The Texas Supreme Court threw out a $46 million award to a man who was crushed by a rolling U-Haul truck, finding that evidence of safety problems in Canadian trucks was improperly admitted in a Dallas County trial.
The justices said there is enough evidence for a re-trial on negligence and actual damages, but rendered a take-nothing judgment on the jury’s gross negligence findings and punitive damages. The six-person jury’s initial award of $84 million in the case was the fifth largest verdict in the nation in 2008, according to Dunn & Bradstreet. V&E’s Tom Leatherbury represents U-Haul.