HARRISON — A U.S. District Court jury in Harrison has ordered a Kentucky trucking company to pay $7 million in damages for sending an unqualified driver on a dangerous trip that left one man dead after a crash in 2008.
Morgan Quisenberry, 54, had been driving almost three hours longer than the law allows when he lost control of his tractor-trailer and it struck two passenger cars before crashing into the cab of the semi-truck driven by Roger Reagan, 42, on Sept. 3, 2008, said J. Kent Emison, a Missouri-based attorney.
The accident happened at the intersection of U.S. 62 and Arkansas 202 in Yellville.
Reagan climbed from the cab but then became trapped in the burning wreckage for 20 minutes, Emison said. Reagan lived one hour, 20 minutes after being rescued but died from a heart attack before reaching North Arkansas Medical Center in Harrison.
The federal court jury found Thursday that Quisenberry’s employer, Dunaway Timber Co. of Fordsville, Ky., was ultimately responsible, Emison said. Court recordsshow the jury assigned 75 percent of the fault to Dunaway Timber and 25 percent of the fault to Quisenberry, but the company will pay the damages.
A spokesman at Dunaway Timber declined to comment Friday and did not want to be identified. Attorneys with Larkowski and Rogers of Little Rock, which represented the company, were out of the office Friday, and lead attorney Gill A. Rogers did not respond to an e-mail.
The company’s responsibility for Reagan’s death stems from its negligent hir-ing and management practices, which greatly enhanced the likelihood that Quisenberry would cause a serious crash, Emison said.
“It was a recipe for disaster when they put the keys in this man’s hands,” Emison said. “We wouldn’t know when, we wouldn’t know where and we wouldn’t know who, but it was a matter of time before he was going to seriously injure or kill somebody.”
Negligent hiring and negligent supervision claims are common in trucking accident cases, said Robert Leflar, a professor at the University of Arkansas School of Law in Fayetteville.
“There are thousands of those cases around the nation, including many in Arkansas going back at least to 1929,” Leflar said. “The trucking company is held liable because it shouldn’t have hired a negligent driver in the first place or should have fired him when it found out his deficiencies.”
Quisenberry, who had been driving for Dunaway Timber for 19 days at the time of the accident, lied about his driving record on his employment application, Emison said. He’d had a recent accident while driving hazardous materials before being hired by the timber company and twice had his license revoked for driving while intoxicated.
Quisenberry had a commercial driver’s license at the time of the crash but shouldn’t have, said Art Menke, a spokesman for Emison’s firm, Langdon & Emison.
Typically, a second offense of driving while intoxicated results in a permanent revocation for commercial drivers licenses, Menke said. However, there is an exception that allows reinstatement if the driver waits 10 years and completes a substance abuse program, Menke said. That didn’t happen in Quisenberry’s case.
The company was also at fault for sending Quisenberry on a route that he couldn’t complete within the number of hours designated for commercial drivers, Emison said. Commercial truck drivers are forbidden to drive more than 11 hours straight, but Quisenberry was on a route that can’t be driven in less than 13 hours, he said.
Quisenberry drove from Fordsville, Ky., to Terre Haute, Iowa, back to Fordsville then to Harrison. He’d had about four hours sleep when the crash occurred, Emison said.
“He was at the end of a 24-hour shift, had very little sleep and had to be extremely tired,” he said.
Several witnesses testified that driving while tired is as dangerous as driving while intoxicated, Emison said.
Trucking companies are prohibited from hiring “unqualified” drivers, but some companies do so because those drivers are more likely to go along with violations, said Norita Taylor, spokesman for the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association.
Truckers are limited to 11 hours of driving in a 14-hour work day, which includes breaks for meals or mechanical problems, before taking a 10-hour break, but some companies push them to violate the law, Taylor said. She said she couldn’t name any companies that do so but it does happen.
“It’s certainly fair to say some trucking companies want to have the ability to pay as little as possible and get as much work out of them as possible,” Taylor said.
Taylor said the best and safest thing is for commercial drivers to know the laws and follow them.
“It’s real simple to us,” Taylor said. “Drive compliant - that’s it.” To contact this reporter:
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 11 on 11/12/2011