$2.13 Million Judgment Against Trucking Company After Highway Crash That Killed Young Woman's Fiance
After trial: The Indiana Court of Appeals affirmed the judgment on May 11, 2017. The $7.1 million in damages was reduced to $2.13 million because the jury assigned 30 percent of the fault to the trucking company and driver.
Won by Schafer & Schafer LLP.
A Tippecanoe County jury found in February 2016 that Brittany Johnson had $7.1 million in damages from a 2008 crash on Interstate 65 that killed her fiance and left her with a traumatic brain injury. It assigned 30 percent of the fault to Sandberg Trucking and its driver, Kimiel Horn, which produced a $2.13 million judgment. The Indiana Court of Appeals affirmed in 2017.
What happened
Before dawn on April 27, 2008, Kimiel Horn was driving a Sandberg Trucking tractor-trailer south on Interstate 65 in Tippecanoe County, Indiana, when several deer ran into the road. He could not avoid them and struck one, leaving its remains across both lanes. Horn pulled onto the right shoulder, about 250 feet past the point of impact, and climbed out to look at a headlamp hanging from its wire.
He did not turn on the truck's hazard flashers or set out reflective triangles. About ninety seconds after he stopped, he got back in the cab and switched the flashers on. At around that time a car came down the highway from behind him. It was driven by Joshua, Brittany Johnson's fiance, with Johnson in the passenger seat. Joshua swerved hard left, apparently to avoid the deer, overcorrected to the right and slid into the back of the parked truck. He died at the scene.
Johnson was 22. She had a traumatic brain injury, multiple skull fractures, multiple rib fractures and a ruptured spleen, and she is deaf in her left ear. She was left with permanent facial nerve palsy, scarring on her forehead, memory loss, trouble learning new things, post-concussive migraines and problems with gait and balance. A neurologist testified that she came close to not surviving and that her deficits will last the rest of her life, including an increased risk of dementia.
Johnson sued Sandberg and Horn in 2009. Her case rested on a federal motor carrier safety rule requiring a driver whose commercial vehicle stops on a highway or shoulder to activate the hazard flashers immediately. The defense argued the rule did not apply because Horn was not engaged in interstate commerce, and asked the court to bar it from evidence. The trial court refused. A transportation consultant told the jury that Horn's delay in activating his flashers was the cause of the second collision.
The case was tried to a jury on February 23, 24 and 26, 2016, and the verdict came on the last of those days. It put Johnson's damages at $7.1 million and found Joshua 70 percent at fault and Sandberg and Horn 30 percent at fault. Under Indiana's comparative fault rules, that left a judgment of $2.13 million against the trucking company and its driver.
Timothy S. Schafer, Timothy S. Schafer II and Todd S. Schafer of Schafer & Schafer represented Johnson. On May 11, 2017, the Indiana Court of Appeals affirmed in full. It held that Horn owed a duty to other motorists, that the federal rule applied to intrastate driving, that the evidence supported causation, and that the damages were not so large as to shock the court.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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