$6 Million Settlement for Construction Worker Struck in Charlotte Crosswalk by Left-Turning Truck
After trial: Mediated settlement of all available liability insurance limits; no trial or appeal applies. The parties' names and the case number were withheld in the report, so no docket could be checked.
Won by Elrod Pope and Trey Cook Law Firm, Lancaster, SC.
A construction worker in a marked Charlotte crosswalk was hit by a left-turning construction truck on August 29, 2022, and suffered a traumatic brain injury with multiple skull fractures. The defense blamed him for failing to keep a lookout, but reconstruction showed the truck at 18 mph with no braking. At a July 29, 2025 mediation the case resolved for $6 million, all available liability insurance limits.
What happened
On August 29, 2022, a construction worker was crossing a street near a busy downtown Charlotte intersection. He was inside a marked crosswalk with an active signal. A construction truck turning left struck him.
He suffered a moderate to severe traumatic brain injury, multiple skull fractures, and hemorrhagic contusions in the bilateral frontal lobes, the lower left temporal lobe, and the front of the right temporal lobe. Advanced imaging later showed encephalomalacia, meaning dead brain tissue, and asymmetrical atrophy in the area of impact. The report says those findings point to an elevated risk of early-onset dementia.
The defense contested liability. It argued the worker was contributorily negligent for failing to keep a proper lookout, and it claimed the truck had been moving at only 1 to 2 miles per hour and that the driver slammed on the brakes just before impact. Under North Carolina's contributory negligence rule, even a small share of fault attributed to a pedestrian can bar recovery, so the argument carried real weight going into the case.
The evidence cut the other way. An eyewitness confirmed the worker had the right of way. Accident reconstruction, corroborated by the truck's own GPS monitoring system, put its speed at 18 miles per hour with no braking before the collision. The worker was thrown about 15 feet backward from the point of impact, which is not consistent with a truck creeping along at a walking pace. The plaintiff's team assembled a neurologist, a life care planner, a vocational expert, an economic consultant, and an accident reconstructionist to support the claim.
Andrew Creech of Elrod Pope Law Firm in Rock Hill, South Carolina, and Trey Cook of the Trey Cook Law Firm in Lancaster, South Carolina, represented the worker in Mecklenburg County Superior Court. The case went to mediation on July 29, 2025, before Bill Brazil of Brazil & Burke in Asheville. It resolved there for $6 million, which was a recovery of all available liability insurance limits. The case settled without a trial, and the reports do not identify the parties or the defense carrier.
The worker's injuries were also covered by workers' compensation, and the report notes that the carrier's lien was admissible under North Carolina Rule of Evidence 414. The reports give no figure for how the proceeds were divided.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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