Family of Young Mother Killed at Atlanta Highway Construction Site Settles Wrongful Death Suit Against Contractor
Won by Hagen Rosskopf, LLC and McArthur Law Firm.
Stevie Bryant, a young mother, died in May 2020 after a crash on the Downtown Connector in Atlanta sent the car she was riding in into an impact attenuator that had been left improperly installed at a highway construction site. Her family sued the contractor, Precision 2000, Inc., in DeKalb County State Court. The case settled for $12.5 million in 2025, less than a week before jury selection was to begin.
What happened
On the evening of May 18, 2020, at about 5:43 p.m., Stevie Bryant was riding in the front passenger seat of a Mercedes sedan driven by her fiance in the southbound HOV lane of the Downtown Connector, the stretch of I-75/85 through Atlanta. A Dodge Ram pickup changing lanes lost control and struck the passenger side of the Mercedes, which spun counterclockwise. The car hit an impact attenuator and then the exposed end of a concrete median barrier.
Bryant was cut from the car and taken to Grady Memorial Hospital. The crash had caused massive blunt trauma to her chest, abdomen and pelvis. Trauma surgeons operated, and at one point she regained blood pressure and a pulse, but she died at 8:00 p.m. of internal hemorrhaging. The cause of death was recorded as blunt force injuries to the torso. She left behind a minor daughter.
The barrier was part of a Georgia Department of Transportation project. Precision 2000, Inc. was building a gravity wall along the left shoulder to separate the southbound lanes from the grassy median. The family's lawyers argued that the contractor had placed only two modules of a Traffix SLED attenuator in front of the wall end when the installation manual and state requirements called for four, and had never attached the device to the wall with the required piece. They also argued that the contractor had no one on the project who knew how to install the device and had left the site in that condition for the night.
The contractor's position was that the Dodge Ram driver, who was not a defendant, caused the collision, and that the Mercedes was thrown into a barrier under construction. The suit named only Precision 2000. The family claimed damages for the full value of Bryant's life, along with her pain and suffering, medical bills and funeral costs, and sought punitive damages.
The case was in discovery for years in DeKalb County State Court. Under the consolidated pretrial order entered in June 2025, the plaintiffs' trial team from McArthur Law Firm was Katherine McArthur, Lindsey Macon, Caleb Walker, Holly Stephens and Michael Thompson, working with Bruce Hagen and Matt Hagen of Hagen Rosskopf in Decatur. The plaintiffs estimated four to five days of trial and the defense seven to ten.
After years of litigation, the defendant and its insurer agreed to a $12.5 million settlement less than a week before jury selection, according to the Daily Report. The settlement is for Bryant's surviving child, a minor daughter.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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