A Burleigh County jury has awarded more than $1 billion in total damages to a survivor and families of two women killed in a 2015 car crash in Mandan.
According to the court documents, on 27th June 2015, a man slammed into the car in which the ladies were travelling at the Mckenzie Drive exit on the Bismarck Expressway which resulted in their death. The third lady who was driving the car suffered a traumatic brain injury.
The jury awarded $295 million in punitive damages each to the victims and also awarded compensatory damages of $170 million to the woman who was driving and $36 million each to the families of the two women who died in the crash.
A similar lawsuit settled for around $40.5 million in damages to the family of a tractor-trailer crash victim. The settlement was declared by a New Mexico jury on October 11, 2019.
The court papers stated that the crash occurred around 8 p.m. on Interstate 10 outside of Las Cruces, New Mexico on February 23, 2017. The victim was driving a 2012 Honda Pilot when a man driving a tractor-trailer crossed four lanes of traffic and a concrete median colliding head-on with her car.
The man was driving for Werner Enterprises Inc. for eight days before the fatal crash occurred. The lawyer for the victim has alleged that the company continued to assign work to the man and his trainer despite the former's inexperience behind the wheel.
The penalties exceed $10 million and the verdict is identified as a "Nuclear verdict".
