Widow Awarded $44.1 Million After Fatal I-35 Ice Storm Pileup

On February 11, 2021, a rare ice storm turned the southbound TEXpress toll lanes of Interstate 35W near Fort Worth into a chain reaction disaster. Vehicles piled into one another along roughly 1,100 feet of elevated roadway in a wreck that the National Transportation Safety Board counted at about 130 vehicles. Six people were killed and another 36 were taken to area hospitals. Christopher Ray Vardy, 49, of Boyd, Texas, was stopped in the backed-up traffic when an 18-wheeler owned by New Prime Inc. and driven by Steven Ridder rear-ended his truck. His lawyers told the jury that the Tarrant County medical examiner found Vardy's injuries were survivable and that he was conscious and in pain for a period after the impact.

Vardy's widow, Tamara Vardy, a former Boyd ISD superintendent, sued New Prime, Ridder and a long list of other carriers, drivers and road-maintenance defendants. The suit was filed in Dallas County rather than Tarrant County, where the crash happened, because several defendants were based there, and defense efforts to move the case to Tarrant County failed. The Law Offices of Frank L. Branson, P.C. represented the family. The firm says the case was tried over two weeks in the 44th District Court by John Burkhead, Tim Newsom and Debbie Dudley Branson, with Dallas appellate lawyer Jeffrey Levinger on the team.

At trial, the family's lawyers argued that New Prime never trained Ridder to handle icy roads and that he was driving too fast for the conditions when he struck the back of the pileup. The jury found Ridder negligent and found New Prime grossly negligent for recklessly employing an unfit driver. Jurors assigned no responsibility to the other drivers and carriers swept into the case, including Sonic Logistics, Sierra Mountain Express, Coca-Cola Southwest Beverages and J.B. Hunt Transport.

On December 12, 2025, the jury returned a verdict of $44.1 million: $24.1 million in compensatory damages, with 75 percent of the responsibility assigned to Ridder, whose share New Prime has said it is responsible for, and 25 percent to NTE Express, the private operator of the toll lanes, plus $20 million in punitive damages against New Prime alone. 'Trucking companies have the obligation to make sure their big rigs are being operated safely,' Frank L. Branson said in a statement for the firm, 'which means taking extra precautions during extreme weather conditions.'

The verdict has not turned into money yet. On December 16, 2025, New Prime filed a post-trial motion asking the court to enter a take-nothing judgment against the Vardy family instead. New Prime argues that settlements the family already reached with other defendants, whose terms have not been made public, exceed the compensatory award, and that Texas's statutory cap on exemplary damages limits or eliminates the punitive award. The company also contends that because the jury found Ridder himself was not grossly negligent, the punitive finding cannot stand. As of this writing, no ruling on that motion has been reported.