Case Description
Attorneys Roland Christensen, Caj Boatright, and our legal team, with co-counsel from Lyons & Simmons, represented the families of Jennifer Lipe, Benjamin Brewer, and Rhoderick Coleman, along with two survivors, after a six-vehicle pileup on Interstate 20 in Warren County, Mississippi. On March 25, 2021, an 18-wheeler operated by a Lupus Superior driver slammed into stopped traffic. Three people burned to death in their vehicles, leaving behind spouses and children. Two others survived with serious injuries.
The evidence showed the crash never should have happened.
For more than a year before the collision, Lupus Superior carried FMCSA safety alerts for unsafe driving and hours-of-service violations. Freight broker C.H. Robinson ignored those warnings and brokered the load to Lupus Superior anyway. On the day of the truck accident, the driver falsified his logs, drove off course in the middle of the night, and told both companies he was too sick to keep driving. C.H. Robinson failed to reschedule the delivery, and the driver kept going until he crashed.
A Dallas County jury found the driver, Lupus Superior, and C.H. Robinson all negligent and returned a $604,025,000 verdict. The jury found C.H. Robinson directly responsible for 23% of the harm and vicariously liable for the driver's 45% as his borrowed employer, making the broker responsible for 68% of the verdict.
"No amount of money will replace the parents and spouses who burned to death in this horrible crash,” said Dallas Truck Accident Attorney Roland Christensen. “But this verdict is a message to C.H. Robinson and the brokering industry that their dangerous practices are not acceptable."