Tampa Bay 28’s Adam Walser opens his report with a situation that sounds impossible until you hear the legal fine print: a widow won a jury verdict worth more than a million dollars, and still might wait years to actually see the money.
On the newscast, anchors Paul LaGrone and Wendy Ryan set the stage by reminding viewers the station’s I-Team had been following the lawsuit after a deputy-involved crash killed the woman’s husband. The jury, they said, awarded her more than $1 million for economic losses, plus pain and suffering.
Then Adam Walser explains why a verdict doesn’t automatically turn into a payout when the defendant is a government agency. The obstacle is a concept called sovereign immunity, and in Florida it comes with strict dollar limits and a process that can drag on long after a trial ends…