Articles Posted in Truck Accidents

A federal jury in Kansas jury awarded $23.5 million to a man who was severely injured in a truck accident in New Mexico on Route 54 near Tucumcari with a truck driver who tested positive for methamphetamine. Jurors found that the driver for Swift Transportation was 65% responsible for the accident that left Plaintiff with major spinal cord injuries. U.S. District Judge Monti Belot subsequently reduced the actual award consistent with New Mexico’s comparative negligence law to nearly $15.3 million.

This was a very serious injury case – the defendant has $5 million in past and future medical bills. A big as this case was, it is not the biggest verdict the defendant Swift Transportation has taken in, even the last year. Last December, an Arizona jury awarded $36.5 million to the family of a man killed in a collision with another one of its trucks.

There is a story on the verdict in the Wichita Eagle.

When a lawyer gets a verdict or settlement in a 7 figure case, the lawyer can join the Million Dollar Advocates (of which I am a member). Last week, after a Texas jury awarded $1.5 million in a truck accident involving two men seriously injured after a semi crashed into their car, an Indiana based trucking company entered a more ignominious group of trucking companies that have had million-dollar truck accident verdicts entered against them based on truck accidents that occurred within a year, both Texas truck accidents. In 2005, Celadon took a $17.5 million jury hit in a truck accident case involving the death of a U.S. Army lieutenant, who was killed after getting rear-ended by a Celadon truck. The venue? Texas.

In this most recent case, two men were driving in their car on a highway in Waxahachie, Texas (near Dallas) when a Celadon Trucking Services tractor-trailer struck their car. The Plaintiffs’ Texas truck accident lawyer alleged in the Plaintiffs’ lawsuit that Celadon negligently hired the truck driver and that its driver caused the truck accident. The jury agreed.

One of the men suffered a fractured vertebra; the other sustained a serious injury to his right knee, which required several reconstructive surgeries. The latter man also suffered a mild traumatic brain injury and damage to his collarbone.

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