$4.5 Million Settlement for 14-Year-Old Killed Behind an Overloaded, Underlit Flatbed on Interstate 79
After trial: Settled and court-approved; final. The $4,500,000 is split $3,000,000 from Quality Woods, Inc. and $1,500,000 from Allegheny Wood Products, Inc.
Won by Atkinson & Frampton, PLLC.
A 14-year-old high school freshman was riding home from a soccer match with her father on Interstate 79 when their vehicle struck the rear of a flatbed semi hauling lumber uphill at 21 mph in the dark. The plaintiffs' case was that the truck should never have been on that road: overloaded by more than 11,000 pounds, inadequately lit, and driven by a man not properly licensed for it.
What happened
On the night of August 31, 2022 a 14-year-old freshman at Herbert Hoover High School was riding home from a soccer match with her father on Interstate 79 near Clendenin, West Virginia.
Ahead of them, around a curve in the dark, a flatbed semi loaded with lumber was crawling uphill at 21 miles per hour. Their vehicle struck the rear of it. The girl was killed. Her father survived.
The case her parents brought was not about the moment of impact. It was about why that truck was on that highway at all in that condition, and it came down to three findings. The trailer was carrying roughly 37,000 pounds against a legal limit just under 26,000, an overload of more than eleven thousand pounds, which is the kind of weight that makes a loaded flatbed climb a grade at 21 miles per hour. It was inadequately lit for night operation on a highway, so there was little to see until there was no time. And the man driving it was not properly licensed to be driving it.
In April 2025 the case settled for $4,500,000, with $3,000,000 paid by Quality Woods, Inc. and $1,500,000 by Allegheny Wood Products, Inc.
The family was represented by Mark Atkinson of Atkinson and Frampton in Charleston.
The girl is not named here because she was a child. Her mother has spoken publicly about her and has founded a memorial foundation and an annual 5K in her name.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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