Family Awarded Judgment from Road Accident

A family has been awarded a multi-million dollar judgment from a deadly road debris accident that killed a 43-year-old woman in February of 2004.

Claudia Avila was a passenger in a car traveling on I-95 in Delray Beach on Feb. 17, 2004, when a 34-pound metal plate projected into the windshield and struck her in the head. The Florida mother died several weeks later.

In turn, Avila’s family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against a trio of companies responsible for the road debris in late 2004. A concrete block manufacturing company called Tarmac America, a scrap metal company known as IGM and trucking company EM Transfer were named in the suit. Both IGM and EM Transfer settled with the family prior to going to trial.

On Wednesday following an eight-day trial, jurors found Tarmac America liable and ordered the company to pay the family $6.98 million.

Tarmac America had reportedly packaged thousands of the metal plates at its Melbourne plant and then loaded the cargo onto several flat-bed trucks destined for Fort Lauderdale. The company reportedly informed attorneys it had sold the metal plates to IGM, which hired EM Transfer to transport the cargo.

Attorneys claimed that Tarmac America was negligent by not properly packaging the cargo by either not securing the metal plates to the wooden pallets where they were stacked or by securing the metal plates to the pallets with banding the company reportedly had known was not strong enough for safe transport.

According to the jury, 28 percent of the liability rested with Tarmac America.

The verdict, which included $2 million in damages for pain, suffering and loss of parental support for each of Avila’s three adult children, and medical expenses, will be lowered by the 72 percent of liability the jury apportioned to EM Transfer.