Truck Driver Wins $436,900 Federal Jury Verdict After Firing for Refusing Overweight Loads

Michael Kennedy drove mulch delivery trucks for Supreme Forest Products, a Southington, Connecticut landscaping-supply company. His job regularly required hauling heavy loads to customers across the region. The problem: the loads Supreme Forest Products wanted him to carry frequently pushed his vehicle over the 80,000-pound federal weight limit for interstate highways.

Kennedy refused to drive the overweight loads. Federal law, specifically the Surface Transportation Assistance Act (STAA), 49 U.S.C. section 31105, prohibits employers from retaliating against commercial drivers who decline to operate vehicles in violation of federal safety regulations. Supreme Forest Products terminated Kennedy's employment.

Kennedy filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut, case no. 3:14-cv-01851, before Judge Jeffrey Alker Meyer. Cicchiello & Cicchiello, together with co-counsel Michael John Reilly, represented him at trial. The defense argued that Kennedy's routes did not involve interstate highways and that the weight-limit protections therefore did not apply. The jury rejected that argument, finding that Kennedy would have been required to travel on interstate highways and that Supreme Forest Products had maintained what Judge Meyer later described as a 'long-running, profit-driven policy to violate federal transportation safety law.'

On May 31, 2017, the jury returned a verdict of $11,900 in compensatory damages and $425,000 in punitive damages, totaling $436,900. On post-trial motions, Judge Meyer reduced the punitive award to $250,000, the maximum permitted under the STAA's statutory cap at 49 U.S.C. section 31105(b)(3)(C), bringing the final judgment to $261,900.

Supreme Forest Products appealed. In February 2019, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed the district court judgment in full, upholding both the liability finding and the punitive damages as reflecting the company's reckless disregard for federal safety law. The decision is reported at 295 F.Supp.3d 113 (D. Conn. 2017) and the appellate affirmance at the Second Circuit docket no. 18-221-cv.