Head-On Truck Crash Gravely Injures Sports Car Driver: $4.75 Million Settlement

On the morning of July 3, 2020, a driver in a 1980s sports car was traveling along a busy business-district thoroughfare where the posted limit was 45 mph. The sky was clear and sunny. At about 11 a.m., a truck came into the path of the sports car, and the two vehicles met head-on.

The crash left the sports car driver with a long list of broken bones. Treating doctors documented a comminuted, intra-articular fracture of the femur, a tibial plateau fracture, a fractured fibula, a shattered right kneecap, a fractured sternum, several broken ribs, and a fracture in the lumbar spine at L1, along with puncture wounds to the forehead and the right knee. A pleural effusion developed in the right chest. The driver had already used a cane before the crash because of preexisting conditions. Afterward, recovery stalled, and the driver now relies on a walker.

North Carolina follows a strict contributory negligence rule. If the defense can pin even a small share of fault on an injured person, that person can recover nothing. The defendants built their case on that rule, arguing the sports car driver had been in a turn lane and bore part of the blame for the collision.

Robert Whitley and Ann Ochsner of the Whitley Law Firm in Raleigh, working with co-counsel James Scherr and Maxey Scherr of Scherr Legate in El Paso, answered that defense with the physical evidence. They retained an accident reconstruction engineer, Steve Farlow, and a forensic human factors expert, Kevin Rider, to map the vehicles' paths and show how the truck driver caused the impact. The record also reflected that the truck driver had been cited for a moving violation and, roughly a year later, pleaded responsible to it.

The parties reached a settlement on June 14, 2023, for $4.75 million. Reported medical expenses under North Carolina's Rule 414 came to $169,851. The case name, court file number, presiding judge, and the defendant's identity were withheld from publication.