By Natalie Neysa Alund
The News Sentinel
NEW TAZEWELL, Tenn. — A jury on Friday awarded $1.2 million to a New Tazewell, Tenn., couple whose teenage son died in a car crash caused by a woman found to have a cocktail of drugs in her system.
It is said to be the highest Claiborne County jury verdict award in recent memory, according to attorneys in the case, and posits that parents can be held legally responsible for the actions of their adult children.
The jury took less than three hours before reaching a verdict in the case of Keith and Diane Harmon against Thelma Beth Trent and her parents, Doug and Mary Trent. The decision capped a three-day trial, which began Tuesday in Claiborne County Circuit Court before Judge John D. McAfee.
Thelma Beth Trent is 33, but jurors still held her parents financially responsible in the teen’s death.
Trent is serving a nine-year prison sentence for the June 14, 2010, fatal wreck that killed 17-year-old Andrew Harmon, a high school senior and member of the South Claiborne Volunteer Fire Department.
Trent, who pleaded guilty to vehicular homicide by intoxication in April 2011, was on drugs when the Ford F-250 pickup she was driving crossed the centerline on Lone Mountain Road and smashed into a Chevrolet S-10 truck driven by Harmon.
According to the lawsuit filed in January 2011, on the day of the fatal crash the teen had visited his mother at a beauty shop where she worked and was on his way home to prepare for his high school senior portrait.
The wrongful death suit claimed Trent’s pickup struck the teen’s truck head on with such force it pushed his vehicle backward into a counterclockwise rotation. The truck overturned and came to a rest on its top.
The suit also was brought against Trent’s parents because “they knew, or should have known, that Ms. Trent was not a fit individual to operate a vehicle.”
Jurors determined Trent’s parents negligently entrusted their vehicle to their daughter, who court papers show has a history of drug abuse and several car wrecks.
She’d been in and out of rehab, attorneys in the case said, and at one point admitted she was huffing three cans of computer keyboard cleaner a day. On the day of the fatal crash, she was taking at least 21 prescribed pills for an assortment of alleged physical and mental illnesses.
The Harmon family was represented by attorneys Scott Hurley, Jed McKeehan and Ryan Shamblin of the Hurley Law Firm in Knoxville.
While speaking to jurors during his closing argument, Scott Hurley said no amount of money could ever replace the teen’s life, and that the Trent family was unlikely to ever have money to repay the Harmons for their loss.
“Ms. Trent is currently in prison, possesses no assets, and is unlikely to ever work when she is released,” McKeehan said Friday. “Given that, the Harmons are unlikely to ever recover the first dollar from Ms. Trent in recompense for their loss. However, by returning the verdict they did, the residents of Claiborne County have stated that Andy’s life is worth something. Not only that, but they have stated the actions of Ms. Trent by operating a vehicle under the influence of drugs, and her parents’ actions by allowing her to do so given her known drug and driving history, will not be tolerated in Claiborne County and in East Tennessee and are worthy of punishment.”
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