CVN screenshot of plaintiff attorney Johnny Simon delivering his opening statement
St. Louis, MO - A Missouri state court jury heard opening statements Tuesday in a products liability lawsuit claiming an allegedly defective rear impact guard on a tractor trailer caused two fatalities in a supposedly survivable crash, and the full trial is being webcast gavel-to-gavel by Courtroom View Network.
The families of decedents Taron Tailor and Nicholas Perkins sued trailer manufacturer Wabash National following a 2019 rear impact collision that their attorneys argue would not have resulted in their deaths if the truck they collided with had a more robust rear-impact guard.
The plaintiffs accuse Wabash of not upgrading their guards to save money, but the company maintains they complied with federal safety standards and that no guard would have prevented fatalities at the speed the collision allegedly occurred.
Attorney Johnny Simon of The Simon Law Firm, delivering his opening statement on behalf of the plaintiffs, told the St. Louis jury that the case could potentially be worth “hundreds of millions of dollars.” Rear impact guards are meant to keep smaller vehicles that crash into the back of tractor trailers from sliding underneath, and Simon argued the design used by Wabash using two posts offered substantially less protection to drivers than other available guards using four posts.
Simon accused Wabash of selling the rig featuring the guard in question for 30 years without doing adequate crash testing, and he repeatedly stressed that the collision at 55 miles per hour - allegedly reduced to the mid 40’s due to the forward motion of the truck - should have been survivable.
“Wabash and the entire tractor trailer industry have known about this problem for decades,” Simon said, according to CVN’s webcast of the proceedings.
Simon claimed a 1998 federal standard related to rear impact guards, due to be updated this year, had obvious flaws and that Wabash and other manufacturers allegedly had knowledge stemming from numerous similar accidents that warned them the two-post rigs did not offer adequate protection.
“The 1998 standard was weak and the industry knew it,” Simon said.
Representing Wabash, defense attorney Brian Johnson of Dickinson Wright told jurors that no rear impact guard, regardless of how many posts it utilized, could have prevented the deaths of Tailor and Perkins.
“There is not a rear impact guard anywhere that prevents rear impact underride at 55 miles per hour,” he stressed.
CVN screenshot of defense attorney Brian Johnson delivering his opening statement
Johnson focused on the details of the accident, noting it took place on a clear sunny day, that the truck had its hazard lights on at the time of the collision, and that no attempt was made by the oncoming car to swerve around the truck or even to use its breaks.
Johnson told jurors that the car Tailor and Perkins were in went from 55 miles per hour to zero “in the same amount of time it takes you to blink your eyes” - a deceleration that he said is impossible for the human body to survive regardless of what type of barrier is used.
He said expert witnesses retained by the defense would dispute the plaintiffs’ claim that the actual speed of the collision was in the mid 40’s, and repeatedly stressed that even the most modern guards which comply with the soon-to-be-released 2024 federal safety standards can’t prevent underride accidents at that speed.
“He drove into the back of a trailer in broad daylight going 55 miles per hour - and the number is 55,” Johnson emphasized.
He disputed the position the 1998 federal guidelines were inadequate, and he asked the jury to reject any award of punitive damages if given the opportunity, noting that would in effect mean every single rear guard-equipped trailer built by every manufacturer to comply with the government’s safety standards would have to be considered unreasonably dangerous.
The trial is taking place before Judge Christopher McGraugh and expected to last roughly two weeks. CVN’s gavel-to-gavel coverage (available both live and on-demand) - including all expert witness testimony - will continue for the duration of the proceedings.
The case is captioned Perkins, et al. v. Wabash National Corp., et al., case number 2022-CC00495 in Missouri’s 22nd Circuit Court in the City of St. Louis.
E-mail David Siegel at dsiegel@cvn.com