Nassau County Jury Returns $1 Billion in I-95 Crash That Killed UNF Freshman Connor Dzion
After trial: Most of the award fell on a carrier that did not defend the case and carried a $1 million policy; the bulk of the verdict is uncollectable.
Won by Pajcic & Pajcic.
A Nassau County jury found two trucking companies responsible for the 2017 chain-reaction crash on I-95 near Yulee that killed 18-year-old Connor Dzion, returning a $1 billion verdict that Curry Pajcic won for the teen's parents.
What happened
On the night of September 4, 2017, over Labor Day weekend, a box truck operated by AJD Business Services crashed on Interstate 95 near State Road 200 in Nassau County, Florida. The driver later told rescuers he had been looking at his phone. The truck flipped and caught fire, and southbound traffic backed up behind the wreck for more than an hour.
Connor Dzion, 18, was sitting in that stopped traffic. He was driving home after visiting his girlfriend, two weeks into his freshman year at the University of North Florida, where he had a scholarship after graduating from Creekside High School. At about 10:34 p.m., a tractor-trailer owned by Kahkashan Carrier slammed into the line of stopped cars. The truck was set on cruise control at roughly 70 miles per hour, and its driver, Yadwinder Sangha, did not brake until about one second before impact. The collision killed Connor.
Curry Pajcic of Pajcic & Pajcic represented Connor's parents, Melissa and David Dzion. Over a five-day trial in Nassau County, he laid out a record of failures by both companies. The AJD driver was operating without a commercial license, had logged hours past federal limits, and carried a history of prior crashes, speeding, and logbook violations. Pajcic told the jury the company never ran a meaningful background check before putting him on the road. On the second truck, he pointed to the cruise control and the lack of any reaction, saying the driver "never hit his brakes until one second before impact."
On August 20, 2021, after about four hours of deliberation, the jury returned $1 billion. It set $100 million in compensatory damages for Connor's pain and suffering and his parents' loss, assigning 90 percent of that to Kahkashan and its driver and 10 percent to AJD. On top of that, it added $900 million in punitive damages against AJD alone.
Most of the punitive figure is unlikely to be collected. AJD had stopped taking part in the case in 2019, and the court entered a default against the company before trial. Its insurance had been canceled, leaving little to recover against the $900 million award. After their son's death, Melissa and David Dzion started the Connor Dzion Foundation, which works on distracted-driving prevention.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.Transport Topics: Jury Issues $1 Billion Verdict Against Two Carriers in Fatal Crash·Archived copy
- 2.FreightWaves: Jury hands down billion-dollar verdict in Florida against 2 trucking companies·Archived copy
- 3.News4Jax: $1B verdict returned in Nassau County crash that killed UNF student·Archived copy
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