Los Angeles Injury Lawyer Blog

We recently won a $7 million trial verdict in a wrongful death auto accident case involving the negligence of a big rig tractor-tractor truck.

Our client’s husband was a passenger in a pick up truck being driven by a co-worker, on the westbound 118 Freeway in Simi Valley, California, when this motor vehicle accident occurred. The pick up truck veered off the freeway and onto the shoulder where it collided with a big rig truck which had been parked on the shoulder for several hours because its driver was negligent in choosing to pull over and sleep, despite the posted “EMERGENCY PARKING ONLY” signs. When the pick up truck collided with the big rig tractor-trailer, the front of the pick up truck underrode the rear of the tractor-trailer, causing the trailer to intrude into the occupant space of the pick up truck. This instantly caused the death of our client’s husband.

The driver of our client’s husband’s pick up truck testified that he veered off the freeway as a reaction to a silver vehicle in the lane to his left which he felt was beginning to cut into his lane of travel, and that he had no time to avoid the big rig truck parked on the shoulder. He also testified that he applied the brakes of the pick up truck just before the accident occurred, but that they did not function properly.

Another witness traveling behind the pick up truck testified that he observed the pick up truck drift to the right.

We hired an expert who testified at trial that for whatever reason the pick up truck left the road, if the tractor-trailer was not parked on the shoulder of the freeway, the pick up truck would likely have continued to travel along the shoulder of the freeway without crashing into anything, and no death would have occurred because the driver would have had the opportunity to either come to a stop, or reenter the freeway. Click the image to the left to see the animations we used at trial to show how the accident occurred.

We conceded that the driver of the pick up truck overreacted to what he believed to be a vehicle beginning to cut him off, but that it was the presence of the illegally parked big rig tractor-trailer on the shoulder of the freeway, that caused the death of our client’s husband.

The defense argued that driver of the pick up veered off the freeway either because he had fallen asleep, or was sleepy due to having a cold. They also argued that the pick up driver was the sole cause of the accident and death because the big rig tractor trailer did not cause the pick up truck to veer off the freeway.

The jury ultimately found that the driver of the big rig tractor- trailer was 80% at fault for causing the death of our client’s husband, and that the driver of the pick up truck was 20% at fault.

In California, a person who loses a spouse due to wrongful death is entitled to be compensated for the spouse’s love, companionship, comfort, care, assistance, protection, affection, society, and moral support. Even though our client had only been married to her husband for 11 months prior to the accident, we were able to show the jury how significant the loss was to our client.

The jury awarded $7 million.