Trucking Company Settles Fatal Oversized-Load Crash For $1.2 Million Mid-Trial

Early on the morning of January 7, 2000, Alfred Heekin was driving on Route 9 in Bennington, Vermont, near the New York border, when he came upon an oversized manufactured home a Bennett Truck Transport rig was hauling to New Hampshire. The home stretched across both lanes of the two-lane highway, and the pilot car escorting it was traveling in the wrong lane. Heekin swerved to avoid the escort vehicle and struck the mobile home.

Heekin, 84, suffered severe brain injuries in the crash. Before it he had been in excellent health, a retired investigator who had spent 25 years with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and who, with his wife, had run a nursing home in the Bennington area. He was treated for nineteen months before he died in August 2001. His wife, Marion Heekin, also 84, a retired registered nurse, was riding in the front seat. She survived with less severe physical injuries but was later diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder from the crash and her husband's decline.

Marion Heekin sued Bennett Truck Transport, a Georgia-based hauler with a fleet of 3,500 trucks, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Vermont in Brattleboro. The Bennington firm now known as BarrSternberg, then Barr, Sternberg, Moss, Lawrence, Silver and Saltonstall, took the case on contingency. Attorney David Silver called it a full firm effort, with four lawyers, Silver, Rolf Sternberg, Neil Moss and Robert Scanlon, working the file. Silver said Bennett had never trained its two drivers on the dangers of moving oversized loads on Vermont's narrow highways: 'They didn't spend one dime to train those people.'

The case reached trial before U.S. District Judge J. Garvan Murtha. About two weeks earlier, Murtha had ruled that Bennett could not tell the jury about Heekin's history of eye surgery, evidence the defense wanted to use to suggest he bore some of the blame. Over three days, jurors heard more than 1,500 pages of medical records documenting Heekin's injuries and decline.

On the third day, with Marion Heekin scheduled to testify next, the two sides reached a $1,200,000 settlement instead. Bennett's attorney, Thomas Hayes, confirmed the deal but said the company did not accept responsibility for the crash, calling it a matter of shared responsibility and noting that 'sometimes it's cheaper to settle than fight.' Silver said his client had never been after the money: she wanted the company to acknowledge what happened to her husband. 'The settlement says two things,' he said. 'It recognizes and values the life of Alfred Heekin and the devastation his loss has been for his wife. The second thing is the company says: we were at fault, we're sorry.'

Vermont's wrongful death statute places no cap on damages, and Bennett was a private, out-of-state trucking company, so no statutory limit applied to the recovery. Because the case ended in a mid-trial settlement rather than a verdict, neither side appealed, and the $1.2 million stood in full.