Family of Man Killed at a Rural Stop Sign Settles Wrongful-Death Case for $3 Million

In November 2017, a 60-year-old man was driving on a country road in North Carolina when a commercial truck driver ran a stop sign. The truck struck the passenger side of his car. His injuries were catastrophic.

Rural intersections like this one leave little room for error. A loaded commercial truck that does not stop carries enough force to crush a passenger compartment, and that is what the man's car absorbed.

He held on for four days. His condition did not improve, and his family was left with a decision no family is ready to make. His wife told doctors to end life-saving treatment. The day she made that choice was the couple's 30th wedding anniversary. "She had to make that decision on their 30th anniversary," said Hunt Willis, one of the attorneys who later represented the family.

The family brought a wrongful-death claim. Bob Whitley of the Whitley Law Firm in Raleigh worked the case with Forest Horne and Hunt Willis of Martin & Jones, also in Raleigh. North Carolina follows a strict contributory negligence rule, which lets a defendant defeat a claim by showing the victim shared even a small part of the fault, so the attorneys had to place responsibility squarely on the truck driver. The core point was simple: the driver failed to stop where the law required, and a man died because of it. Counsel documented how the truck entered the intersection and struck the car, along with the four days between the crash and the death.

The case never reached a jury. The parties agreed to a $3 million settlement before trial. At the defendants' request, both the dollar figure and the location of the crash were kept confidential, which is why the venue stays out of the public record. Settlements of this size in fatal crash cases are usually paid by a commercial carrier's insurance, though the confidentiality terms here keep the payer and the policy limits private. Because the matter closed by agreement rather than a verdict, there was no award for a judge to reduce and no appeal.

North Carolina Lawyers Weekly compiles its Top 50 list each year from reports submitted by attorneys across the state, ranking the largest reported civil recoveries. The publication included this case in its Top 50 Verdicts and Settlements of 2019, where the $3 million settlement tied for 25th in the state that year.