A massive Texas wreck involving more than 130 separate collisions has led to a $44.1 million nuclear verdict that will mostly hit truckload carrier New Prime.
The February 2021 highway disaster took six lives, including that of Christopher Ray Vardy, who filed suit in Dallas County court against the driver of the New Prime truck involved in the wreck, Steven Ridder. The impact of the crash, according to a report by the National Transportation Safety Board, stretched for approximately 1,100 feet of vehicles that had slammed into each other in the chain reaction on interstate 35 near Fort Worth.
An attorney close to the litigation said there are other lawsuits still being pursued in the courts arising from the cascade of crashes that took place in wintry weather.
The specific penalty levied against New Prime was $20 million for “exemplary damages,” which the Charge of the Court, in a document submitted by the jury that ruled for Vardy’s family, defined as “a penalty or by way of punishment but not for compensatory purposes.”
A prepared statement on the jury verdict released by The Law Offices of Frank L. Branson, which represented the Vardy family, also described that amount as punitive damages.
The remaining $24.1 million was the total for a variety of compensatory damages.
The Charge of the Court document said the jury assessed 75% of the responsibility for the wreck to Ridder. That is Ridder’s share of the compensatory damages assessed by the jury and it works out to just over $18 million.
But The Branson office said New Prime will be responsible for the payout assessed against Ridder.
NTSB critical of road maintenance
The other 25% of the responsibility for the compensatory damages was assessed against NTE Express. It is a private company that in a public-private partnership operates about 10 miles of a toll road on interstate 35, the TEXPress. Earlier this year, NTE reached a settlement in another lawsuit that came out of the 2021 wreck.
In the NTSB report released in 2023 on the causes of the wreck, the board had criticized NTE Express on its preparation for the bad weather.
“Although (NTE’s) pretreatment of the roadway before the storm was reasonable, its roadway monitoring process was deficient because it failed to detect that the elevated portion of I-35W required additional deicing treatment on the morning of the crash when precipitation arrived in the area,” the board wrote.
The original lawsuit charged that what it described as the “road maintenance defendants” were negligent in several ways, including failing to de-ice the TEXPress lanes where the wreck occurred, and failing to monitor the lanes “considering the forecast and occurring weather events.”
The report does not discuss any actions by individual car or truck drivers that might have led to the massive pileup.
Long list of defendants
The original lawsuit filed by Tamara Suzanne Vardy, Christopher Vardy’s widow, as well as other family members, had a long list of trucking company carriers and shippers as defendants.
In addition to the carriers sued by the Vardy family, their drivers were sued as well. But the Chart of the Court assessed zero responsibility to the other drivers in the case.
That let off the hook truck company defendants Sonic Logistics, Sierra Mountain Express, Coca-Cola Southwest Beverages, J.B. Hunt Transport (NASDAQ: JBHT), GG’s Produce, I Garza, Rich Transport, Sun Valley and Go To Logistics.
In summing up the case, the Branson law firm said evidence in the trial showed that Ridder “did not receive adequate winter weather driving training and failed to exercise extreme caution in hazardous weather. The 18-wheeler owned by New Prime and driven by Mr. Ridder rear-ended Mr. Vardy’s vehicle, which was stopped because of other crashes in front of him.”
Victim was alive after the crash
According to Branson’s prepared statement, Vardy survived the original collision but that “first responders reported they had never seen a vehicle damaged as extensively as Mr. Vardy’s.”
“The Tarrant County Medical Examiner confirmed that his injuries were survivable, and he was conscious during a period of pain and suffering following the crash,” the statement said.
Although the wreck occurred in Tarrant County, home of Fort Worth, the original lawsuit was filed in Dallas County. Vardy’s family cited the location of some of the individual and company defendants as the basis for filing in Dallas county..
Efforts by various defendants to switch the venue to Tarrant County were unsuccessful, according to court records.
Emails sent to the Branson law firm for additional comment, to New Prime and to New Prime’s outside counsel had not been responded to by publication time.
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