High School Senior sues trucker, others for coma-causing injury

LOUISA – Brooke Castle, a senior at Lawrence County High School, has filed a Civil Action in the Lawrence Circuit Court requesting payment of $1 million in past and future medical bills plus another $9 million in damages allegedly sustained when a vehicle operated by Felicia Howard, of Inez, in which she was a passenger collided with a truck owned by Kinser Drilling Company of Allen, Kentucky and driven by Jimmy R. Key, also of Allen.

“The fact that this young woman is even alive is truly a miracle,” John Kirk who filed the Civil Action said, “and it is also a tribute to the first responders to the accident who saved her and gave her a chance to live,” Kirk said, adding, “and then there are those truly wonderful doctors and nurses who did what they did to bring Brooke through her great ordeal.”

According to the complaint, Brooke was hospitalized for several weeks and was in a coma for a time. Past medical expenses exceed $200,000, according to the complaint.

“Brooke was the victim of two factors which contributed to this horrible accident,” Kirk said. “The truck that hit the car she was in was traveling very fast and the driver of the car in which Brooke was a passenger may have made a driving mistake by misjudging the speed of the truck.”

According to the complaint, the two-vehicle accident occurred on October 16, 2006, one mile south of Louisa on U.S. 23. Castle was a passenger in a vehicle operated by Felicia Howard. Howard’s vehicle collided with a large truck owned by Kinzer Drilling and operated by Jimmy R. Key.

Castle alleges that the proximate cause of the accident was speed and that the truck was traveling at an excessive speed.