Boone County Jury Returns $74 Million Verdict Against Eaton Asphalt in a Mother's Death

On the morning of January 9, 2019, Amy Skiba was driving her twin children to school on Richwood Road in Walton, Kentucky. Coming the other way, a 2003 Chevrolet flatbed truck ran its right front tire off the edge of the pavement. The tire dropped into the gap where the asphalt met the unpaved edge, then caught a driveway apron that stood almost ten inches above it. The truck went partly airborne, the driver lost control, and it came back across the center line into Skiba's Honda Accord. She died at the scene. The two children riding with her were hurt.

Skiba was 45 and had worked as a guidance counselor in the Boone County schools. The crash left three children without their mother, including the twins who were in the car. The truck's driver, Darrin Carroll, was 43. He was indicted on second-degree manslaughter, wanton endangerment, and driving under the influence. In January 2021 the family's lawyers turned over evidence pointing at the road itself, and on April 1, 2021, prosecutors dismissed every charge against him.

The children's father, Alton Godwin, sued Eaton Asphalt Paving Company in Boone Circuit Court. Ron Johnson and Jay Vaughn of Hendy Johnson Vaughn Emery represented the family. Eaton had repaved that stretch of Richwood Road in 2018. To meet a deadline, the company got permission from a Kentucky Transportation Cabinet engineer to skip milling, the step that grinds off the old surface before new asphalt goes down. Skipping it left the new pavement about 1.25 inches higher than it would have been, deepening the drop at the edge. The firm showed that Eaton also paved over the rumble strips and never built the safety wedge the contract required to taper that edge down to the shoulder.

Eaton argued that it had been cleared to skip the milling and that the driver, not the road, caused the wreck. Engineering News-Record laid out that fight in detail, including expert and police theories that fatigue, speed, or drugs played a part. The jury did not accept them.

On July 12, 2021, the jury assigned no fault to Carroll and held Eaton responsible. The award reached $74 million: $8 million to each of the three children for the loss of their mother and their emotional distress, and $50 million in punitive damages against the company. After the verdict, the parties reached a settlement, and the final figure was not made public.