He and the SinClair family connected with the jurors in September to discuss the trial
When Harold Morris regained consciousness in the hospital eight weeks after his Harley-Davidson motorcycle crashed in Pennsylvania in June 2020, he learned that his passenger and partner of nearly a decade, Pamela SinClair, had died.
He'd come close to death himself, he was told.
"I guess [the doctors] pronounced me dead three times while I was in ICU," Morris, 79, says in an interview.
It was the second time in two years that Morris had spun out of control on his 2019 Harley Tri Glide Ultra, a three-wheeled motorcycle known as a "trike."
Morris says the second accident bore "striking" similarities to an earlier one in 2019, in which his trike unexpectedly changed direction on the road, injuring both him and SinClair, he says. So when attorneys told him there was "good reason" to sue, he brought a complaint against Harley-Davidson in 2020, claiming they sold a defective product.
Morris and SinClair's family believe a software problem in his trike led to both wrecks because it wrongly triggered the brake of a singular rear wheel, causing the trike to swerve.
In August -- after a four-year legal battle that culminated in a civil trial -- a jury sided with Morris and the SinClair estate, finding Harley-Davidson was responsible for the deadly 2020 crash and awarding a whopping $287 million in damages.
While Harley-Davidson, perhaps the world's most famous motorcycle manufacturer, is appealing and disputes the verdict, Morris, a Navy veteran and retired engineer at Kodak, calls his victory an important step in protecting others.
He says he had been advised against taking on this fight but "we wanted to hold Harley-Davidson accountable so nobody else would go through the same tragedies and injuries," he tells PEOPLE.
"I was not pursuing it to get rich or make a lot of money," he says.
Attorney Daniel A. Thomas, who represents the SinClair estate, echoes that: "Harold definitely traded a sure-thing settlement for the gamble of a jury verdict, because any settlement would mean that Harley-Davidson makes no admission of wrongdoing."
Having jurors agree with him and award both damages and compensation for medical expenses, pain and suffering and loss of enjoyment of life, Morris says, "I felt vindicated."
Still, it's bittersweet. Morris says he mourns his lost future with SinClair, 63, whom he calls "a very outgoing, caring person" and a devoted mother and grandmother. The two met at Kodak. She died just one month after she retired.
"I lost my life partner, the person I felt I was going to spend the rest of my life with," Morris says.
Before the crash, the couple had talked about traveling the country with their motorcycle and their RV. "And now I have been alone for four-plus years due to, truthfully, no fault of my own or hers," Morris says.
Bob SinClair, Pamela's brother and the administrator of her estate, adds, "We would rather have Pammy living her retirement, enjoying her hard work for 40 years than to have to go through this. So there's a high and there's a low."
In November 2019, Harley-Davidson recalled its 2019 and 2020 Tri Glide trikes, which Morris owned, citing a problem in the traction control software.
According to a safety recall report from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the software malfunction "could lead to an unexpected change in vehicle direction which may increase the risk of a crash."
In the first crash, in February 2019, Morris and Pamela took a joyride down a highway in LaBelle, Fla., when, Morris recalls, his motorcycle suddenly began pulling to the left, across the road in front of a truck trailer and into a grassy area, throwing them off the trike.
Thomas, the SinClairs' attorney, says the one-wheel brake activation had changed the motorcycle's direction and led to the crash.
At the time, Morris had "minor injuries," Thomas says, but SinClair had sustained fractures and needed surgery on her thumb.
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A Florida Highway Safety & Motor Vehicles crash report obtained by PEOPLE deemed "equipment failure" as the cause of the crash. But "Harley-Davidson, through a lawyer, claimed that they investigated the Florida accident and concluded that it had nothing to do with the recall, and therefore his trike was safe," says Morris' lawyer, Paul J. Edelstein.
The company declined Morris' request for medical compensation following the first crash, Edelstein says.
The recall was issued later that year, and Morris -- a Harley-Davidson rider since the early '80s -- "had [his] vehicle serviced and Harley assured him it was safe to operate," his attorneys have said, according to The Buffalo News.
Then in 2020, Morris and Pamela were coasting down a highway in Hamlin Township, Pa., when his trike veered off-road at 55 mph, struck an embankment and rolled over -- killing her and seriously injuring him.
A Pennsylvania police crash report obtained by PEOPLE did not include a conclusion for the wreck's cause, but as Morris recovered, his adult children hired Edelstein to represent him in his suit against Harley-Davidson.
The company has challenged the position that a defect is to blame.
Harley-Davidson's attorney Mark Kircher argued at trial that Morris had little experience operating a three-wheeled bike compared with a two-wheeled motorcycle, failed to adhere to a safe speed and didn't ensure he was medically capable of operating the trike due to a heart condition, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported, citing court documents.
"[Morris] never took a class on how to operate a motorcycle or a trike, even after the Florida accident when the trike was still new," Kircher said, according to the paper.
Morris tells PEOPLE that's "insulting" and pointed to his many decades operating Harley-Davidson vehicles, adding, "Apparently, they failed to take classes in honesty and integrity."
Jurors agreed, though neither Morris nor the SinClair family will see the $287 million award until Harley-Davidson's appeals are reviewed.
"While we extend our sympathies to these families ... we believe that the evidence does not support this verdict," a spokesperson for Harley-Davidson tells PEOPLE.
They declined to comment further, citing the ongoing litigation.
After winning in court, there was another surprise when Morris and the SinClairs connected with members of the jury, who reached out to plan a gathering at a juror's home and talk about the trial.
They say they had been bonded by their collective view on the company's conduct -- and wanted to spend time with Morris and Pamela's relatives.
On Saturday, Sept. 17, Pamela's siblings Bob SinClair and Becky Schroeder and Morris met with seven of the 10 jurors at Conesus Lake in Livingston County, N.Y.
When Morris entered, they immediately greeted him with hugs.
Juror Susan Cady-White, who hosted, describes the occasion as "heartwarming" with "little tearful and tender moments."
"As meaningful and warm and connected as we feel, we are also a group of people who -- quite frankly -- should not have been put in a position of getting to know each other," she says, "because had [Harley] responded appropriately to Harold's first accident, we would not know each other and Pam would still be here."