Truck Wreck of the Day

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At Pine Bluff, Arkansas, on Saturday afternoon, a Mississippi tractor trailer driver crossed the highway center line and killed a mother and four children.  Those killed were LaKetria Wells, 26, of Monticello, a prison guard at the state Cummins Unit, and her children, LaKiyah Wells, 7; Kaleb Jarrell Stokes, 5; Keyshon Wells, 4; and LaKayla Wells, 2.

A witness told investigators that, about an hour before the crash, the big rig was parked on the side of the highway and Jordan was slumped over the steering wheel, asleep. Another witness told police that before the accident, the truck driver appeared to be struggling to stay awake and was lurching across lanes on the four-lane but undivided highway.

A search of the truck cab revealed a crack pipe.    The truck driver admitted that he had used crack cocaine earlier in the day, falsified his log books, and did not get the required amount of sleep.   See my article on punitive damages for violation of hours of service rules, which of course hardly begins to scratch the surface of the punitive damages issues in this tragic incident.

For every truck driver like this one, there are hundreds who try to play by the rules and operate safely under often adverse circumstances.  Every occupation — including law — has its bad guys who harm the reputation of the group.  The challenge is the purge the worst and make of them examples that can help to raise the behavioral standards of all the rest.

Lawrenceville, GA, 7/12/07 – A tractor trailer driver who admitted to police that he had fallen asleep at the wheel rear-ended a Honda at Georgia 316 and US 29.  All four Mexican immigrant occupants of the Honda were killed.  They were identified as Juan Gutierrez Medina, 36,  Andres Juan Gutierrez, 19, Virginia Jimenez-Cabrera, 38, and her daughter, Victoria Cabrera, 12.  Fire crews found the car under the tractor trailer. The problem of truck driver fatigue is one with which we are all too familiar.

Murfreesboro, TN, 6/29/07. Robert Franklin Hankins and Betty Hankins, 68, both of Commerce, GA, were killed when their pickup truck was struck head-on by a semi-truck  driven by Arthur Trollinger,  a driver for Cooper Mobile Homes in Lewisburg, TN.  According to the Tennessee Highway Patrol, about 12:20 PM  the left front tire of the eastbound semi-truck blew out shortly, causing the unloaded tractor trailer to plow through the grass median into oncoming traffic. The semi hit the Hankins pickup head-on, rolled over and then collided with an SUV which was hauling a fully-loaded storage trailer.

News reports were silent about the reason the Cooper Mobile Home truck tire blew out.  In such situation, one should immediately demand that the company preserve the tire, the tractor, black box data, and all pertinent records, and look into tire defects, fit,  selection, installation, maintenance, alignment, etc.

6/25/07, Berea, KY. A Tennessee UPS truck driver was killed when at 2:50 AM  a tanker truck carrying liquid sulfur,  driven by a Georgia truck driver,  had a tire blew out, hit concrete median barrier, went airborne and crossed over intooncoming lanes. The tanker hit a UPS tractor trailer head-on. The UPS driver  Johnny l. Dopp, 35, of Jacksboro, TN, was killed, pronounced dead at the scene due to multiple injuries. Dopp was  a member of Vasper Missionary Baptist Church and was employed with UPS for five years.   The driver of the tanker truck, Arthur l. Mays, 54, of Blakely, Georgia, was not injured. News reports were silent about the reason the tanker’s tire blew out.  In such situation, one should immediately demand that the trucking company preserve the tire, the tractor, black box data, and all pertinent records, and look into tire defects, fit,  selection, installation, maintenance, alignment, etc.

On 6/24/07, a tractor trailer jackknifed on I-20 near Oxford, Alabama, crossed the median, and crashed head-on into a Honda occupied by an assistant football and basketball coach and three team members from North Oconee (GA) High School on the way home from a basketball camp at Jacksonville State University.  Coach Shawn Smith was killed.  He was apparently quite a guy.  Drew Landers, son of UGA women’s basketball coach Andy Landers, was hospitalized in ICU at Grady in critical condition with  a head injury, but there is hope for a full recovery. News reports have said little about the trucking company, the truck driver or the reason the truck jackknifed.  The Alabama Highway Patrol may take up to six weeks to investigate the crash and release their findings. 

