Denver Jury Awards $26.6 Million After Drowsy Driver Kills Both Parents of Two Adult Siblings

On July 4, 2017, Nicole and Nicholas Walters were traveling with their parents, Mike and Jill Walters, on Interstate 76 in Colorado when traffic ahead forced their GMC Yukon to stop. Mark Bollinger, driving a pickup truck for Country Wide RV Transport (CWRV) after finishing a delivery, plowed into the back of the stopped Yukon at roughly 75 miles per hour. He had fallen asleep at the wheel. Mike and Jill Walters were killed. Nicole was 21 at the time; Nicholas was 18.

Bollinger admitted he had fallen asleep behind the wheel. With the criminal process resolved short of a serious sentence, the siblings turned to civil court for accountability. Dan Caplis and Babar Waheed of Dan Caplis Law filed suit in Denver District Court against both Bollinger and CWRV, targeting the company's liability as the entity that put a fatigued driver on the road.

CWRV's central defense was that Bollinger was an independent contractor, not an employee, and that the company bore no responsibility for his actions. Over a six-day trial, Caplis and Waheed presented evidence that Bollinger functioned in practice as the company's agent, regardless of how his contract was worded. The jury agreed on both counts: Bollinger was negligent, and CWRV was vicariously liable.

On September 23, 2019, the jury returned a verdict of $26.6 million in economic and non-economic damages. Law Week Colorado reported it as the largest truck-crash jury verdict in Colorado at the time. Because Colorado caps non-economic damages in negligence and wrongful death claims, the collectible amount was reduced to approximately $8.8 million plus interest after application of the statutory limits. The plaintiffs' attorneys indicated they would pursue a felonious-killing finding, which could lift the wrongful death cap.

The verdict's impact extended beyond the courtroom. CWRV, then the second-largest RV transport carrier in the country with roughly 540 drivers, announced it was shutting down operations effective November 1, 2019. Nicole and Nicholas Walters subsequently launched the public-safety site wakeupdrivesafe.com to raise awareness about fatigued driving, which they said accounts for about 21 percent of fatal crashes in Colorado.