Dive Brief:
- The U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday criticized a 2023 Texas appeals court ruling that held carrier Werner Enterprises liable for $100 million in damages from a 2014 truck crash. The chamber said in a court filing that the decision threatens the trucking industry.
- The collision involved an F-350 pickup truck that crossed a 42-foot grass median on Interstate 20 near Odessa, Texas, into a Werner Enterprises tractor-trailer, killing 7-year-old Zachery Blake and severely injuring his family members, including leaving his 12-year-old sister a quadriplegic.
- “The trucking industry is vital but particularly vulnerable to excessive ‘nuclear verdicts’ like the one here,” the chamber wrote in the filing. “Nuclear verdicts drive up the cost of doing business, with all the attendant harms.”
Dive Insight:
Nuclear verdicts, defined as those with jury awards of $10 million or more, have increased in size and frequency in the trucking industry, with Texas being among the top states experiencing these, the chamber said in its filing.
Notably, the average verdict skyrocketed in 2018 to over $20 million, a figured that previously fell at or below $5 million from 2010 to 2017, according to a Chamber of Commerce-affiliated report cited in the court filing.
Such verdicts push up insurance rates, and most trucking companies now purchase less insurance. The legal outcomes also ultimately drive up consumer prices, the organization said.
“The verdict against Werner at issue here—now well over $100 million—is one of the largest and most notable examples of excessive liability from nuclear verdicts,” the chamber said. “Verdicts like it also grossly inflate settlement values, so much so that the average of verdicts and settlement in Texas now hovers around the size of the Werner verdict.”
Werner attorneys also defended the carrier in a court filing this week, saying the company bears no legal responsibility “for the Blakes’ vehicle losing control and spinning across the median of a divided interstate highway into the path of the Werner tractor-trailer.”
Lawyers for the victims’ family previously argued that Werner was seeking to get a pardon for the tragedy, in which its driver was allegedly driving too quickly given there were black ice conditions. An appeals court said the driver was traveling approximately 50 mph when the passenger vehicle lost control and crossed the median.
In 2021, Texas approved a law changing how liability cases unfold. The new rules affect crashes after Sept. 1, 2021, whereby a negligence finding of an employee may be required before an employer’s actions can be tried.
“Responding to the explosion of liability for commercial trucking, the Texas Legislature passed House Bill 19 in 2021,” the chamber said, adding that those legislative changes sought to provide a “clear policy of limiting expansive liability against commercial trucking companies.”
