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Jury verdict against Werner for Texas fatal crash is the biggest in company history

Reading the two post-verdict recaps of an almost $90 million verdict handed down this week against Werner Enterprises, it’s clear the jury made its choice from two highly different views of the tragic events.

A jury in Harris County, Texas handed down a judgement just under that amount in connection with a collision in late 2014 in wintry conditions near Odessa in West Texas. A Werner official who spoke to Freightwaves said it was by far the biggest judgement that the company has ever had against it, and this website–though unverified–does quote figures of Werner-related settlements far less than the Texas case. This story from a few years ago about rising truck settlements quotes figures for other cases that indicate the Werner verdict is one of the biggest ones ever.

Werner’s primary post-verdict statement on the jury’s action came in an 8-K filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, filed when a company has a material event that could affect its financial conditions. In the 8-K, Werner said its maximum liability for the accident is $10 million, with “premium-based coverage above this amount.” That $10 million will be accrued in its second quarter earnings. Werner’s net income in the first quarter was $27.8 million.

It also said it would appeal.

Here are some of the highlights of Werner’s recap of the crash, which took the life of a 7-year-old boy, left his 12-year-old sister with “catastrophic” brain injuries, and injured the childrens’ mother and another brother:

A Werner driver was westbound on interstate 20. The pickup truck carrying the family that suffered the fatal and non-fatal injuries was traveling eastbound–the mother was not the driver–lost control, went through a grassy median “and directly into the path of the Werner unit.” The pickup truck had turned around, so its rear was hit by the oncoming Werner truck. 

“Werner’s driver did not receive a citation, and the investigating officers placed no blame on the Werner driver,” the company said in its filing. “The Werner driver was traveling well below the posted speed limit, did not lose control of his tractor-trailer, and even brought the unit to a controlled stop after the impact.”

The recap from the Penn Law Firm, one of two firms representing the plaintiffs, paints a very different picture, not of the accident itself but of the conditions prior to the wreck. 

There apparently were differing views in the testimony about whether there were icy conditions, but clearly, the roads were not great. “Werner’s witnesses testified that Werner did not allow Ali, its student driver, to have access to basic safety equipment, such as an outside temperature gauge or the CB radio, either of which would have alerted him to the dangerous road conditions at the time,” the Penn statement said. A National Weather Service warning about the poor conditions was not communicated to the driver, according to Penn, “allowing (the driver) to average over 60 mph while driving unsupervised through the icy conditions because (the driver) was on a Just-In-Time (JIT) load, requiring delivery to California by the next day.”

“Ali averaged in excess of 60 mph for the 52 miles he was driving in icy conditions prior to the crash, and was traveling over 50 mph seconds prior to the collision,” Penn said. 

If the driver was traveling 50, that would support Werner’s contention that he was below the speed limit. The question then was how slow the truck should have been going given the conditions, and the jury sided with the plaintiffs.  

36 Comments

  1. J Seitz

    Look They are stating this, It wasa rookie driver with his trainer ASLEEP, on a Just in Time load, Werners fault on that. Two, the driver drove through 200 miles of Ice and snow and should have known to SHUT IT DOWN, Three, The Werner driver had advanced knowledge of the conditions that the pick up didnt, Werner was more worried about the freight than the driver of their truck who had no experience. Four, the other trucks out there were doing 35-40, Werner was doing 50-60 and passing everyone in bad conditions, Driver failed to adjust speed for conditions because they we’re in a hurry to be in Cali by the next morning. Jury found Werner at fault for they way they do business and operate their drivers.

  2. Robert

    Here is what the jury heard at the trial: the Werner truck averaged 60 mph traveling westward from Dallas to Odessa. Ice started forming on I-20 on the 100 mile stretch west of Odessa that the Werner truck went through. There were many, many other accidents on that same stretch. An identical accident occurred before the Werner truck (passenger vehicle lost control, went through the medium, collided with 18-wheeler) but no injuries because the 35-year veteran truck driver had slowed down to 5-10 mph because of the ice. The rookie Werner truck passed by many of the other accidents. He was not allowed to use the outside temperature gauge or CB radio (trainer driver was asleep in the berth but testified the rookie driver hadn’t earned the right to use those tools). The rookie driver and company denied there was ice on the road, despite 14 witnesses who testified otherwise. The company refused to acknowledge that the company or the driver made any mistakes, despite the fact that it made a conscious decision, with full knowledge of the national weather winter (ice) advisory, to take I-20 instead of another route with no icy conditions. The Werner truck should have been off the road like many of the other truckers, or going at a crawl for the safety of passenger cars, who are much more prone to losing control on ice. The passenger vehicle in this case hit black ice on the western edge of the ice storm, without warning (unlike the Werner truck that had passed through 2 hours of ice). The driver of the passenger vehicle was also found to be negligent and had already settled with the family, who were passengers but not related to the driver. The jury heard evidence that the Werner driver had slowed down to 50 mph due to a slower moving vehicle in his lane, but then was in the process of speeding back up when the collision occurred. If the Werner truck had slowed down or gotten off the road altogether then the injuries would have been minor or non-existent.

    1. James Mock

      It’s a sad world when people like Robert, and obviously many others, have been convinced by lawyer-reasoning, that someone bears culpability for damages that occurred solely because of the failings of others. Find someone else to blame for your own failings. Shift the blame as far as you can. Hell, like someone else said, with this thinking surely the Dept of Trans and the police are culpable as well! Just 50 years ago people did not think like this. It’s sick……and my son is a Manhattan corporate lawyer.

  3. Charles

    The ambulance chasers that represented this poor woman and her kids used The Reptile Theory’s smoke and mirrors to bamboozle the jury into ignoring the rules and common sense in this case and instead rule based solely on sympathy. The lawyers will strut and preen until there is no one left who is willing to haul freight into Texas – or any of the states where run-away verdicts that defy common sense are the norm. Then they’ll move off to big pharma lawsuits.

  4. Jackson

    I call horsemonkeys! That’s slang for…yes you guessed it. Werner representatives did a sloppy job. So let me get this straight. The pickup lost control, crossed the median, and into the path of the incoming Werner truck but somehow how this is Werner’s fault. My heart goes out to the family of the pickup truck but the Werner driver was in control of his truck the whole time. I agree maybe a donation should be setup for the family but Werner should not be held responsible for a tragedy that was clear not their fault

  5. Ed

    To Werner : Hire some Representation for the appeal because apparently whatever you used for this trial "never showed up"

Comments are closed.

John Kingston

John has an almost 40-year career covering commodities, most of the time at S&P Global Platts. He created the Dated Brent benchmark, now the world’s most important crude oil marker. He was Director of Oil, Director of News, the editor in chief of Platts Oilgram News and the “talking head” for Platts on numerous media outlets, including CNBC, Fox Business and Canada’s BNN. He covered metals before joining Platts and then spent a year running Platts’ metals business as well. He was awarded the International Association of Energy Economics Award for Excellence in Written Journalism in 2015. In 2010, he won two Corporate Achievement Awards from McGraw-Hill, an extremely rare accomplishment, one for steering coverage of the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster and the other for the launch of a public affairs television show, Platts Energy Week.