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Dive Brief:
- The U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday criticized a 2023 Texas appeals court ruling that found trucking company Werner Enterprises liable for $100 million in damages from a 2014 truck accident. The chamber told a court filing that the decision threatens the trucking industry.
- The crash involved an F-350 truck that plowed through a 42-foot grass patch on Interstate 20 near Odessa, Texas, into a Werner Enterprises tractor-trailer, killing 7-year-old Zachery Blake and seriously injuring members of his family, including extrication. his 12-year-old sister is a quadriplegic.
- “The trucking industry is vital but especially vulnerable to excessive ‘nuclear verdicts’ like the one here,” the chamber wrote in the filing. “Nuclear verdicts increase the cost of doing business, with all the attendant damages.”
Dive Insight:
Crash verdicts, defined as those with jury awards of $10 million or more, have increased in size and frequency in the trucking industry, with Texas among the top states experiencing it, the chamber said in its filing.
Notably, the average verdict soared in 2018 to more than $20 million, a figure that previously fell to $5 million or less from 2010 to 2017, according to Exhibition connected with the Chamber of Commerce mentioned in the case file.
Such verdicts drive up insurance rates and most trucking companies are now buying less insurance. The legal effects are also driving up consumer prices, the agency said.
“The verdict against Werner at issue here—now over $100 million—is one of the largest and most notable examples of excessive liability from nuclear verdicts,” the chamber said. “Such verdicts also greatly inflate settlement values, so much so that the average verdict and settlement in Texas is now around the size of the Werner verdict.”
Werner’s lawyers also defended the carrier in a court filing this week, saying the company bears no legal responsibility “about the Blakes’ vehicle spinning out of control across the median of a divided interstate highway into the path of the Werner tractor-trailer.”
Lawyers for the victims’ family previously supported that Werner was trying to get a pardon for the tragedy, in which his driver was allegedly driving too fast in black ice conditions. An appeals court said the driver was traveling about 50 mph when the passenger vehicle lost control and crossed the median.
In 2021, Texas passed a law changing the way liability cases are developed. The new rules affect accidents after 1 September 2021, under which a finding of an employee’s negligence may be required before the employer’s actions can be adjudicated.
“Responding to the explosion of commercial truck liability, the Texas Legislature passed House Bill 19 in 2021,” the chamber said, adding that these legislative changes seek to provide a “clear policy to limit expansive liability against commercial companies trucks”.