Nassau jury awards $141 million over log truck wreck where company calls driver 'unfit'
A Nassau County jury has awarded $141.5 million to people injured by a logging truck wreck involving a man whose employer later labeled him “unfit to operate” the tractor-trailer.
“This jury wanted to send a message, and they did,” attorney Curry Pajcic said about the verdict, which included $125 million in punitive damages, for the lawsuit against driver Ellis Trollinger; his employer, K&N Logging LLC; and Candi Legree, the truck's owner.
A company lawyer conceded in a court filing that Trollinger had a history that included charges of DUI, possession of methamphetamine, careless driving, speeding in a commercial vehicle and causing a crash.
The company “was grossly negligent in its hiring, training, supervision, employment and entrustment of Trollinger as a truck driver,” said a document called a pretrial stipulation that K&N’s attorney, John Moffitt Howell, and an attorney from Pajcic’s firm filed in court last month, before the lawsuit was sent to a jury.
The stipulation left the jury to decide what payment was due for the wreck, in which the 60,000-pound logging truck traveling an estimated 67 mph hit the back of a two-door Toyota, beginning a five-vehicle wreck in backed-up traffic.
The Toyota's driver, Angel Rodriguez-Santiago, received injuries to his head, neck, back and shoulder while his 5-year-old niece in a booster seat behind him had severe damage that included a traumatic brain injury and other head, neck and spine injuries, Pajcic's firm argued in a lawsuit for that family and for Michael Miller, whose car was in front of the Toyota and was totaled. Miller received serious back and leg injuries as well, the suit said.
Trollinger was cited for failing to maintain a safe distance and careless driving, but Pajcic said the crash showcased a danger happening regularly in growing Nassau County, where trucks carry logs from swampy North Florida and South Georgia woods down U.S. 1 and Florida 200 to pulp and paper mills.
Trucks doing that work are subject to extensive federal regulation, but Pajcic said that in a deposition, Legree ― listed in state records as the manager and representative of now-defunct K&N Logging ― said she had never read the government's Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations and didn't know anything about them.
He said evidence in the case showed Trollinger was paid in cash when he completed trucking runs and that Legree said she hadn't checked his driving or arrest history before putting him to work.
Pajcic said people in Nassau County deserve to have trucking companies following federal codes, and said having to pay for big-ticket verdicts is a way to motivate companies, or their insurers, to pay more attention to the rules.
(This story was updated to match the tractor-trailer weight referenced in the lawsuit.)
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Nassau County verdict: $141 million for people hurt by 'unfit' trucker
