Tracy Morgan Sues Wal-Mart for Crash That Killed 1

[CatWoman]

Tracy Morgan has sued Wal-Mart over last month's highway crash that seriously injured him and killed a fellow comedian.

The lawsuit, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in New Jersey, claims Wal-Mart was negligent when a driver of one of its tractor-trailers rammed into Morgan's limousine van. The complaint claims the retail giant should have known the driver had been awake for over 24 hours, and that his commute of 700 miles from his home in Georgia to work in Delaware was "unreasonable." It also alleges the driver fell asleep at the wheel.

"As a result of Wal-Mart's gross, reckless, willful, wanton, and intentional conduct, it should be appropriately punished with the imposition of punitive damages," according to the complaint.

http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory/tracy-morgan-sues-wal-mart-crash-killed-24533320

[malaise]

1. Good

Rec

[onethatcares]

2. for some reason

I picture the walmart folks pinning this all on the driver and claiming he was an independent contractor with his own insurance etc.

they'll use the "we have no control over what independent contractors do during the time they aren't working directly for us" ruse.

[Shoulders of Giants]

5. I think that's what they would normally do if a celebrity wasn't involved.

However, this time, i think they will run the numbers and decide its better to just admit the guilt and pay up to avoid more bad press, which would be more costly than whatever the settlement will be in this case. Not that the reasoning is any better, but that's what I'm expecting. If it was you or me in the same situation though, forget it.

[daleanime]

8. +1

[Ikonoklast]

9. The driver was a Walmart Transportation employee.

It was still entirely the driver's fault, he was speeding in a construction zone. There is no reasonable way for any employer to prevent that from happening.

Walmart tries to eliminate the problem drivers by not hiring any to begin with, their qualification standards for new hires are very high.


Walmart Transportation operates one of the safest trucking fleets in all of North America. Their SAFER stats are excellent, most trucking companies would love to have their rating.

[JJChambers]

11. An inconvenient truth

Thanks for calming the hype with soothing facts.

[Ikonoklast]

13. Another truth is that Walmart had no reasonable way of knowing if the driver

got the mandated ten-hour rest break previous to going on duty. Trucking companies will take a driver at his word that they are properly rested before going On Duty. It is also legally the responsibility of the driver to report otherwise.

"Off Duty" means exactly that, the employer is not responsible for any actions taken by an employee while not under the direct supervision of dispatch, such as parking the CMV at a terminal and going home, i.e., "Off Duty".

If the driver did not get proper rest while on Off Duty status, there is no practical way for his employer to know that. It is entirely the driver's responsibility to get proper rest and report as being not being available to work due to not getting the required ten hours rest before reporting to work and resuming On Duty

If he drove from his home in Georgia to the terminal in Delaware, it is was the driver's responsibility to ensure that he got enough sleep before getting behind the wheel of that tractor. This is not something that is vague or not commonly known by a CMV driver, it is actually a Federal regulation well known by anyone in the industry.


Walmart has already stated that they would take full responsibility if it was found that their equipment failing was the cause of the crash.

If the driver lied about his rest time and availability to work, the bulk of any liability for the crash will fall on his shoulders.

[Shrike47]

3. Seams premature to me. He doesn't know yet how big the hospital + bills will be.

Their liability is pretty clear, though.

[TBF]

4. What part about "killed one person" is premature?

[bluedigger]

7. Punitive damages would not be tied to medical expenses.

I doubt this is really about the money for Mr. Morgan in the first place.

[AllyCat]

6. Go get 'em! Sorry to here about Morgan's friend.

[Gothmog]

10. This lawsuit will be settled soon

[CatWoman]

12. The Ugly Truth of Trucking

[maxrandb]

14. I hope he sues the Walton family individually as well

since the Supreme Court just drove a truck through the corporate veil, I think it's time to start holding individuals liable for the things their "personhood" corporation does.

[ProfessorGAC]

15. The Insulation of Incorporation

That avoidance of liability is one of the critical reasons people incorporate in the first place.

As bad as i feel for the family of the injured parties, what you suggest just isn't going to occur. It would be summarily dismissed because there are tens of thousands of points of precedence.

In this case, i wish they could be held liable, but at the same time, that would be a bad precedent, because now every small business owner could lose everything if one of their workers did something negligent, and since they're much, much smaller, it wouldn't requrie causing a fatality to bankrupt them personally.

The protections of corporation mean a great deal more to the average business owner than to gazllionaires who were the heirs to a megacorp.