$18.9 Million Verdict in Teen's Underride Death on I-40

On a November afternoon in 2015, a 16-year-old Manzano High School student was driving his Honda Civic west on Interstate 40 through Tijeras Canyon east of Albuquerque, heading to band practice. A tractor-trailer hauling a Utility Trailer Manufacturing refrigerated unit drifted from the center lane and struck the Civic. The car slid beneath the trailer's side, became wedged under the chassis, and was dragged nearly half a mile before bursting into flames. The teenager died from his injuries at the scene.

The victim's father decided to sue not the truck driver but the trailer's manufacturer, arguing that side underride guards, if installed, would have deflected the car rather than letting it slide beneath the trailer frame. Randi McGinn, one of New Mexico's most prominent trial lawyers, was initially skeptical: few plaintiffs had ever won a case on a side-guard theory. But as McGinn and co-counsel Michael Sievers worked through the evidence, they found internal company documents suggesting Utility Trailer had been aware of side underride risks since at least 1970 and had taken no meaningful steps to address them.

At trial in Albuquerque in 2019, the team spent two weeks presenting that history to the jury. The central argument was straightforward: a side underride guard is a known, manufacturable safety feature, Utility Trailer chose not to offer it, and that choice was the proximate cause of the fire that killed the boy. Defense witnesses testified that side guards would make trailers more dangerous. The jury disagreed.

Jurors returned a gross verdict of $42 million, which included $38 million to the estate and $2 million apiece to each parent for loss of consortium. Because they apportioned 45 percent of fault to Utility Trailer and 55 percent to the truck driver (who was not a defendant in the suit), the final award against the manufacturer came to $18.9 million. ProPublica and PBS Frontline, both reporting on the case as part of broader investigations into federal inaction on underride standards, described it as one of the first major jury verdicts in the country premised specifically on side-guard negligence.

After the verdict, Utility Trailer began offering a side impact guard as an optional feature on new trailers, a reversal of the position its witnesses had taken at trial.