In March of 2021, a motorcyclist and US Marine had a ride that changed his life forever. After a bad street crash on his bike, Don Zemo suffered a T12 spinal cord injury, resulting in his permanent lower body paralysis. But earlier this week, a jury found in favor of Zemo's lawsuit, awarding him a $45 million settlement.
Who or what was the lawsuit about? The original complaint, which was filed in March 2022, sets the following scene. On March 21, 2021, plaintiff Don D. Zemo IV was riding his motorcycle toward the location of a towing company called MyHoopty.com LLC. At the same time, another person whose vehicle had been towed by that company was pulling out of their parking lot after having picked up his Ford Explorer that had been towed.
That's when things got dicey, as you'll see in the following security video that caught the crash as it happened. A driver of one of MyHoopty.com's tow trucks had apparently parked the truck in a dubious manner, so it was blocking the view of multiple drivers coming from multiple directions. As a result, the lawsuit said, neither the Ford Explorer driver nor Zemo on his motorcycle had adequate sightlines around the tow truck to be able to safely maneuver, and that's how the crash happened.
