On November 4, 2013, in a 7-0 decision, the Georgia Supreme Court unanimously refused to hear Monitronics’ appeal of a $9 million verdict given by a DeKalb County, Georgia jury. The Georgia Supreme Court’s refusal to hear the case of Monitronics International, Inc. v. Veasley allows the Georgia Court of Appeals’ July 16, 2013 opinion to stand.
The verdict was given on November 11, 2011 to a woman who had bought a security system monitored by Monitronics because she lived alone and worked two jobs. Monitronics is one of the nation’s largest alarm monitoring companies.
One morning while the client was at work, a man broke into her home and triggered her alarm system. The system was tripped repeatedly throughout the day from multiple zones – a sign that an intruder was inside. The jury found that the alarm monitoring company either put the alarm on a “hold” status or did not act reasonably to reach its client. When the Monitronics operator eventually reached our client late that evening after what was at least the 8 th alarm of the day, the operator first made up a reason why the alarm went off . The operator never told the client that the alarm had been repeatedly triggered throughout the day. A short time later, the woman was attacked in her home by a man who had been hiding there all day.
The monitoring company appealed the $9 million jury verdict and argued that a “limitation of liability clause,” written in small print on the back of the contract, should limit the value of the attack to $250.
Michael Neff, Dwayne Adams, and Shane Peagler represented the Plaintiff at trial and were co-counsel on the appeal. Michael Neff stated, “We are gratified by the rulings of both the Georgia Supreme Court and the Georgia Court of Appeals in affirming the jury’s verdict in this case. Our client hopes that no Georgia citizen will ever have to endure these horrific circumstances again.”
More details on this trial, which resulted in a record-setting verdict in Georgia, can be found on our site here.