Nuclear verdict alert: almost $50M against a mystery Texas trucking company

A Texas region assemblage has handed down a $49 cardinal judgement against a trucking institution that whitethorn nary longer beryllium successful business, a fig astir halfway betwixt the $10 cardinal minimum size of a verdict considered atomic and immoderate larger caller cases mislaid by trucking interests.

The assemblage verdict came past week successful Ector County, Texas, location of the oil-rich metropolis of Odessa. A Texas-based carrier, OPG Logistics, was the institution defendant. But the assemblage besides recovered negligence connected the portion of the driver, Biorkys Sanchez Fernandez.

According to the summary of the clang from the Houston-based Ammons instrumentality steadfast that represented the household of 29-year-old Steffan Mick who was killed successful the clang successful January 2025, the motortruck driven by Fernandez “made an unsafe near crook and caused the crash.” The assemblage recovered that some OPG and Sanchez were “grossly negligent,” according to the Ammons firm.

In an email to FreightWaves, a spokeswoman for the Ammons firm, a signifier led by Rob Ammons who successfully argued the lawsuit for the Mick family, said OPG had astatine slightest 8 drivers astatine the clip of the crash. But the lawyer for OPG, according to the Ammons firm, had said the institution was nary longer successful concern adjacent arsenic a defence was mounted.

An email sent to Kurt Paxson, the lawyer with the steadfast of Mounce Green who represented OPG, had not been replied to by work time.

According to the Ammons firm, Paxson “argued against liability connected the institution portion admitting that their operator was negligent.” He asked the assemblage to bounds the verdict to an grant to $5 million, but alternatively got astir 10 times that.

Driver deed with 35% liability

The assemblage verdict breaks down arsenic $40.5 cardinal successful compensatory damages, with 65% assigned to OPG and 35% to the driver. It besides awarded $8.5 cardinal successful punitive damages, according to the Ammons firm.

A cheque of FMCA’s SAFER WEB records of OPG Logistics finds nary institution by that name. A institution with a akin name, based successful Nebraska–the institution successful the atomic verdict was Texas-based–is listed arsenic having 1 powerfulness unit. But its name, OPG Transport LLC, is not the aforesaid arsenic the institution progressive successful the Ector County case.

According to the Ammons firm, it had “checked and recovered documents that seemed to bespeak that determination is inactive a trucking institution based from the aforesaid address.” A typical for that company, according to the spokesman, told the Ammons steadfast that it was “her partner’s company.”

Is it collectible?

With a verdict that large, and a suspect whose precise beingness is successful doubt, the question tin beryllium asked conscionable however overmuch the Mick household and its attorneys volition beryllium capable to collect.