Dallas Jury Awards $3.6 Million After 24-Year-Old Killed by Stalled Semi in Travel Lane on I-635
After trial: The jury set damages at $4 million and put 10 percent of the fault on the young man who was killed, so the trucking company and its driver owe the other 90 percent, $3.6 million. Both defendants appealed; the appeal was pending in the Texas Fifth Court of Appeals as of August 2025.
Won by Cowen Rodriguez Peacock.
A Dallas County jury returned a $4 million wrongful death verdict against Newkirk Logistics after a tractor-trailer stopped in an active lane of Interstate 635 with no warning devices, killing Robert Buntyn, 24.
What happened
Shortly before 10 p.m. on September 2, 2021, Desiree Boyd was hauling a load westbound on Interstate 635 near the State Highway 121 interchange in Dallas when her tractor-trailer ran over road debris. The impact disconnected a brake airline and disabled the rig. Boyd brought the truck to a stop in an active travel lane. She did not move to the shoulder, did not deploy flares or reflective triangles, and did not activate her four-way hazard lights.
Robert Buntyn, 24, was driving along the same stretch of freeway when he came upon the darkened, stationary semi with no time to react. He struck the rear of the trailer and was killed. His mother, Dara Harris, and his father, Bryan Buntyn, filed suit against Newkirk Logistics, Inc., the company that owned the truck, and against Boyd directly.
The plaintiffs were represented by Michael Cowen, Malorie Peacock, and Benjamin Julius. At trial in Dallas County Court at Law No. 1, before Judge D'Metria Benson, the attorneys argued two parallel failures: Boyd chose to stop in a live lane rather than reach the shoulder, and Newkirk had not adequately trained its drivers on what to do when a mechanical problem strikes on a busy freeway.
The jury, which returned its verdict on June 13, 2024, apportioned fault at 50 percent to Newkirk Logistics, 40 percent to Boyd, and 10 percent to Robert Buntyn. It awarded $4 million in damages covering past and future loss of companionship and society, and past and future mental anguish for his parents. Because of the 10 percent comparative fault finding against Robert, the collectible judgment was reduced to $3.6 million.
Newkirk and Boyd appealed. As of August 2025, the case was pending before the Texas Fifth Court of Appeals (No. 05-24-01263-CV), with briefing complete and oral argument not yet scheduled.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.WFAA (ABC Dallas): 'Dallas jury awards nearly $4M to family of 24-year-old who died after hitting stalled semi-truck' (2024)
- 2.Texas Lawyer (Law.com): 'Son's Death Not His Fault, $4M Verdict Goes Against Trucking Company' (Jun. 26, 2024)
- 3.Exlitem Jury Verdict Report: 'Newkirk Logistics Hit with 50% Liability in $2M Wrongful Death Lawsuit' (2024)·Archived copy
- 4.JudyRecords: Texas 5th Court of Appeals, No. 05-24-01263-CV (appeal pending as of Aug. 2025)
More proven verdicts from Cowen Rodriguez Peacock
All Cowen Rodriguez Peacock proven verdicts →A Hidalgo County jury awarded $17.5 million to a warehouse forklift operator whose left leg was amputated below the knee after a Yale lift truck with no occupant restraint system pinned him against a column; the court entered final judgment of $10.5 million after apportionment and prejudgment interest.
A jury in Austin awarded $8.5 million to a tech executive who suffered a traumatic brain injury after falling ten feet into a steel container at a Bee Cave solid waste transfer station, with the jury assigning 90% of fault to the facility operators.
Related truck accident verdicts
A Nassau County jury found two trucking companies responsible for the 2017 chain-reaction crash on I-95 near Yulee that killed 18-year-old Connor Dzion, returning a $1 billion verdict that Curry Pajcic won for the teen's parents.
A Titus County jury awarded $730 million to the family of Toni Combest, a 73-year-old great-grandmother killed when a Landstar Ranger truck hauling a 197,000-pound Navy submarine propeller struck her car on a narrow Highway 271 bridge, though the family's actual recovery came from pretrial settlements: $50 million from Landstar Ranger and $1 million from escort company S&M Pilot Service, with the verdict itself returned against the small front-escort company 2A Pilot Cars.
A Leon County jury awarded $411,726,608 to Duane Washington, a career Army sergeant left partially paralyzed in a 45-vehicle pileup on Interstate 10 near Tallahassee, in the Second Judicial Circuit's first virtual jury trial. Ben Crump tried the damages case with co-counsel Robert Cox. Liability was entered by default after defendant Top Auto Express stopped responding in the litigation, its lawyer withdrew months before trial, the one-truck Pembroke Pines carrier sat out the Zoom trial undefended, and industry observers called the record number essentially uncollectable beyond the roughly $1 million in insurance that was offered and rejected before trial.
On February 13, 2016, 21-year-old Riley McPherson was killed on U.S. 271 near Gilmer, Texas, when his van struck the side of a Jefferson Trucking flatbed tractor-trailer that was blocking all four lanes of the highway while its driver, on hour 17 of a run home from Ohio, tried to back it into a private driveway. McPherson's parents, Eddie McPherson and Karen Pearson, sued Jefferson Trucking, driver Eric Wayne Jefferson, and Timothy Wayne Jefferson in the 115th District Court of Upshur County. On November 8, 2018, a jury apportioned 65 percent fault to Eric Jefferson, 20 percent to Jefferson Trucking, 10 percent to Timothy Jefferson, and 5 percent to McPherson, and set damages at $260 million, which the comparative-fault finding reduced to $247 million. The defendants appealed, then voluntarily dismissed their own appeal, leaving the trial court judgment intact.