Nassau County Jury Returns $141.5 Million Against Log-Truck Company

On the morning of March 3, 2020, an 80,000-pound log truck was moving west on State Road 200 in Nassau County, Florida. Its driver, Ellis Eugene Trollinger, had been behind the wheel since 4 a.m. and was running about 67 mph in a 45 mph zone. Ahead of him sat a congested stretch near a school, with construction workers, school buses, and parents stopped to pick up their children. Trollinger never slowed in time. He drove the loaded truck into the back of the waiting line of cars, setting off a five-vehicle pileup.

Three people were seriously hurt. A five-year-old girl riding in a booster seat suffered a traumatic brain injury along with other head, neck, and spine damage that doctors described as permanent. The driver of her car, Angel Rodriguez-Santiago, was injured to his head, neck, back, and shoulder. Another motorist, Michael Miller, was left with serious back and leg injuries.

Curry Pajcic of Pajcic & Pajcic tried the case over four weeks and built it around how K&N Logging put Trollinger on the road in the first place. The company, based in Columbia County, took him on with no job application, no background check, no review of his driving record, and no call to prior employers. There was no pre-employment drug test and no medical certificate, steps the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations require. Trollinger's history included a DUI crash, felony methamphetamine possession, and assault convictions, and two earlier employers had fired him over crashes and speeding. The company's own court filings conceded he was unfit to operate a commercial truck.

Pajcic told the jury the firm paid Trollinger cash by the load and left him on his own. "Zero training, zero supervision, zero log books, zero hours of service enforcement, and zero training about how to strap down logs, and then pays him cash under the table and pays him by the load and tells him to just drive," he said.

The jury came back on the evening of November 6, 2024, with a unanimous verdict. It set compensatory damages at $16.5 million and added $125 million in punitive damages, for a total of $141.5 million against K&N Logging and Trollinger. No reduction or appeal of the award had been reported in the coverage of the verdict.