$5M settlement in Illinois fatal crash exposes risks of commercial trucking

The attorneys for the family of a woman killed in a wreck with a tractor-trailer hope their case highlights how quickly bad things can happen on the roadway.

In March 2021, Jamie Roth, 34, died when a heavy-duty truck driven by Gursimran Singh crashed into her stalled car on Interstate 70 outside of Edwardsville, Illinois. 

Her family’s civil team — lawyers Kevin Etzkorn and Nathan A. Steimel — recently helped bring a $5 million settlement with the carrier that owned Singh’s truck, NFL National Freight Ltd.

“No. 1, be careful driving,” Steimel told Freightwaves in an interview. “Understand your surroundings, and if you see people staring at their cell phone, be extra careful.”

Etzkorn and Steimel are both based in the St. Louis, Missouri, area. They took on the case after members of the Roth family reached out to them. 

Etzkorn said large trucking accident settlements are often confidential, but this settlement was  unsealed by Roth’s family.

“It’s really unusual… I have cases that settle for substantially less than this, the defendant requires confidentiality,” Etzkorn told FreightWaves. “But this one … I think it benefits everybody if cases, when they do settle, are not sealed, then we can learn from mistakes.”

The attorneys spent months researching the accident to understand what happened, including hiring a forensic investigator, interviewing eye witnesses and talking to employees who worked at the trucking company involved in the accident.

The investigation led them to conclude Singh was driving the truck “on cruise control in heavy rain while looking down at his phone,” according to the forensic report.

The report was produced by John C. Glennon, Jr., and it was included in a 2023 wrongful death lawsuit Etzkorn and Steimel filed on behalf of Roth’s family against NFL National Freight Ltd.

Glennon is an automotive technologist and crash reconstructionist. 

NFL National Freight Ltd. is based in Surrey, British Columbia, Canada. The cross-border carrier has 35 trucks and 40 drivers, according to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.

On the night of the accident, Singh was co-driving an NFL National Freight truck across the country. The co-driver’s name was Lakhveer Singh, no relation to Gursimran.

“In the early part of 2021, they put Gursimran Singh on the road and he and Lakhveer go to California and spend a few weeks driving across the country with a shipment of fruit products that they have taken from California up to the eastern part of Canada,” Etzkorn said. 

The crash occurred at 12:41 p.m. on March 18, when Gursimran Singh’s truck rear-ended Roth’s Scion TC car, which was disabled in the eastbound right lane of I-70. 

A witness reported that Gursimran Singh was looking at a phone that he was holding in the center of the steering wheel. The witness also reported the co-driver, who was seated in the passenger seat, was also looking at a cell phone.

“At the scene [Gursimran Singh] told police that he just didn’t have time to react because there was another truck that was in front of him that moved at the last minute,” Etzkorn said. “He said that it was pouring rain as well, which did not help his cause at all because he did not slow down, he didn’t deactivate the cruise control and as we found out when we got further into the case, he actually was on his cellphone while he was driving.”

Gursimran Singh and his co-driver Lakhveer Singh had driven almost 14,000 miles in a 17-day period by the time the accident with Roth occurred, the forensic report said. 

Steimel and Etzkorn said their investigator found evidence that NFL National Freight Ltd. may have been part of a chameleon carrier operation. The carrier was NFL, but that company may not have been all that it seemed.

According to the forensic report, 17 other companies were found to likely be affiliated with NFL National Freight Ltd. and its owners.

“The Freightliner truck was reportedly being operated by the motor carrier NFL National Freight,” Glennon wrote in the forensic report. “Based on my review of this case I found that there are numerous companies affiliated with NFL. The group of companies are using common employees for the management of multiple motor carriers. The evidence shows that this group of companies is an affiliated chameleon operation that is most likely ghosting loads for larger companies.”

A chameleon carrier often reincarnates to separate itself from negative past behavior, including FMCSA and/or state imposed citations or fines.

“Certainly, it seems like the trucking industry would want to know about [chameleon carriers],” Steimel said. “Even if you have the companies that aren’t going to take care of themselves, which is what these chameleon companies try to do, they’re getting hit for liability, and go down to one truck or two, but then put 20 trucks over here with the guy that has a good safety record.”

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