Log Truck Driver Hurt by Falling Logs at Smurfit-Stone Mill Wins $3.97 Million, Capped at $2.5 Million

On July 11, 2008, Allen Ginn, a 49-year-old log truck driver employed by Ginn Trucking, hauled a load of logs to a mill owned by Smurfit-Stone Container in Missoula County, Montana. After he arrived and released the load, several logs fell on him. He was hurt badly: skull fractures and bleeding around the brain, fractures in the lower spine, and breaks to his right hip and pelvis. He was in a coma for several days. The lasting effects include a brain injury, occasional seizures, memory loss and chronic fatigue.

The Ginns' case was that the mill had no safe way to unload. Their lawyers argued that the company did not provide an operable rack to hold the logs in place and used an unloading procedure that was dangerous because the load was not secured first.

Smurfit-Stone was in Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Delaware, which shaped how the case could be brought. After the Ginns asked the bankruptcy court for permission to pursue their claim, the two sides negotiated a stipulation that the court approved on June 28, 2012. It let the Ginns sue in Montana state court and required Smurfit to set aside cash and Rock-Tenn stock to satisfy any settlement or judgment. The price was a limit on what the Ginns could recover: according to their appellate brief, the stipulation capped their damages at $2.5 million.

The Ginns filed suit in Missoula County and mailed the complaint to the company lawyer the stipulation named to accept service. When no answer came, they served the papers again by hand at Rock-Tenn's front desk. Smurfit still did not respond, and the court entered default on liability on September 27, 2012. Smurfit appeared only after that, and the District Court refused to undo the default, finding it willful.

That left causation and damages for a jury. Smurfit argued that an earlier tractor-trailer crash, not the mill accident, accounted for Ginn's disability, and its medical expert testified that the brain injury was mild. After a four-day trial before Judge John W. Larson, the court entered judgment on January 21, 2014. The jury awarded Allen Ginn $3,470,899.56 and his wife, Laurie Ginn, $500,000 for loss of consortium, for a total of $3,970,899.56. Because of the bankruptcy stipulation, the most the Ginns could recover on that judgment was $2.5 million.

Smurfit appealed, arguing the default should have been set aside. On March 17, 2015, the Montana Supreme Court affirmed in Ginn v. Smurfit Stone Container Enterprises, 2015 MT 81. Justice Michael Wheat's opinion held that Smurfit had ignored service in a manner it had itself negotiated, and that the Ginns would be prejudiced by further delay after years without Ginn's income, since they remained bound by the liability cap they had bargained away. The court declined to reach Smurfit's constitutional arguments because they had not been raised in the District Court. Alexander (Zander) Blewett III and Kurt M. Jackson of Hoyt & Blewett PLLC in Great Falls represented the Ginns, and the court's docket shows the case closed on remittitur on April 2, 2015.