ST. LOUIS — A jury in Missouri's 22nd Circuit Court in St. Louis issued a verdict of $462 million in a product liability case involving a truck's collision guard.
The state court jury's award included $450 million in punitive damages to the families of two men, Taron Tailor, 30 and Nicholas Perkins, 24, who died in an accident on May 19, 2019, after their car crashed into a Wabash National trailer.
The lawsuit claimed that the trailer’s rear impact guard, designed to prevent “underride impacts,” was defective and failed to protect the victims.
The families were awarded $6 million each in compensatory damages.
The accident occurred when Tailor’s Volkswagen sedan hit the back of the Wabash trailer and slid underneath, resulting in both men's deaths.
The plaintiffs argued that Wabash’s rear impact guard design, which used two posts, was inadequate, and that a four-post design would have saved lives.
The plaintiffs also claimed that Wabash had known about the risks for years but did not make safety improvements to save costs.
Despite complying with federal safety standards, the plaintiffs insisted that the 1998 standards were outdated and insufficient to prevent underride accidents.
Wabash’s defense argued that the crash occurred at an unsustainable speed of 55 miles per hour, making it impossible for anyone to survive regardless of the impact guard design.
The defendant maintained that the trailer met all federal safety requirements and that upgrading to a four-post guard would not have changed the outcome.
The defense also blamed the driver, pointing out that the accident took place in clear daylight and stressed that no impact guard could have prevented the fatalities in such a high-speed collision.
The jury deliberated for three hours after a two-week trial, with the decision seen as a significant statement about safety in the trucking industry.
One of the plaintiffs' attorneys, John Simon, praised the verdict, emphasizing that it sends a message against "reckless disregard for human life."
John Simon and Johnny Simon, a father and son law firm, tried the case with co-counsel Brian Winebright of Cantor Injury Law and Lisa Tsacoumangos of Brown & Crouppen.
"We hope this case will begin to stop others from dying in these preventable underride accidents, as no amount of money will ever bring back the young men who needlessly lost their lives in this case," Tsacoumangos said.
John Simon said the impact guards need to be made safer.
"What they needed to make it safe, they could've done it decades ago," John Simon said. "The trailer in our case was consciously designed to prevent underrides on 30 miles per hour impacts. Every one of these trailers is on the highway. The minimum is forty miles per hour."
Wabash is evaluating its legal options, continuing to argue that the verdict suggests all trailers meeting federal standards could be deemed unsafe.
"While this was a tragic accident, we respectfully disagree with the jury’s verdict and firmly believe it is not supported by the facts or the law," Wabash’s General Counsel and Chief Administrative Officer Kristin Glazner said in a provided statement. "No rear impact guard or trailer safety technology has ever existed that would have made a difference here."
The trial was before Judge Christopher McGraugh.
Twenty-Second Circuit Court case number: 2022-CC00495