Lawsuit Filed in Deadly Truck Crash on Dallas Freeway

openpr.com, May 30, 2008

Dallas, TX - Attorneys from the Dallas trial firm of Sayles Werbner, PC, are announcing the filing of a civil lawsuit against Dallas-based Texas Industries Inc. (NYSE: TXI) following a deadly freeway crash that killed a local real estate agent and seriously injured her five-year-old daughter. The lawsuit, Gamez v. Texas Industries Inc., et al., No. 08-04820, is filed in Judge Carl Ginsberg’s 193rd District Court in Dallas.

Maria Gamez, 41, of Keller, was killed on the afternoon of April 11, 2008, when a cement truck driven by Edward Magallon swerved out of control and slid more than 140 feet on top of a State Highway 183 barrier before flipping over and crashing into Mrs. Gamez’ sport utility vehicle. The lawsuit names Mr. Magallon as a defendant, as well as his employer TXI Transportation Co., a TXI subsidiary.

Mrs. Gamez’s daughter Angelica was a passenger in the SUV and suffered head and facial injuries in addition to intense emotional trauma while rescue crews worked for more than two hours to free her from the mangled wreckage as fresh cement filled the vehicle. Angelica was hospitalized with head trauma and facial lacerations. She is now recovering at home.

“This was a tragic, needless incident that shows the continued lack of care and common sense by the owners and operators of these giant, unstable trucks,” says Mark Werbner of the Dallas-based trial firm Sayles Werbner and lead counsel for Angelica and her father, Lorenzo Gamez. “The pain and suffering that this little girl has endured is almost indescribable, caused solely by a driver tailgaiting and going too fast in a mammoth truck. Based on his driving record alone, TXI should have known that this driver had no business operating a 25-ton cement truck on our highways.”

Mr. Gamez has filed a petition in Tarrant County Probate Court No. 2 to settle the estate of his deceased wife. The filing seeks to appoint Mr. Gamez as the legal representative of Mrs. Gamez's estate, and would allow the estate to bring any associated wrongful death and survival claims.

Mr. Werbner is a veteran of many lawsuits involving heavy truck wrecks, including work in a 2004 case that resulted in a $70.9 million verdict following one of the most devastating highway crashes in Texas history. In that case, which gained national media attention and was featured on Court TV, Mr. Werbner represented a seriously injured teenager who was on a church bus trip when the driver fell asleep at the wheel before crashing into a highway pillar. Jurors learned during the trial that the driver had traces of Valium and cocaine in his system at the time of the crash.

According to federal data, TXI, the state’s largest producer of cement, operates a fleet of more than 150 trucks and employs more than 330 drivers in Texas and surrounding states. A 2006 investigative series published in The Dallas Morning News found that federal inspectors ordered TXI drivers off the road 40 times in a two-year period for serious violations of safety regulations.

During the same two-year period, TXI’s vehicles were put out of service 297 times in 1,031 inspections – an out-of-service rate significantly above the national average. The most common violations were for defective or maladjusted brakes, bald tires, defective brake lights, improperly secured loads and cracked or broken wheel rims.

According to Texas Department of Public Safety records, Mr. Magallon was convicted of driving while intoxicated in 1999 and has been convicted five times since 1998 for failing to maintain motor vehicle liability insurance. His driving record also shows a 2006 conviction for speeding while operating a commercial vehicle, a 2005 conviction for disregarding a traffic control device and driver’s license suspensions in 2005 and 2006.