Vet Awarded $19 Million in Damages

Updates with month and year of Thomas Nickerson's injury.

A paraplegic, who spent more than three months at the Veteran's Administration hospital in Long Beach recovering from a broken leg, was awarded more than $19 million in punitive damages Tuesday in his lawsuit against an insurance company that only wanted to pay for 19 days of treatment.  

Thomas Nickerson, a former Marine from Westminster, sued Stonebridge Life Insurance Co. for breach of contract in January 2009. The same Los Angeles jury previously awarded Nickerson more than $65,000 in compensatory damages, most of it for emotional distress.

Nickerson's lawyer, William Shernoff, said Stonebridge would only pay the former Marine for 19 of  the 109 days he spent in the veteran's hospital in Long Beach after falling from his wheelchair and breaking his right leg in February 2008. 

Shernoff said that insurance companies should not be able to overrule the expertise of treating physicians in determining benefits. Defense attorney James Wood could not be immediately reached. However, in their court papers lawyers for Stonebridge stated the payment of benefits for 19 days was "according to the terms of the policy and the circumstances of the hospitalization.''

City News Service contributed to this report.