Another Bad Verdict; Werner Enters., Inc. v. Blake

As many of you may or may not know, one of my many jobs is to review court cases that involve motor carriers and independent contractors. If I see a case that is interesting, I save it in an applicable state folder so that if any NTA Member in that state who thinks they may have a problem doesn’t make the same mistake of others and gets dragged into court.

With that in mind, here is a case where a passenger vehicle lost control and crossed over the roadway in front of a tractor-trailer. One would think that the passenger vehicle even after admitting they were at fault would win this case hands down but no, the motor carrier wound up the guilty party.

I found that this case shows the depths that some plaintiff’s attorneys will go to, to spin things around and to the deepest depths to win a case against the motor carrier when their client seems to be at fault.

Every private and for-hire motor carrier in the U.S., no matter how small or large, should take note of this case. Because this is why driver qualification files, background checks & written policies play an important role in your business operations. 

Werner Enters., Inc. v. Blake, 2023 WL 3513843, C.A. No. 14-18-00967 (Tex. Ct. App. May 18, 2023). In this appeal, the en banc panel of the Court of Appeals of Texas affirmed the jury verdict against a motor carrier and its driver for $116 million in a case resulting in the death of a seven-year-old and TBI/quadriplegia to a twelve-year-old, as well as other injuries to the occupants of the passenger vehicle that collided with the Werner tractor-trailer during an ice storm in December 2014.

In the Accident, the passenger vehicle lost control on ice and crossed the roadway in front of the tractor-trailer. Specifically, the appellate court found the evidence presented at trial was sufficient to establish the verdict. It found the driver of the tractor-trailer owed a duty to the plaintiffs and breached that duty by driving “more than a crawl” during the ice storm. 

The court further found that the defendants failed to preserve certain objections to jury instructions presented at trial. The court affirmed the trial court’s refusal to provide a sudden emergency instruction where the court provided, as an alternative, an unavoidable accident instruction. 

The court rejected appellant’s(Werner) arguments that the plaintiffs could not pursue direct liability claims of negligence against the motor carrier because it had admitted it was vicariously liable for the negligence of the driver of the vehicle, with the court noting that the “respondent superior admission rule” has not been recognized in that District at the time of the jury verdict, and moreover, even assuming it did apply, the motor carrier’s gross negligence would be enough to avoid application of the rule. 

The court then found there was sufficient evidence to support the jury’s findings against the motor carrier on the direct liability claims, finding that the motor carrier placed an inexperienced and unskilled driver in a situation that was reasonably likely to result in foreseeable harm to members of the motoring public. 

Specific evidence cited by the appellate court included the following: 

(1) Werner actively denied [the driver] access to devices which would have conveyed relevant information concerning the weather and road conditions into which he was driving during a Winter Storm Warning while traveling at approximately 50 miles per hour on a [just-in-time “JIT”] delivery; 

(2) [the driver] received the second lowest score possible on his driving exam; 

(3) [the driver] was nonetheless entrusted with a JIT run through a Winter Storm Warning without access to relevant information or a supervisor who was awake;

(4) Werner’s director of safety was unfamiliar with Werner’s practice of pairing student drivers with trainers on JIT deliveries; 

(5) it is “really important for the driver to monitor the outside air temperature … because we know once it drops below 32, that’s the condition that creates freezing water and therefore, freezing rain and black ice”; and

(6) despite this importance, [the driver] was actively and knowingly prevented from monitoring the outside air temperature. The court went on to hold that the evidence was sufficient to establish the motor carrier failed its duty to properly train the driver.

The appellate court further affirmed various evidentiary rulings made by the trial court, over the objection of defendants. Notably, there were two dissenting opinions to the majority en banc decision. 

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