so he is just kind of seeing what he
wants to do for the rest of his life,”
D’Amore said. “He wants to be left
alone, and we’re going to honor that.”
Hammond Ranches drops appeal, for now, to compete for grazing allotments
By Mateusz Perkowski
EO Media Group
EO Media Group file photo
Cattle graze in Eastern Oregon.
sentences. They had been
convicted of burning public
lands.
Though
the
Interior
Department restored the
grazing permit to Hammond
Ranches in 2019, a federal
judge overturned that deci-
it has done so “without preju-
dice,” which means the com-
pany reserves the right to rein-
state its legal objection, said
Schroeder, its attorney.
The federal judge’s deci-
sion that rescinded the grazing
permit did not vacate the graz-
ing preference for Hammond
Ranches, so the company still
holds that preference, he said.
“We’re certainly maintaining
that position.”
Grazing preferences are
important because they attach
to a “base property” in the
vicinity of the federal allot-
ments, placing the ranch first
in line for a grazing permit.
In effect, such a grazing pref-
erence greatly enhances the
value of a property.
However, a federal judge
determined this year that BLM
can cancel such a preference
without a notice and hearing
at the same time it decides
against renewing a grazing
permit.
Cattle groups argued that
treating grazing preferences
this way would undermine the
stability of the Western graz-
ing system and reduce the val-
ues of private ranch lands.
In its application for a
permit, Hammond Ranches
warned that it would demand
“immediate compensation”
for its range improvements,
water rights and intermingled
private lands if BLM awards
access to the allotments to
another ranch.
Grant
SWCD Weed
Weed Control
Control Dept.
Dept.
Grant SWCD
Working
for You
You in in 2020
2019
Working for
Wendy Cates
Principal Broker/GRI
541-620-4239
Debbie Brown
Broker
541-419-8156
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Oregon’s
Hammond
Ranches has dropped a legal
challenge against the federal
government, at least for now,
to compete for access to graz-
ing allotments it lost last year.
Instead of waiting until the
legal dispute is resolved, the
U.S. Bureau of Land Man-
agement can now choose
whether the Hammond family
or one of three neighboring
ranches can use the 26,000-
acre BLM allotments.
Hammond Ranches hopes
that U.S. Interior Secre-
tary David Bernhardt and
the BLM will issue a permit
to graze the four allotments
as soon as possible, though
it’s possible they may not be
available for livestock this
year, said Alan Schroeder, the
company’s attorney.
“It’s tough to speculate
what the secretary will do or
the BLM will do,” he said.
“One would certainly hope
the BLM would move for-
ward forthwith.”
The agency will conduct
an analysis of qualified candi-
dates but doesn’t have a spe-
cific timeframe for awarding
the grazing permit, said Tara
Thissell, pubic affairs spe-
cialist for the BLM Burns
District.
Steven Hammond and his
father, Dwight Hammond,
were released from prison in
2018 after President Donald
Trump granted pardons for
their arson convictions, for
which they were serving five-
year mandatory minimum
sion after agreeing with envi-
ronmentalists that it wasn’t
properly substantiated.
Because
Hammond
Ranches had again lost access
to the public allotments, the
company’s
administrative
appeal — which sought to
recover its grazing permit —
was effectively re-activated.
However, earlier this year,
the BLM announced that it
would allow the Hammonds
and other ranchers to compete
for the allotments.
Unless the Hammonds
withdrew their legal chal-
lenge, however, the agency
would suspend that process
until the dispute was resolved.
While Hammond Ranches
has now withdrawn its appeal,
Thanks to the Grant County Court and Northeast Oregon Forests Resource
Advisory Committee, Grant Weed Control is able to offer a 50% Cost
Share Program for Noxious Weed Control on Private Grazing Lands,
through a Title II funded Grant Project. This program will provide a
maximum $5,000 of noxious weed control services with a $2,500 maximum
landowner contribution to qualifying participants. To be eligible for
participation, the treatment property must not be actively irrigated and must
be primarily managed for livestock grazing, minimum of 20 acres in size,
located within Grant County, and must contain weed species listed on the
Grant County Noxious Weed List. Applications for this limited weed control
assistance opportunity will be funded on a first come first serve basis.
Applications due by June 5th.
Contact the Grant Soil and Water Conservation District Office at
(541) 575-1554 or visit 721 S. Canyon Blvd., John Day, OR 97845 for
applications and additional information.
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