On October 11, the family of a tractor-trailer crash victim was awarded around $40.5 million in damages by a New Mexico jury.
According to the court documents, On February 23, 2017, the lady 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 crash occurred around 8 p.m. on Interstate 10 outside of Las Cruces, New Mexico.
The man had only been driving for Werner Enterprises Inc. for eight days before the fatal crash occurred. The court filings allege that Werner continued to assign work to the man and his trainer despite former's inexperience behind the wheel. The filings further alleged that he drove approximately 64% of the time unsupervised, wherein the first four days went with "zero observation time," which the family believed was a disregard for basic safety policies and training of new drivers by Roadmaster Drivers School, acquired by Werner in 2014.
The verdict is a "Nuclear verdict," wherein the penalties exceed $10 million. In a similar case against Werner in the past 18 months, a Texas jury awarded a family nearly $90 million in a fatal crash.
