Truck Driver Hit by Falling Cardboard Pallets Settles for $2.2 Million After Career-Ending Brain Injury

In 2015, a commercial truck driver identified in court papers only as KW stopped to help a co-worker unload his trailer. When she opened one of the trailer doors, both doors swung wide and a double stack of pallets loaded with heavy bales of cardboard tumbled out, knocking her to the ground. The pallets had shifted during transit because no load bar held them in place.

The falling bales left KW with a subarachnoid hemorrhage, a traumatic brain injury, and a non-displaced fracture of her right tibial plateau. She developed seizures that doctors did not bring under control until roughly a year before the case resolved. For a long stretch she needed a walker to get around, and she still relied on a cane at times. She could no longer pass the medical exam required to keep her commercial driver's license. "KW was not able to again qualify for a CDL or return to her job she loved," her attorney, Adrienne Blocker, said.

Blocker and Michael A. DeMayo of DeMayo Law Offices in Charlotte built the claim around the missing load bar, arguing the cargo was never properly secured for unloading. They retained accident reconstruction analyst Steve Farlow of Raleigh to explain how the stacked pallets came down, and vocational consultant Jessica Conard to document why KW could not go back to over-the-road driving or comparable work.

The defense pushed back hard on fault. It argued that KW had not followed the proper procedure for opening a loaded trailer and that she should not have stepped in to help the co-worker at all. That argument carried real weight in North Carolina, one of the few states where any contributory negligence by the injured person, even a small share, can erase the entire recovery.

The parties worked through mediator Thomas Duncan rather than putting the dispute before a jury. On September 13, 2021, about six years after the cardboard pallets fell, they settled for $2.2 million. A workers' compensation lien of $356,629.96 was carved out of the proceeds. Because the case ended by agreement, there was no verdict to appeal and no reduction. North Carolina Lawyers Weekly later named the result among its top settlements of 2021.