Titus County Jury Returns $730 Million Verdict for the Family of a Great-Grandmother Killed by a Submarine-Propeller Superload, After Landstar Settled for $50 Million on the Eve of Trial

On February 21, 2016, Toni Combest, a 73-year-old great-grandmother, was driving north on U.S. Highway 271 in Titus County, Texas, near Mount Pleasant. Coming the other way was one of the largest loads that can legally move on an American highway: a flatbed truck operated by Landstar Ranger, Inc. hauling a 197,000-pound propeller for a U.S. Navy nuclear submarine from El Paso toward Texarkana. The superload was traveling with a front escort vehicle from 2A Pilot Cars and a rear escort from S&M Pilot Service. As the convoy approached a narrow two-lane bridge, the truck left its authorized lane and struck Mrs. Combest's vehicle at roughly 65 miles per hour. She died at the scene.

Her four adult children sued Landstar Ranger and both escort companies in the 276th Judicial District Court in Titus County, in a case styled Ramsey, et al. v. Landstar Ranger, Inc., et al. The theory was straightforward: this part of East Texas is full of narrow bridges, and the companies moving a load that heavy had no plan for safely getting it across this one. Brent Goudarzi of Goudarzi & Young tried the case for the family alongside co-counsel Nelson Roach.

The defendants did not all take their chances with a jury. Less than a week before jury selection, Landstar Ranger, the trucking company itself, settled for $50 million. S&M Pilot Service, the rear escort company, settled for $1 million before trial. That $51 million is the money the family actually recovered. The trial went forward against the remaining defendant, 2A Pilot Cars, the company whose driver ran the front escort. Evidence at trial included testimony that the lead pilot vehicle forced Mrs. Combest off the roadway just as she rounded a blind curve leading onto the bridge.

After about a week and a half of trial, the jury returned its verdict on November 22, 2021: $480 million in compensatory damages and $250 million in punitive damages, a combined $730 million. Press coverage at the time ranked it among the largest wrongful death verdicts ever returned for a single victim, and Goudarzi told reporters the number was a message to the pilot-car and heavy-haul industries that juries will hold them accountable for ignoring state law and their own training.

The honest accounting of this case has two lines. The verdict line reads $730 million, but it was returned against a small escort-vehicle company, and no public record documents what, if anything, was ever collected on that judgment. The recovery line reads $51 million in settlements, anchored by the $50 million Landstar paid days before a jury could hear the evidence. Both numbers tell the same story from different directions: the companies that moved that propeller onto a narrow East Texas bridge without a plan paid for it, either at the settlement table or on the verdict form.