Family of TDOT Supervisor David Younger Brings $18 Million Suit Against Spirit Truck Lines Over Fatal I-40 Crash

On the morning of April 28, 2016, a Tennessee Department of Transportation milling crew had pulled onto the shoulder of Interstate 40 in Hickman County, near mile marker 155. Three work trucks sat with their emergency lights on while the crew worked, dealing with a flat tire. At about 9:21 a.m., a Spirit Truck Lines tractor-trailer failed to move over. It struck one TDOT truck, hit a worker standing outside, then slammed into a second truck before overturning.

The worker who was killed was David Younger, 65, of Nashville. He had joined TDOT in 2010 and had run a milling and paving crew as field supervisor since July 2015. He was struck and killed instantly. Two of his crew members were hurt, including Santana Smith, 22, who was airlifted to Vanderbilt University Medical Center and later released, and Carl Smotherman, 59. Younger left a wife of more than 40 years, two daughters, and grandchildren.

The family brought the case to the Rocky McElhaney Law Firm in Nashville. In June 2016, McElhaney filed suit on behalf of Younger's family and four other plaintiffs: Dorathea Rye, Rickey Rye, Santana Smith, and Carl Smotherman. The complaint reached past the single crash and laid out a pattern at the carrier.

The firm's investigation found that Spirit Truck Lines, based in south Texas, had been in 20 crashes over the previous two years and had been cited 66 times for breaking federal hours-of-service rules. McElhaney's review of the driver's records turned up two active logbooks for Candelario Castillo, the 37-year-old behind the wheel. One book reported him resting; the other reported him working the same hours. The firm called it an old industry scheme used to hide how long a driver had really been on the road.

The lawsuit sought $18 million for the family and the injured workers. The civil case ran alongside a criminal investigation by the Tennessee Highway Patrol. Castillo was not cited at the scene the day of the crash, but criminal charges against him were pending as the case moved forward.

The final resolution of the civil suit does not appear in the public reporting, so whether the family and the injured workers recovered anything, and how much, is not known from the available record. David Younger was 65 and had supervised his crew for less than a year when he was killed.