TAMPA –- The city of Tampa is back on the hook for a nearly $18-million jury award owed to a man who crashed with a city Water Department truck, according to the St. Petersburg Times. Eleven years after the near-fatal wreck, Ramiro Companioni Jr. hasn’t received a penny from the verdict.

City attorneys had persuaded Circuit Judge Herbert Baumann to order a new trial after they learned that two jurors failed to disclose felony convictions. But the 2nd District Court of Appeal on March 30 reversed the Hillsborough judge’s ruling and said the personal injury award from the 2004 trial — the largest ever against the city — should stand.

Companioni’s motorcycle slammed into the back of a city truck Nov. 26, 1996. His attorney argued that the truck caused the crash by veering dangerously across three lanes of traffic.