Werner hit with $90 million dollar verdict

Werner should’ve known it was icy since it was forecasted ??? Using the same logic shouldn’t Texas have pretreated the roads for ice?? I hope it gets overturned but sends a warning to the mega driver mills that people are fed up

 

If I was a mega driver mill company I'd be nervous right now cause they arnt going to stop with Werner ....those lawyers have tasted blood now .

 

My question is why would a jury award so much money to someone who was clearly in the wrong, are we missing something here?

 

Methinks it's something to do with the driver violating HOS i.e. as in "truck not supposed to be there, while other vehicle was sliding across the other side". They mentioned something about "JIT", which is possible that the driver was being made to "make sure it gets there"

 

So...... If it was icy, why was the pick-up driver on the highway? I'm sorry about the loss, but I'm siding with Werner here. Even if the judge rewarded her, $90 mil? That's too extreme. If Werner wasn't a big company, she would have never gone after them.

 

I just wonder what other route would have been safer than the oft traveled interstate 20. Back roads are the last roads I want travel in bad weather.

 

Thing is, the plaintiff's lawyers lied. The regulations don't require you to "slow to a crawl" or even to get off the road...§392.14 only requires "extreme caution" and "reduced speeds". The CMV is only required to be parked IF it cannot be operated safely under those conditions...and from the sound of it, the facts seem to be on the side of the CMV being safely operated as he did not even lose control after being hit, but rather was able to safely bring the CMV to a stop following the impact.

This judgement WILL BE overturned on appeal, the family won't see a dime, and will likely have to cover not only damages to Werner's truck, but their legal fees as well.

 

I don't think it will be overturned. The award may be reduced but I think the key aspect of this is Werners policy of allowing student drivers (trainees) to operate as though they were a regular non-supervised driver, and in dicey conditions no less and that this has been allowed and ongoing for many years.

They highlighted the very real fact that the entire Werner Enterprise organization is built on using poorly paid, and unqualified drivers to move high dollar freight as cheaply as possible.

They probably argued the student driver should have not chosen to drive given the TXDot sign messages of hazardous driving conditions ongoing or expected. However it was worded should have been an indication further unnecessary travel is not recommended.

 

Even if you tried to blame Werner. Shouldn't you need to prove that no one else would have been in the same place the Werner truck was at the time of the accident?

What if Werner did take an alternate route. How can you say there wouldn't be another vehicle in that place instead. How could you show prof of the flow of traffic from the point of the detour to the point of collision? Impossible.

 

It's about playing on emotions and people's disdain for extreme wealth earned on the backs of poorly paid workers and trainee students. And upper management appeared to show little remorse or desire to change their current business model during their testimony.