The Texas Supreme Court will hear a controversial, nine-figure crash case involving a Werner Enterprises truck, in which a state trooper investigating the crash concluded the driver “didn’t do anything wrong.”
Werner’s challenge to the jury verdict of more than $100 million has been closely watched by the trucking and legal industries in the Lone Star State. Although this verdict is eye-popping in itself, the real headscratcher is how a jury was able to hold the carrier and its driver responsible for a crash that involved a passenger vehicle sliding across a median and striking a truck on the other side of the highway.
How the Texas Supreme Court decides the case will likely substantially impact crash lawsuits against trucking companies in the state. Affirming the lower courts’ decisions could potentially increase nuclear verdicts in Texas and leave trucking companies vulnerable to lawsuits for crashes they did not cause.
Facts of the case
The full court of appeals order stems from a lawsuit filed by the family of Zachary Blake and Brianna Blake. Zachary, who was 7 years old, was killed in the crash with a Werner truck. Brianna, who was 12, was rendered a quadriplegic.
On Dec. 14, 2014, the Blakes were traveling east on Interstate 20 in Texas in a pickup truck driven by Zaragoza “Trey” Salinas. Weather conditions began to worsen, coating the windshield of the truck they were traveling in with ice. While traveling 50-60 mph, a car ahead of them began to fishtail. Salinas also lost control and careened across a grass median, entering the westbound lanes.
At this time, Shiraz Ali was driving a truck for Werner going west on I-20. He was driving below the speed limit when the pickup truck began to spin. Also present in the Werner truck was Jeff Ackerman, a Werner driver-trainer. According to the appellate brief, Ali reacted within half a second, hitting the brakes.
Even the Blakes’ expert witness conceded that Ali’s reaction was “very quick” and “appropriate to the conditions.”
During the trial, it was revealed that westbound I-20 was not slick like the eastbound lanes, due to heavier traffic melting the ice with friction and heat. Witnesses stated that even though they felt no one should have been driving on I-20 that day, they did not fault Ali for the crash.
In addition to Salinas making statements suggesting guilt and responsibility, a Texas Department of Public Safety trooper defended Ali’s actions. Trooper Villareal, a 17-year veteran who investigated the accident, concluded “this is truly an accident,” Ali “didn’t do anything wrong,” and there was nothing Ali “could have done to avoid the collision.” A higher-ranking trooper who approved the report concurred.
More details of the crash can be found here.
Werner found 84% liable
Despite the facts of the case showing the Werner driver did nothing to cause the crash, a Texas jury put the carrier on the hook for millions of dollars.
In 2018, a jury found Werner 70% liable, Ali 14% liable and Salinas 16% liable. After calculating all damages, the jury award for the plaintiffs was in excess of $100 million.
Werner challenged the verdict in the 14th Court of Appeals. It argued there was insufficient evidence supporting that Ali or Werner proximately caused the crash, especially in terms of anything that happened at the company years prior.
During the trial, plaintiffs were allowed to present evidence that had no direct proximate effect on the crash in order to show the jury that Werner’s culture and policy caused it. This evidence included:
- Details about Werner’s training and supervision of Ali
- Werner’s lack of a “command center” for weather monitoring
- Werner’s handling of crash investigations
- Claims of Werner’s driving school director being unqualified
- Werner’s failure to require a CB radio
- Werner’s failure to require an outside temperature gauge
Werner argued, however, that this evidence had nothing to do with the crash in question and that relevant evidence insufficiently supported a finding of negligence. The appellate court disagreed and affirmed the lower court’s verdict.
Admission Rule
At the center of the Texas Supreme Court case is whether the court should adopt what is called the Admission Rule, which could determine the fate of nuclear verdicts like Werner’s.
In its petition, Werner argues that since it accepted responsibility by admitting Ali was in the course and scope of employment, plaintiffs cannot pursue “derivative theories of negligence.” Known as the Admission Rule, once an employer establishes liability, “evidence of the employer’s hiring, training or supervision practices becomes inadmissible as irrelevant and likely to prejudice the jury,” according to the law firm Lewis Brisbois.
In this case, the appellate and district courts rejected the Admission Rule by allowing a variety of evidence dealing with Werner’s companywide policies and training. This in turn allowed plaintiff attorneys to use a tactic known as reptile theory, which evokes emotions of fear and anger in jurors to encourage nuclear verdicts. As Lewis Brisbois put it, “This company was so terrible you should punish them, regardless of whether any of our evidence showed the company or its driver’s actions actually caused the subject crash.”
The Admission Rule has been adopted in several states. In Texas, courts are split on the rule, with some adopting it and others – like the 14th Court of Appeals – rejecting it.
Werner is asking the Texas Supreme Court to cement the Admission Rule into state legal precedent.
If the high court adopts the rule, trucking companies’ practices, policies and overarching operations and culture could not be used in a crash lawsuit when the company accepts vicarious liability. Effectively, jurors would not be subjected to prejudicial evidence that fuels nuclear verdicts.
Conversely, if the state Supreme Court affirms the appellate court decision, the use of reptile theory could ramp up in crash cases in the nation’s second-largest state by population and size. Consequently, nuclear verdicts could increase.
Werner states in its petition that the court of appeals “imposes a legal duty on Texas motorists in the state’s largest appellate district to anticipate that vehicles on the other side of a divided highway will lose control and cross directly into their path.”
“A failure to foresee this remote possibility and do everything possible to avoid it, including getting off the road entirely, can make a driver 100% responsible for almost any accident,” Werner states.
Stakeholders weigh in
Half a dozen amicus briefs have been filed in Werner’s Supreme Court case, nearly all from trucking and legal groups.
As of Thursday, Sept. 5, the following groups have filed amicus briefs in the case, all of them supporting Werner’s bid for the Texas Supreme Court to adopt the Admission Rule:
- American Trucking Associations
- Texas Association of Defense Counsel
- Texas Civil Justice League
- Texans for Lawsuit Reform
- Texas Trucking Association
- Trucking Industry Defense Association
- S. Chamber of Commerce
In their joint brief, the Texas Trucking Association and the Trucking Industry Defense Counsel point out how the plaintiffs’ attorney admitted to focusing on what should have been irrelevant factors.
“In the words of the lead trial attorney for plaintiffs, ‘Our case was about everything but the three-second crash sequence,’” the groups state. “Because appropriate boundaries were not in place via the Admission Rule, plaintiffs’ counsel was allowed to argue everything from how Werner should have built a weather command center to how Werner should have given Ali a company email address.” LL
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