Greyhound Rollover on an Icy Texas Highway: $7.2 Million Dallas County Verdict
Won by Zehl & Associates.
A Dallas County jury awarded Greyhound passenger Ashley Reedy $7.2 million after a phone-distracted driver rolled the bus on an icy stretch of Interstate 40.
What happened
In December 2007, a Greyhound bus crossed the Texas Panhandle on Interstate 40 at night, in snow, on a stretch of highway that had turned to ice. The driver, Rashad Nichols, was running above 60 miles per hour. When traffic from a wreck slowed ahead of him and he braked, the heavy bus got away from him. It slid, lost its footing on the ice, and rolled over in Wheeler County.
Ashley Reedy was a 24-year-old passenger from Colorado. The rollover left her with head, neck, and back injuries. She was not the only one hurt: a second passenger was injured in the same crash, and the firm went on to represent both of them in court.
Reedy's case was filed in the 193rd District Court of Dallas County, Texas (Case No. DC-09-09239-L). Attorneys Ryan Zehl and Kevin Haynes, then practicing as Fitts Zehl LLP, tried it over roughly three weeks. Their case rested on two failures. First, the driver's attention: phone records showed Nichols had used his cell phone 17 times in the three hours before the crash. Second, the company's judgment in putting him behind the wheel. Nichols carried three speeding convictions before Greyhound hired him, and the lawyers pressed Greyhound on its hiring, its training, and its control of driver speed.
The jury found both Greyhound and its driver grossly negligent. It awarded Reedy $2.2 million in compensatory damages and $4.8 million in punitive damages, with her verdict reported at $7.2 million. Punitive damages are unusual in an ordinary motor vehicle case, which made the gross negligence finding stand out. The jury returned its decision on December 19, 2011, and the court entered judgment in early 2012.
The firm describes the result as the largest verdict against Greyhound in the company's history and, at the time, the largest verdict in Dallas County. The figure the firm cites today, about $18.7 million, reflects the combined recovery for the two passengers it represented, not Reedy's individual verdict, which the jury set at $7.2 million. The sources reviewed for this account do not report that her award was reduced, remitted, or overturned on appeal.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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