Foster Wallace and co-counsel reached a $7.25 million wrongful death settlement in Kansas on behalf of our client who lost his wife and their unborn child. The defendants, a trucking company and its driver, were never listed on the Kansas Highway Patrol report, and the investigating patrolmen were unable to determine the sequence of events leading to the crash. Following an extensive investigation, it was our position that the defendant driver recklessly merged into the decedent’s lane, forcing her into oncoming traffic headed in the other direction where she was struck and killed. Despite the defendant driver admitting under oath that he saw the decedent’s vehicle next to his tractor-trailer immediately before he began to merge into her lane, defendants continued to maintain that they played no part in causing this deadly wreck. Over the course of almost three years of litigation, the parties conducted nearly two dozen depositions. We retained multiple experts in support of our client’s claims on issues of liability and damages, including experts in the fields of reconstruction, human factors, trucking, medicine, and economics. After protracted settlement discussions, including at a voluntary mediation, the parties reached the settlement just weeks before trial. The proceeds that our client receives cannot replace what he lost, but we hope it brings him some sense of closure to a dark chapter in his life, knowing that at least some measure of justice has been served.
$7,250,000