Newport News Jury Holds Trucking Company Liable After Parked Tractor-Trailer Contributes to Teen's Death
After trial: The verdict was returned on February 20, 2026. We could not confirm whether post-trial motions or an appeal have been filed, so the outcome may not yet be final.
Won by Fried Goldberg LLC.
A Newport News jury found USA Truck, LLC and its driver responsible for a March 2023 crash that killed a 17-year-old passenger on Jefferson Avenue. The truck had been left parked in a travel lane while the driver went into a restaurant. After a six-day trial the jury awarded $2.25 million to the teenager's two siblings and mother, and declined to award punitive damages.
What happened
On a March evening in 2023, a tractor-trailer driver named Leonard Couplin pulled onto Jefferson Avenue in Newport News, Virginia, stopped in the right lane, and walked into a fast food restaurant. He left the rig where it was. A few minutes later a car carrying a 17-year-old passenger came up the road, driven by a 16-year-old. The car struck two other vehicles and then collided with the parked tractor-trailer. The passenger died from the injuries.
The teenager's mother and two siblings sued the driver and his employer, USA Truck, LLC, in the Newport News Circuit Court. The case, Etheridge v. USA Truck, went to trial in February 2026 and ran six days. Joseph Fried of Fried Goldberg represented the family. Ashley Winsky of Moran Reeves Conn defended the trucking company and its driver, according to Courtroom View Network coverage of the trial.
The dispute was about cause. In his opening, Fried told jurors the driver had left the truck unattended for more than 20 minutes without setting out reflective warning triangles, and that he could have avoided the whole episode by staying parked nearby, where the truck had been safely positioned minutes earlier. Winsky argued the opposite: that the only proximate cause of the crash was the conduct of the young driver of the car, who she said was traveling faster than surrounding traffic and made an unsafe lane change with an obstructed view, as surveillance video showed.
On February 20, 2026, the jury sided with the family. It found the trucking company and its driver responsible and returned a total of $2.25 million: $950,000 to each of the teenager's two siblings and $350,000 to his mother. Jurors considered a request for punitive damages and declined to award any.
The verdict came in a case where the car's driver was not a defendant at trial and the defense put the blame squarely on him. A jury that accepted some of that account could have returned nothing. Instead it attached liability to a truck that was sitting in a lane of traffic with no one at the wheel.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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