About David Harris
David E. Harris is a name partner at Sico Hoelscher Harris LLP and has secured numerous multi-million dollar verdicts and settlements in catastrophic personal injury and death cases. His practice spans automotive and tire product defect litigation, commercial trucking, refinery and workplace accidents, and oil and gas disputes, and he has represented clients from all fifty states as well as Central and South America. A licensed pilot, Harris investigates aircraft and helicopter accidents both domestically and internationally. He is an advocate for broader adoption of vehicle safety systems and has published on what the automotive industry knew about life-saving technology.
He also represents victims of human trafficking and pursued landmark cases against companies profiting from exploitation, work that contributed to the shutdown of Backpage.com. His results include a $41 million commercial accident recovery, a $34 million consumer product liability result, and a $21 million result in Umma Resources, LLC v. Key Energy Services. Harris was named a Super Lawyer at age 33 and has been recognized among the National Trial Lawyers Top 100 and Top 40 Under 40. He earned his J.D. from South Texas College of Law and was admitted to the Texas bar in 2006.
Proven verdicts and settlements
On February 23, 2017, a Werner Enterprises student driver on his eighth day behind the wheel crossed four lanes of Interstate 10 and the median outside Las Cruces, New Mexico, and struck Kathryn Armijo's vehicle head-on, killing her. Her estate sued Werner, the driver, and the driver's trainer over inadequate training and supervision, and a Santa Fe County jury returned a $40.5 million verdict on October 11, 2019, including $10 million in punitive damages. David Harris, a partner at Sico Hoelscher Harris LLP, was plaintiff co-counsel for the estate. No appeal of the verdict has surfaced, and Werner, a large publicly traded and insured motor carrier, is treated as having satisfied the judgment.
On October 10, 2005, a Los Paisanos Autobuses van slid off an icy highway near Denver, Colorado at 70 miles per hour, flipped, and struck a concrete embankment, killing two passengers and injuring five others. A Texas jury in the 327th District Court in El Paso County found the bus company and its driver negligent for operating a van with bald tires and inaccessible seatbelts while the driver ate and drove too fast for the weather, and on December 3, 2010 returned a verdict of more than $124 million. Los Paisanos appealed, and while the appeal was pending the parties settled; in July 2012 the Eighth Court of Appeals in El Paso reversed the trial court's judgment and rendered a new judgment of $5,000,000, divided among fifteen plaintiffs on a pro rata basis under the settlement. David E. Harris of the firm now known as Sico Hoelscher Harris represented the plaintiffs and told a local business paper after the verdict that he could not promise the family would ever collect the full amount the jury awarded.
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is unique and depends on its own facts.
