Semi Jackknife on Black Ice Kills Ronald Alleman; Misny Wins Settlement Including Trucking Safety Changes
Won by The Law Offices of Tim Misny.
After a semi-truck jackknifed on black ice and killed Ronald Alleman in 2008, Tim Misny negotiated a settlement with the trucking company that included both financial compensation for the family and mandatory procedural changes to prevent similar crashes.
What happened
On a winter morning in 2008, Ronald Alleman was killed when a semi-truck jackknifed on black ice and struck his vehicle. He left behind a wife, Lisa, and a two-year-old son named Gray. The collision was sudden and catastrophic, the kind of crash that leaves a family with no income, no guidance, and no clear path forward.
Lisa Alleman's father had been represented by Tim Misny in an earlier personal-injury matter and called him immediately after the crash. Misny took the case and began building a claim against the trucking company, focusing on what the company knew about road conditions that day and whether its driver and dispatch protocols met Ohio safety standards.
The negotiation stretched over several years. Misny pursued not only monetary damages for the loss of a husband and father but also structural changes to the way the trucking company operated. The final settlement included a financial payment to the Alleman family and a commitment from the company to alter its internal procedures, aimed at reducing the risk of similar accidents under icy conditions.
Lisa Alleman later described the dual nature of the outcome plainly: 'Making them pay does not exclusively pertain to monetary references, there are also changes in the way things are done.' That framing, accountability through both compensation and operational reform, reflects how Misny has long described his purpose in trucking and wrongful-death cases.
In the years after the settlement closed, Misny remained close to the Alleman family. He accepted Lisa's request to become godfather to Gray. In 2024, he attended Gray's high school graduation, a personal chapter that followed more than fifteen years after the crash that started the relationship.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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