$81 Million Utah Verdict After a Truck Killed a 12-Year-Old in a Marked Crosswalk

On December 17, 2018, a 12-year-old boy crossed Pleasant Grove Boulevard at State Street in Pleasant Grove, Utah, with the walk signal and two friends beside him. A flatbed truck owned by Allied Building Products, a company later folded into Beacon Roofing Supply, turned right through the intersection. The driver, Rusty Cope, did not come to a complete stop before turning, and the truck struck the boy in the crosswalk. He was killed.

The boy had the right of way and was where he was supposed to be, in a marked crosswalk with the signal in his favor. His two friends were next to him and watched the truck hit him. Both survived, but each was left with the trauma of seeing it happen.

The case did not resolve quickly. At the first trial, the jury found the driver was not negligent, which left the family with no recovery. The plaintiffs asked the court to set that finding aside as a matter of law. The trial judge agreed the driver was negligent, and a Utah appellate court upheld that ruling, clearing the way for a new trial.

Sean Claggett of Claggett & Sykes Trial Lawyers tried the retrial in the Fourth District Court in Provo, with local counsel Blake Johnson of Johnson Livingston. The defense argued that the boy had run into the truck's path. Claggett took the opposite approach and confronted the hardest fact in the case head on rather than hiding from it. "By owning the worst fact, I empowered the jury to see how ridiculous it was to blame a child," he said.

In March 2026, the jury returned $81 million. It awarded $33 million to each of the boy's parents and $7.5 million to each of his two friends for the emotional harm of witnessing the death, a total of $15 million for the two children. Claggett described the result as the largest personal injury verdict in Utah history, topping a previous record of about $25 million.

The verdict was not the final number paid. Before any appeal, the two sides reached a settlement whose amount is confidential, and that agreement supersedes the $81 million award and ends the litigation. A spokesman for QXO, which now owns the defendant, said insurance fully covered the payment.