$30 Million Verdict After Trainee Truck Driver Turned Left Into Oncoming Traffic With Trainer Asleep

Thomas was a passenger in a car his girlfriend was driving on Highway 9 outside Cheraw, South Carolina, late on the night of March 1, 2024. They had a green light and were driving straight through an intersection when a Prime, Inc. tractor-trailer traveling in the opposite direction suddenly turned left directly into their path. There was no time to react before the truck struck their car.

The truck was being driven by a Prime trainee with only about 90 days of commercial driving experience. His co-driver, the trainer who was supposed to be supervising him and catching mistakes like a misjudged left turn across oncoming traffic, was asleep in the truck's sleeper berth at the time of the crash, according to Thomas's attorneys.

Thomas survived, but the injuries were severe: a fractured cervical spine, a ventral epidural hematoma that required emergency surgery, an acetabulum (hip socket) fracture that required a total hip replacement, and a traumatic brain injury that left him with permanent cognitive, memory, and emotional deficits. He had worked as a heavy equipment operator before the crash. Afterward, his lawyers argued, he was unemployable, with future medical and life care costs estimated at more than $11 million.

Thomas sued Prime, Inc. and the driver in Chesterfield County Court of Common Pleas. He was represented by David Yarborough Jr. and Liam Duffy of Yarborough Applegate along with Reynolds Blankenship, working with Franklin Joyner Jr. of the Joyner Law Firm in Cheraw. Their case centered on a straightforward argument: Prime put a driver with three months of experience behind the wheel of an 80,000-pound truck and then let the person responsible for supervising him sleep through the drive, leaving no one alert enough to catch a dangerous turn before it happened.

At trial, Thomas's side called 17 witnesses over two and a half days, laying out both the mechanics of the crash and the difference between the man Thomas had been, a working man supporting himself through physical labor, and the man he became after the crash, permanently disabled and reliant on others. They asked the jury to account for more than $12 million in past and future medical expenses, lost wages, and lost earning capacity, plus damages for the pain, disability, and disfigurement that no medical bill captures.

The jury did not need long to decide. Deliberations lasted less than an hour. On May 22, 2026, they returned a verdict of $30 million for Thomas.

Nelson Mullins, a large South Carolina firm, subsequently appeared in the case as appellate counsel, a step that typically signals a defendant is pursuing an appeal of the verdict. As of this writing, no appellate ruling has been reported, and the case's ultimate outcome on appeal is not yet known.