Driver of Victim's Car, Union Pacific Driver Held Liable in 2002 Accident
August 24, 2006
PRNewswire
FORT
WORTH, Texas, Aug. 24 /PRNewswire/ -- A Tarrant
County jury has returned a $5.2 million verdict
against a Mesquite, Texas woman and a driver for
Omaha, Neb.-based
Union
Pacific Railroad Company over a 2002 tractor
trailer accident that left a Waco man permanently
paralyzed.
The jury placed six percent of the
blame on the Union Pacific truck driver and the
remaining 94 percent on the driver of the car
that the truck hit, and found them both liable
for damages to the plaintiff, Curtis Woods.
The verdict follows eight days of
trial in Judge Ken Curry's 153rd District Court
in Fort Worth.
"By its verdict, the jury in
essence said that what happened to Curtis Woods
shouldn't have happened," says attorney
Jim Orr of the Texas law firm of Heygood,
Orr, Reyes & Bartolomei, who represented Mr.
Woods at trial.
In the 2002 accident, Mr. Woods
was a passenger in a car driven by Crystal Lowder.
Ms. Lowder was trying to enter traffic on I-30
eastbound from Loop 820 in Fort Worth when she
lost control of her car, possibly due to a problem
with one of the tires. Her 1992 Chevrolet went
across all three lanes of traffic, hit a concrete
barrier, then traveled back across all three lanes
again, coming to a stop in the right-hand lane.
All of the other vehicles on the
road managed to slow down and stop or pull over,
including the car immediately in front of the
Union Pacific truck. But instead of slowing down,
the truck went around the car in front of it and
hit Ms. Lowder's car broadside.
Mr. Woods, who was 19 years old
at the time of the accident, was sitting in the
back seat. He suffered a break at the C6 vertebrae
of his spine and was left a quadriplegic.
Heygood, Orr, Reyes, Pearson & Bartolomei
is an
AV-rated
firm that focuses its practice on the representation
of plaintiffs in business disputes, civil litigation
matters, and more. With 10 attorneys and a staff
of 50, the firm's trial teams handle a full array
of civil litigation and business cases across
Texas and the United States.
For more information on the Curtis
Woods case, please contact Mark Annick at 800-559-4534
or
mark@legalpr.com.
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