Wrongful Death Truck Case Settles for $6.09 Million, Ranked Ninth Among All Texas Settlements in 2019
Won by Sutliff & Stout.
After a Detmar Logistics frac sand truck fatally injured Nanasha Ra-Nee Mild in 2018, Sutliff & Stout identified six liable parties and secured a $6.09 million settlement that ranked ninth among all Texas civil settlements in 2019.
What happened
On September 7, 2018, Nanasha Ra-Nee Mild, 39, died at Shannon Medical Center in San Angelo, Texas, from injuries she sustained in a collision involving a commercial truck operated by Rodney O'Bryant. O'Bryant drove for Detmar Logistics, a San Antonio-based company specializing in frac sand hauling for oilfield customers across Texas. A lifelong San Angelo resident, Mild had earned All-State softball honors at Central High School and devoted years to animal rescue work in the area, including volunteering with a program that paired service dogs with veterans. She left behind her parents, Stephen and Jeannie Mild, and a young daughter.
Four days after her death, the estate and Mild's parents filed suit in Bexar County District Court, where Detmar Logistics is registered and headquartered. Hank Stout and Graham Sutliff of Sutliff & Stout took the case.
Rather than limit the complaint to the primary carrier, the attorneys examined the layered corporate structure behind the trucking operation and identified additional responsible parties. The complaint named six defendants: Detmar Logistics LLC, Detmar Logistics II Inc., Detmar Logistics Leasing LLC, O'Bryant personally, Good Ol Boy Investments LLC, and the Texas Department of Transportation. Three distinct Detmar entities were named, each reflecting a separate corporate function in the operation. The inclusion of Good Ol Boy Investments LLC and the Texas Department of Transportation extended the liability picture beyond the employer-employee relationship to questions of vehicle ownership and roadway conditions.
The legal theories rested on negligent tort, respondeat superior, and vicarious liability. Respondeat superior tied Detmar directly to O'Bryant's on-duty conduct. Vicarious liability extended accountability to the affiliated corporate entities. A court-appointed guardian ad litem represented Mild's minor daughter, who held a separate wrongful death claim as a surviving child under Texas law.
The case resolved in 2019 with a settlement of $6,087,629. TopVerdict, which tracks civil case outcomes across all Texas courts, ranked the result ninth on its Top 100 Settlements in Texas for 2019, a list that draws from every area of civil litigation and every jurisdiction in the state.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
More proven verdicts from Sutliff & Stout
All Sutliff & Stout proven verdicts →Sutliff and Stout won a $1.94 million wrongful death verdict against ExxonMobil for the family of Alfredo Pagayon, a Harris County man who died after an ExxonMobil cashier attacked him at a Houston convenience store; the Texas Supreme Court reversed the judgment in 2017, ruling that the employer owed no supervisory duty under the circumstances.
A Montgomery County jury found a driver 70 percent liable for striking a 16-year-old pedestrian who had crossed outside a marked crosswalk, awarding $38,124.88 that was reduced to $26,687.42 after comparative-fault apportionment.
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.