$23.5 Million Verdict Against Swift Transportation for Meth-Impaired Driver
After trial: Judgment after comparative-fault reduction; $23.5 million gross verdict.
Won by Shamberg Johnson & Bergman.
A federal jury in Wichita awarded $23.5 million to a Yellow Freight co-driver left with debilitating injuries after a Swift Transportation driver, impaired by methamphetamine, backed her rig from a rest stop onto U.S. Highway 54 in New Mexico.
What happened
On the morning of March 16, 2006, a Swift Transportation driver attempted to pull into a highway rest stop off U.S. Highway 54 in rural New Mexico. Unable to complete the turn, she reversed her tractor-trailer back into oncoming traffic. A Yellow Freight tractor-trailer, traveling the highway, could not avoid the collision. Terry Frederick was in the sleeping berth of the Yellow Freight truck at the time of impact.
The crash left Frederick with severe, debilitating injuries. He and his wife Donna brought suit in federal court in Wichita, Kansas, against Swift Transportation. The case centered not only on the mechanics of the crash but on what Swift knew, and ignored, about the driver it had put behind the wheel.
Attorneys Lynn R. Johnson, Scott E. Nutter, and Douglas R. Bradley of Shamberg Johnson and Bergman built the record at trial. Evidence showed the Swift driver had lied on her job application, concealing prior drug use, felony convictions, and past license suspensions. She lacked the experience and training required to safely operate a commercial rig. Post-accident drug testing confirmed she had methamphetamine in her system at the time of the crash. Accident reconstruction disproved the driver's claim that the Yellow Freight truck had struck her from behind.
After six and a half hours of deliberation, the jury returned a verdict of $19.5 million for Terry Frederick and $4 million for Donna Frederick, totaling $23.5 million. The jury allocated 35 percent of fault to the Yellow Freight side, reducing the judgment to $15.275 million. The verdict was described at the time as the largest personal injury verdict in Kansas history.
Swift Transportation appealed, arguing among other things that the district court should not have allowed evidence of the driver's drug use and that she was acting outside the scope of her employment. The United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit rejected both arguments in an August 2010 opinion and affirmed the $15.275 million judgment in full.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.Frederick v. Swift Transportation Co., Nos. 09-3080/09-3082 (10th Cir. 2010), court opinion via FindLaw·Archived copy
- 2.TruckersReport.com forum post citing Phoenix Business Journal (Dec. 1, 2008)·Archived copy
- 3.Humphrey Farrington and McClain, 'Appeals Court Upholds Record Setting Verdict Against Swift Transportation'·Archived copy
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