In a sharp turn of events, a Clark County judge on Tuesday threw out a defense verdict and ordered a new trial for Allie Mead, the passenger who sued General Motors after suffering serious injuries in a 2018 crash while wearing a lap-only seat belt. The ruling wipes away a November jury win for GM and gives Mead’s legal team another shot at convincing jurors that the restraint system or its warnings were defective.
District Judge Tara Clark Newberry granted the retrial after Mead’s attorneys attacked the original outcome, arguing that GM’s lawyers repeatedly leaned on out-of-state cases and made other improper arguments that misled or confused jurors. According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Newberry agreed the record justified a do-over and signed the order on Tuesday.
Crash that led to the lawsuit
Court filings state that Mead was riding in the rear center seat of a 1998 Chevrolet pickup on Aug. 18, 2018, when the truck left the roadway and slammed into a tree and a boulder. Her complaint describes a spinal fracture, a ruptured colon and other abdominal injuries, and says she now lives with chronic pain and multiple mental-health diagnoses. Those details appear in the docket and related filings on Trellis.
What happened at trial
The case went before a jury in November 2025, and GM initially walked away on top. Jurors found that the lap-only belt in Mead’s seating position was not unreasonably dangerous, as reported by the Review-Journal. Plaintiff attorney Robert Eglet had urged jurors to award $64.8 million, arguing that a three-point lap-and-shoulder belt would have prevented Mead’s devastating injuries. GM countered that the pickup’s restraint system met federal safety standards and did exactly what it was designed to do in the crash.
Legal next steps
After the loss, Mead’s lawyers filed post-trial motions asking Judge Newberry to set aside the verdict and send the case back for another trial. With that request granted, the lawsuit now returns to the active trial calendar, where new deadlines, discovery disputes and fresh motions are almost guaranteed. Case records on Trellis list the filings, parties and lead attorneys on both sides and will serve as the public play-by-play as things move forward.
The judge’s order does not decide who is at fault or how much money, if any, Mead might ultimately receive. A new jury will have to sort out both liability and damages. In the meantime, expect both camps to jockey for position, seek scheduling orders and press for key pretrial rulings as the case rumbles back toward a second showdown.
