Truck Crash: Negligent Employee Causes Accident and Permanent Injury
Nueces County, Texas—On or about February 11, 2005, Gerald Parra, operating a 1995 Freightliner towing a 2004 Wabush trailer on behalf of defendant SAIA Motor Freight Line, Inc., began to make a right hand turn from the left lane and pulled in front of Kimberley Barrera, who was in the right hand lane, crashing into plaintiff and causing her vehicle to be caught between the freightliner and the trailer bed. As a result of the accident, plaintiff Kimberley Barrera was diagnosed with Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy.
At the time and on the occasion in question, Defendant, Gerald Parra, while operating said vehicle within the course and scope of his employment for SAIA, failed to keep a proper lookout and made an unsafe, illegal right-hand turn from a center lane that was not designated as a turning lane.
Wigington Rumley Dunn & Blair, L.L.P. filed suit contending that Defendant SAIA failed to properly train Gerald Parra, failed to properly supervise Gerald Parra, entrusting a truck tractor and/or semi-trailer to Gerald Parra with inadequate signage to be driven on a public highway, entrusting a truck tractor and/or semi-trailer to Gerald Parra with an unsafe trailer knowing that said tractor trailer was to be operated in a residential area, and failed to properly implement proper policies and procedures to ensure that the equipment assigned to its employees can be safely operated for the task the employee is assigned. This case settled for a confidential sum.