Judge awards Ryan Ferguson $43.8 million in lawsuit against insurance company

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (KMIZ)
A Cole County judge awarded Ryan Ferguson nearly $44 million in his lawsuit against an insurer that hasn't yet paid out his settlement with several Columbia police detectives.
Judge Cotton Walker on Monday awarded Ferguson $43.8 million. A Cole County jury sided with Ferguson in November when he sued Travelers Insurance to collect the rest of his nearly $11 million settlement with the detectives who helped convict him of the 2001 murder of Kent Heitholt.
Walker's decision added several million dollars of interest to the amount the jury ordered in November. Walker ordered Travelers to pay $41.6 million for claims of bad faith and another $2.14 million for vexatious refusal -- an insurer's unreasonable denial or delay in paying a valid claim. Ferguson's attorneys will collect $305,250 in attorneys' fees through the judgment.
Ferguson's attorney, Kathleen Zellner, told ABC 17 News that she and Ferguson were pleased with the decision. Zellner says she delivered the news to Ferguson on Monday.
“He was thrilled. It was close, not entirely comparable to when I got to tell him that, the appellate court overturned his conviction and he was going to be released. But this is a close second, Zellner said. “I’m thrilled for him and his family. I’ve represented him since 200,9 so this has been a long, long journey.”
Combined with the money Ferguson collected from the 2017 settlement, Zellner said the case is the largest individual award for a wrongful conviction in U.S. history.
“For me personally, it's confirmation that our legal system does work. Sometimes, it takes a long time, but if you persevere and if you're on the right side of the case and the evidence does work, and this case is an example of that because we had to push through setbacks along the way,” Zellner said. “We never gave up hope in exonerating him and then in getting compensation for the wrongdoing and then holding the insurance company liable.”
The six police detectives will also get a percentage of the final award, Zellner said. The group of former police officers became plaintiffs in Ferguson's lawsuit to show the stress caused by Travelers' refusal to cover the city and its workers in the case. The insurance provider covered the city's law enforcement liability from 2006-11, a period in which Ferguson was in prison for the killing.
“We have we have an agreement with them [six former police officers] and so they'll get a percentage of it,” Zellner said. “That was based on us having their cooperation and then we basically represented them in the sense that we presented their case to the jury, that they were deprived of coverage. And we had an excellent officer testify about the type of strain that it took on her life. So it was definitely a collaboration because the officers had been put in a difficult position when the coverage was denied.”
An appeals court vacated Ferguson's conviction in 2013 after Zellner found that prosecutors failed to disclose some witness statements to the defense.
ABC 17 News reached out to CPD for comment but was told the department does not comment on litigation. ABC 17 News has also reached out to Travelers Insurance and the City of Columbia for comment.
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