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On October 8, 2024, after nearly four years of litigation in Beaumont, Texas state court, Kuchler Polk partners Janika Polk, Lee Ziffer, and Marcus Hunter obtained summary judgment on behalf of a heavy truck manufacturer in a wrongful death case brought by the survivors of a truck driver who died in a post-crash fire.  The Decedent was operating a heavy truck manufactured by our client, which was towing a tanker trailer fully loaded with hazardous materials, when he failed to negotiate a curve on Interstate 10 in Beaumont, Texas, causing the tractor to roll over on its driver’s side.  The driver survived the crash, but an electrical fire originating in the vicinity of the vehicle’s battery box engulfed the cabin, causing his death.  Discovery revealed multiple post-sale modifications to the vehicle’s electrical system, including removal of one of the four batteries, removal of one of the battery retaining brackets and failure to secure another, and installation of an aftermarket power inverter without any fuse protection and with the use of undersized electrical cable intended for powering air conditioners.  In the crash, the unsecured batteries moved about the battery box, causing the aftermarket positive inverter cable to contact the negative cable leading to the starter.  Because there was no fuse protection leading to the inverter, this contact caused a sustained electrical fault, causing the fire.  Plaintiffs argued that notwithstanding the modifications, our client should have anticipated the possibility of an electrical fire in the battery box, and should have designed a battery box cover that could not burn in the event of a fire.  We successfully argued that the fire would not have started had our client’s electrical system not been modified, that the modifications to the electrical system were the producing and proximate cause of the fire, and that the modifications were both substantial and unforeseeable.  As a result, our client had no duty to foresee the need to design a battery box cover incapable of burning.

On September 26, 2024, after more than two years of litigation in the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, Kuchler Polk partners Janika Polk, Lee Ziffer, and Marcus Hunter obtained summary judgment on behalf of a heavy truck manufacturer in a products liability case in which the plaintiff was partially paralyzed following a commercial vehicle accident.  The Plaintiff, an experienced commercial vehicle driver, was operating a dump truck when the dump bed collided with a highway overpass, causing him to crash into the highway support pillar.  Discovery showed that the Plaintiff exited the dump yard without lowering the truck’s dump bed, and was traveling at highway speeds with the bed in an upright position when the bed collided with the overpass.  The Plaintiff claimed that our client should have included interlock devices preventing the vehicle from driving above minimal speeds while the dump bed was raised, and provided audible and additional visual warnings to the driver that the dump bed was raised.  The Court found that Plaintiff could not meet his burden under the Louisiana Products Liability Act that driving a dump truck at highway speeds with the bed extended was a reasonably anticipated use of a dump truck, finding that doing so was obviously dangerous, against all warnings and trainings the driver received, and that the driver knew of the danger of doing so.

In 2022, Janika Polk, Skylar Rudin, Deb Kuchler, Marcus Hunter, and Michael Harrison, defended a supermajor oil company in a commercial dispute involving two breach of contract claims, wherein the company that brought its claims sought approximately $30 million in damages. The matter was submitted to Arbitration where a three day remote hearing was held, which included witnesses from Asia and South America. The parties also submitted post-hearing briefing and presented post-hearing oral argument. The 3-person Arbitration Panel reached a unanimous decision in favor of the Firm’s client finding that the company that brought its claims would take nothing.