Federal Jury Awards $7.8 Million After Semi Blocks Oklahoma City Road, Causes High-Speed Crash
Won by Parrish DeVaughn Injury Lawyers.
A federal jury awarded Aldin Lewis $7.8 million after a Chandi 209 Trucking semi pulled onto W. Reno Avenue without stopping at a stop sign, blocking both eastbound lanes and leaving Lewis no room to brake.
What happened
Shortly after midnight on March 3, 2024, Aldin Lewis was driving his 1985 Chevrolet K10 pickup east on W. Reno Avenue in southwest Oklahoma City. A semi-truck operated by Wilayat Hussain, a driver employed by California-based Chandi 209 Trucking, Inc., pulled from a private driveway onto Reno Avenue and failed to stop at the stop sign controlling that movement. The truck swung across both eastbound lanes in the middle of a turn, blocking the road entirely.
Lewis, traveling at approximately 50 miles per hour, could not see the dark trailer in time to stop. His pickup struck the rear of the semi at speed. The collision totaled the truck, which Lewis had inherited from his father, and left him with serious injuries to his neck and head. Medical evaluations recommended surgery on his neck.
Parrish DeVaughn attorney Travis Leverett argued at trial that Hussain's failure to yield was compounded by the trucking company's own negligence in hiring and training a driver with limited English proficiency and inadequate preparation for operating a commercial vehicle in U.S. traffic conditions. The defense denied liability and contended that Lewis bore responsibility for failing to react to the trailer's presence in the roadway.
On March 26, 2026, an Oklahoma City federal jury disagreed. The panel awarded Lewis $4.3 million in actual damages and an additional $3.5 million in punitive damages, reaching a total verdict of $7.8 million. The punitive award reflected the jury's finding that Chandi 209 Trucking's conduct in hiring and supervising Hussain rose to the level of gross negligence.
At the time of the trial, Lewis was supporting his family and expecting a child. No post-verdict reduction has been reported.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
Related truck accident verdicts
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.
A Titus County jury awarded $730 million to the family of Toni Combest, a 73-year-old great-grandmother killed when a Landstar Ranger truck hauling a 197,000-pound Navy submarine propeller struck her car on a narrow Highway 271 bridge, though the family's actual recovery came from pretrial settlements: $50 million from Landstar Ranger and $1 million from escort company S&M Pilot Service, with the verdict itself returned against the small front-escort company 2A Pilot Cars.
A Leon County jury awarded $411,726,608 to Duane Washington, a career Army sergeant left partially paralyzed in a 45-vehicle pileup on Interstate 10 near Tallahassee, in the Second Judicial Circuit's first virtual jury trial. Ben Crump tried the damages case with co-counsel Robert Cox. Liability was entered by default after defendant Top Auto Express stopped responding in the litigation, its lawyer withdrew months before trial, the one-truck Pembroke Pines carrier sat out the Zoom trial undefended, and industry observers called the record number essentially uncollectable beyond the roughly $1 million in insurance that was offered and rejected before trial.
On February 13, 2016, 21-year-old Riley McPherson was killed on U.S. 271 near Gilmer, Texas, when his van struck the side of a Jefferson Trucking flatbed tractor-trailer that was blocking all four lanes of the highway while its driver, on hour 17 of a run home from Ohio, tried to back it into a private driveway. McPherson's parents, Eddie McPherson and Karen Pearson, sued Jefferson Trucking, driver Eric Wayne Jefferson, and Timothy Wayne Jefferson in the 115th District Court of Upshur County. On November 8, 2018, a jury apportioned 65 percent fault to Eric Jefferson, 20 percent to Jefferson Trucking, 10 percent to Timothy Jefferson, and 5 percent to McPherson, and set damages at $260 million, which the comparative-fault finding reduced to $247 million. The defendants appealed, then voluntarily dismissed their own appeal, leaving the trial court judgment intact.