Jury awards $118 million to mentally disabled Middle Georgia man beaten in care home
A jury in the State Court of Bibb County on Wednesday awarded $118 million in damages to a mentally disabled man who was beaten in a series of assaults at a personal-care home’s day center nearly a decade ago.
The beatings happened in November 2013 at a day center for the developmentally disabled in Gordon, east of Macon.
In a lawsuit filed by Betty Gill, the mother of Joseph “Joey” Cason Jr., the man who was assaulted, claimed he had been “repeatedly and sadistically beaten and otherwise abused by employees” at the center in episodes recorded by a surveillance camera.
Wednesday’s jury award included $90 million in punitive damages against Total Care Community Living Properties LLC, Total Care Personal Care Home LLC, and the companies’ operators, husband and wife David Reaves and Pamela Whipple Reaves, who live in Macon.
Lawyers for Cason, Charles E. Cox and C. Brian Jarrard, said the $118 million award was believed to be the largest in Bibb State Court history.
Jarrard described the allegations in the case as “reprehensible.”
A few employees of the care home who were involved in the assaults on Cason, now in his 50s, have since been prosecuted for their roles. Most received six-month jail terms and probation, Jarrard said.
In describing the assault on his client, Jarrard on Wednesday evening said Cason “was over the course of a single afternoon in November of 2013 ... just beaten. He was hit 96 times over the course of five hours: slapped, punched, taunted, laughed at, ignored.”
A judge in another lawsuit related to the 2013 assault awarded Cason $64.6 million in 2016.
— Information from Telegraph archives was used in this report.
This story was originally published December 22, 2022 at 8:00 AM with the headline "Jury awards $118 million to mentally disabled Middle Georgia man beaten in care home."