$10 Million Verdict for Family of Christopher Short, Killed by Fatigued Marvin Keller Trucking Driver on I-64
Won by Isaacs & Isaacs.
An eight-person federal jury awarded $10 million to the widow and two children of Christopher Short, 44, who died when a Marvin Keller Trucking driver crossed the I-64 median in Bath County, Kentucky, in March 2019.
What happened
Just before midnight on March 13, 2019, Christopher Short, 44, of Mount Sterling, Kentucky, was driving westbound on Interstate 64 in Bath County when a Marvin Keller Trucking semi-truck traveling eastbound crossed the grassy median and struck his pickup head-on. The collision pushed Short's truck through a guardrail and down an embankment. Short died at the scene. He was survived by his wife, Joy Short, and four children, two of whom were minors at the time.
The defense argued at trial that the driver, John Walls of Beecher City, Illinois, lost control because of an involuntary cough-related syncope episode that caused a brief loss of consciousness. Isaacs and Isaacs attorneys Jon Heck and David Scott challenged that account directly, presenting evidence that Walls had a documented history of sleep disorders and had failed to disclose that condition when renewing his commercial driver's license. The plaintiff's theory was straightforward: Walls fell asleep at the wheel, and Marvin Keller Trucking put a medically unfit driver on the highway.
Trial ran five days in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky in Lexington. The case number was 5:2019-cv-00471. At the close of evidence, all eight jurors, whose verdict had to be unanimous under federal rules, returned a $10 million award for the Short family in December 2021.
The verdict's financial weight proved fatal to the company. Marvin Keller Trucking, an Illinois-based carrier, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Central District of Illinois on April 22, 2022, roughly four months after the jury's decision. No appellate reduction of the award has been reported in court records or press coverage reviewed for this summary.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.FreightWaves: Illinois trucking company files for bankruptcy after nuclear verdict (Clarissa Hawes, Apr. 26, 2022)·Archived copy
- 2.Justia: Short et al v. Marvin Keller Trucking, Inc. et al, No. 5:2019cv00471 (E.D. Ky. 2021), Doc. 77
- 3.Justia: Short et al v. Marvin Keller Trucking, Inc. et al, No. 5:2019cv00471 (E.D. Ky. 2021), Doc. 96
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