LANCASTER, PA, 6/26/07 – A tractor-trailer driver who did not notice slower-moving traffic in front of her caused the fiery seven-vehicle crash on the Pennsylvania Turnpike that killed three people from New Jersey. The tractor-trailer hit six passenger cars and then burst into flames, police said. The dead were all in the first car hit, which was wedged beneath the tractor.  The tractor trailer was reportedly traveling too fast for conditions when the crashed occurred about 12:30 PM. State police confirmed that Katrina Griffin of Greensboro, N.C., was driving the tractor-trailer and did not notice slower-moving traffic in front of her, causing the crash. One eyewitness said, "I could see the truck coming really fast behind me. I could see all the cars being pushed out of the way." 

Why would a truck driver fail to notice the slowing of traffic that everyone else on the highway saw and dealt with?  The news articles are silent on that question, but we see it all the time.  There a many reasons.  Often it is a tired trucker who has been on the road too long under economic pressure to meet delivery schedules that cannot be met without breaking the rules regarding speed and hours of service. Other times there are effects of medications, pressure medical conditions, distractions.  Sometimes we just can never be sure why things happened.

In Los Angeles last night, this big rig with a vehicle jammed underneath it  slid down an embankment off  the 60 freeway.  A unidentified victim was dead at the scene. The cause of the crash was not revealed in early reports. 

With my son planning to enroll in college in the LA area in a few months, this is a sobering reminder of how crazy LA traffic can be.

At 3:41 AM on Sunday, a tanker truck crashed and burned at the intersection of three freeways, causing the collapse of an overpass.  This will likely  snarl commutes for hundreds of thousands of people for months until repairs can  be completed.  California officials are urging residents to shift to public transit and telecommuting due to the effect on area commuting.

The tanker carrying 8,600 gallons of gasoline ignited around 3:45 a.m. after crashing into a pylon on the interchange, which connects westbound lanes of Interstate 80 to southbound I-880, on the edge of downtown Oakland about half a mile from the Bay Bridge’s toll plaza.A preliminary investigation indicated he may have been speeding on the curving road.  Flames shot 200 feet in the air and the heat was intense enough to melt part of the freeway and cause the collapse, but the truck’s driver walked away from the scene with second-degree burns.

The tanker driver left the scene before police arrived, by crawling out the truck’s passenger window and walking down the ramp to a gas station.  He worked the past 10 months for a South San Francisco trucking firm. He apparently took a freeway ramp from westbound I-80 to southbound Interstate 880 too fast.  Details of his driving record were not immediately. His employer was involved in a June 2006 crash in Vallejo that sent about 4,000 gallons of diesel into storm drains. In that case, a double tanker overturned on a ramp connecting I-80 to I-780.

Three people were killed and two injured this morning when a state vehicle struck the end of logs protruding from the rear of a log truck in Folkston, some of which entered the vehicle passenger area.  Timber hauling is governed by the Georgia Forest Products Trucking Rules. Any load that projects more than four feet beyond the end of the trailer must have a flag and strobe light mounted on the rear of the load. We are currently handling another case where a pickup truck was impaled on the rear of a load of a projecting load of logs, and eyewitnesses swear that there was no light to make the log truck visibile in the dark. 


Fri., 3/9/07, Calhoun, GA. 

In a scene reminiscent of the 1982 Paul Newman movie, "The Verdict," the jury after three hours of deliberation Thursday afternoon sent a note to the judge asking if they were limited by the amount the plaintiff asked for.   In closing argument I had asked for a verdict of approximately $1.2 million for our client’s permanently disabling leg injury.  When we got that question from the jury, my first thought was that I don’t drink anywhere near enough to fit the Paul Newman role in the movie.

Today we won a $2,345,940.17 jury verdict against a Pennsylvania trucking company in the Superior Court of Gordon County, Calhoun, Georgia.  The verdict was broken down as follows: compensatory damages:  $1,742,845.70, attorney fees due to bad faith in the transaction, $580,948.57, expenses  of litigation $ 22,145.90.  Medical expenses were $112,228.  The highest offer from defendant’s insurance company before trial was $125,000, going up to $400,000 on third day of trial. This was nearly three times the highest previous verdict in the history of Gordon County.

The specificity of the figures, down to the penny, helps to refute any allegation that it was a random verdict by a "runaway jury."  These jurors were all deeply conservative northwest Georgia folks who were determined to follow the law and the facts wherever they led, and to do the right thing.

It was a very good week.

Johnson v. Clarendon National Insurance Company, American Trans-Freight, LLC, ATF Trucking, LLC, ATF Logistics, LLC, and Robert W. Carnley, CIVIL ACTION FILE NO. 04-CV-43532