On his first day on the job, a Texan refuse truck driver took his seat behind the wheel and clicked on the dashcam. Footage showed the inexperienced operator veering off the road as his driving became increasingly erratic. Within moments, his journey would come to a crashing halt. Half a block ahead, cars were coming to a stop at a red light. Meanwhile, the truck continued to plow toward them at 30 mph. It wasn’t slowing down. Patiently waiting, the drivers at the signal light had no idea of the danger that was barreling down upon them. Then horror struck as the 12-ton truck smashed into the back of a Jeep. Inside the impacted vehicle, Joe — a Jeep enthusiast who regularly went out ‘jeeping’ with his local club — was violently whipped back and forth. His head slammed into the roll bar above him and the headrest behind him, which broke on impact. The refuse truck sandwiched the Jeep between it and the car ahead, destroying Joe’s prized possession within seconds — but the worst was yet to come.
The accident severely damaged Joe’s brain. The blunt force of the collision on his skull caused a cascade of brain cell death. However, Joe’s worth ethic was unflinching. He continued to show up for his job as a porter at a property management firm. Joe was also a family man with five children and five grandchildren. Both his wife and one of his children had special needs, and he tended to them when not at work. For eight months, Joe trudged along without medical treatment until the symptoms of his traumatic brain injury (TBI) compelled him to seek care. He went in for treatment, and brain scans revealed loss of white matter volume and multiple areas of hyperintensities. He could no longer ignore the TBI’s devastating impact on his life.
A week after the accident, a friend of Joe’s put him in touch with Randy Howry, founding partner of Howry Breen & Herman, LLP in Austin, Texas. Randy practiced law for over 40 years and specialized in personal injury and wrongful death cases. To start, he identified not only which company operated the refuse truck but also the truck wholesaler from which it had been leased. He put the companies on notice and discovered two more layers of excess insurance coverage.
Randy requested a slew of documents from the refuse truck company but kept running into wall after wall. He discovered that the company had been bought out, and during the transition, the relevant records had either been lost or destroyed. Randy brought that issue before a judge, who issued a spoliation-of-evidence ruling. That proved to be a crippling blow to the defense. They scrambled for alternative explanations for how the accident occurred, blaming the crash on faulty brakes. However, they were unable to produce any documents to support their novel theory.
Desperate for leverage, the defense pounced on the eight-month delay between the accident and Joe’s first medical treatment. They argued that Joe’s injuries must have been brought on by something other than the accident. While dashcam footage proved the driver’s liability, Randy needed to prove causation by demonstrating how the accident undeniably left Joe with a significant TBI. He recruited a biomechanical expert, a reconstructionist, a neurologist, a vocational rehab expert, an economist, and a life care planner. He also brought on DK Global to animate how the accident’s biomechanical forces caused Joe’s TBI.
The DK Global animation opened with Joe inside his Jeep. The accident was recreated in slow motion with Joe's skull and brain injuries visible. His brain was seen slamming into his skull from the coup-contrecoup forces while his head hit the roll bar and headrest. The second part of the animation illustrated how the neurons in Joe’s brain were destroyed by the impact. Brain scans were animated to show how axial rotation shifted brain region. To illustrate the loss of white matter volume, a normal brain was compared against a shrunken version. The final part of the animation correlated Joe’s radiological imaging with a 3D version of his head.
Randy attempted to mediate with the defense, but while the primary carrier showed up, the two excess carriers failed to appear. Randy ended the mediation early as he could tell the defense was not taking the case seriously enough. The second mediation took place six weeks before trial. The excess carriers attended, but the parties could not reach an agreement. It was not until a month before trial that the defense called Randy, seeking to settle the case. Randy gave a number and told the defense to either meet it or see him in court. A week later, the defense agreed to Randy’s number, and the case settled for a confidential sum. When Randy told Joe the final amount, Joe was so blown away that he nearly dropped his phone.
Randy Howry, founding partner of Howry Breen & Herman, focuses on personal injury, products liability, catastrophic injuries, wrongful death, and commercial/business disputes. He has tried hundreds of jury trials, securing multi-million dollar verdicts. He has been recognized multiple times in The Best Lawyers in America since 2006, Texas Super Lawyers by Thomson Reuters from 2003 to 2020, Martindale-Hubbell AV Preeminent Rated since 2018, and Top American Lawyers since 2017. Randy has also been recognized in The Best Lawyers in America for Bet-the-Company Litigation 2009 and Commercial Litigation 2006.
