Colin Kellaher of The Wall Street Journal reports that an increase in lawsuits resulting in large punitive damages has been a major concern in the transportation industry. They write:
Transportation equipment maker Wabash National is facing a $462 million jury verdict in a lawsuit filed by the families of two men killed when their car slammed into the rear of a trailer made by the company.
Attorneys for the men’s families argued that the trailer’s rear-impact guard wasn’t strong enough to prevent the deaths.
Rear-impact guards are meant to keep smaller vehicles that crash into the back of tractor trailers from sliding underneath.
Wabash had argued that the trailer, which was manufactured in 2004, complied with all existing regulatory standards when it was made, and that the 2019 crash wasn’t survivable. […]
The Lafayette, Ind., company also noted the jury in the case was prevented from hearing evidence that the driver’s blood alcohol level was over the legal limit at the time of the crash, and that neither man was wearing a seat belt. […]
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in July 2022 adopted new standards requiring rear-impact guards to stand up to crashes of up to 35 miles an hour, up from a previous standard of 30 miles an hour, and the agency gave a two-year compliance window. […]
Trucking officials are trying to seek limitations on “nuclear verdicts,” or verdicts that top $10 million. The American Trucking Associations has said such verdicts dramatically raise insurance costs across the sector and have helped push some carriers into bankruptcy.
The Texas Supreme Court agreed this week to hear an appeal by trucker Werner Enterprises of a verdict awarding more than $100 million to the family of a child that was killed in a 2014 crash in Odessa, Texas, that also left several family members injured.
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