$500,000 Settlement for Family of Marine Recruit Killed in Route 5 Semi-Truck Chain-Reaction Crash

On the afternoon of March 31, 2010, traffic had come to a stop on state Route 5 near the Burnett Road intersection in Leavittsburg, west of Warren, Ohio. A semi-truck driven by Donald P. Williams of Austintown did not stop with it. The rig struck a Pontiac G6 carrying young men on their way to a Marine Corps recruiting event and kept going, traveling more than 580 feet and hitting six additional vehicles before coming to rest.

Three Marine recruits died in the wreck: Michael T. Theodore Jr., 19, of Howland; Joshua A. Sherbourne, 21, of Southington; and Zachary Nolen, 19, of Newton Falls. Investigators found that Williams had anti-anxiety medication in his system that had not been prescribed to him, and prosecutors described dash-camera footage showing him in a trance-like state as the truck bore down on the stopped cars. He pleaded guilty to aggravated vehicular homicide and was sentenced in 2012 to 16 years in prison.

The civil litigation that followed was extensive. Eighteen plaintiffs filed eight lawsuits in the Trumbull County Court of Common Pleas against Williams, his employer Nick Strimbu Inc. of Brookfield, and other defendants including Progressive Insurance. The cases were consolidated before Judge Andrew Logan, and nine injured or bereaved claimants across the seven struck vehicles pressed damage claims. Attorney Mark Gervelis represented the family of Michael T. Theodore Jr. in their wrongful-death case.

Rather than proceed to trial, the parties worked through court-supervised mediation with Magistrate Anthony Cornicelli in late 2013. The Vindicator reported in November 2013 that a global settlement had been reached, and the Tribune Chronicle reported that Nick Strimbu Inc. resolved all of the claims for slightly less than $2 million, exhausting $1 million in insurance policy limits and contributing hundreds of thousands of dollars out of pocket, a structure plaintiffs' counsel said was designed to compensate the families while avoiding pushing the company into bankruptcy.

Because the core claims were wrongful-death actions on behalf of the three young men's estates, the settlements required approval from the Trumbull County Probate Court. On December 18, 2013, Probate Judge Thomas A. Swift approved nearly identical settlements of $500,000 in each of the three wrongful-death cases, including the Theodore family's claim handled by Gervelis. The crash remains one of the most widely covered roadway tragedies in Trumbull County's recent history, and the settlements closed out more than three years of criminal and civil proceedings arising from it.