Deadly truck crash foreshadows fight between business, safety at Capitol

AUSTIN (KXAN) -- Six years ago this month, Jay Rosenberg's world was ripped apart after his wife and teenage daughter died when their vehicle went underneath a semi-truck.

"It's like a wound that never heals," he said on a recent early morning, staring at framed family photos.

On Oct. 14, 2018, 19-year-old Sophie -- the youngest of 10 children -- was in town to attend the second weekend of the Austin City Limits Music Festival. Photos taken just two days before she died show the Texas A&M sophomore beaming in a brightly colored dress, wearing face paint and confetti in her hair. Sophie was studying to be an engineer and dreamed of one day building robots to explore Mars. After the concert, her mom, Leslie, 62, offered to drive her back to College Station so she could make it to class the next morning.

"They left shortly after midnight," Rosenberg recalled, in tears, about the night that changed his family forever. "Gave them both hugs. Told them I loved them."

That was the last time he saw his wife of 35 years and his daughter alive.

They made it within 25 miles of campus when, around 3:20 a.m., the driver of a semi-trailer truck "failed to yield" the right of way at a stop sign and "pulled out in front" of their vehicle, according to the Texas Peace Officer's crash report.

The driver told law enforcement he "saw the vehicle approaching" but believed he had enough time to make the wide turn. The minivan Leslie and Sophie were in went underneath the side of the truck, shearing the roof off, before stopping in a ditch, records and photos show. The airbags never had time to go off.

Shortly after 5:15 a.m., a Texas Highway Patrol corporal came to Rosenberg's home to deliver the news.

"They said, 'There was an accident,'" Rosenberg recalled. "And, I said, 'How serious?' And they go, 'Both your wife and daughter passed away.' I just couldn't believe it ... It doesn't seem real. Still almost impossible to accept."

In the years since, Rosenberg moved out to the mountains of Colorado. There were too many reminders in Austin, which became too "emotionally overwhelming," he said on a recent trip back to visit family.

Lawsuit law fuels controversy

Before he moved, Rosenberg testified against Texas House Bill 19 in 2021, which ultimately became law.

"If HB 19 passes," he told lawmakers at the time, "I firmly believe that more accidents like the one that took my precious wife and daughter from our world will continue to occur."

That law, which has been in effect for more than three years, essentially, splits civil lawsuits involving any commercial vehicle into two trials: A jury must first find the driver negligent before it can consider whether the company carries any blame -- and, if so, how much.

Supporters of the law say it's not designed to prevent "legitimate" victims from seeking justice but rather to prevent juries from "unfairly" punishing businesses.

Austin trial attorney Sean Breen said he is already seeing the impact of bifurcated trials.

"Under HB 19," Breen said, "a muzzle is put on the [victims'] family."

Breen represents a teacher who was seriously hurt in March when the driver of a concrete truck -- who police say admitted to smoking marijuana and using cocaine hours before -- crashed into a Hays CISD school bus in Bastrop County. Two people died, including a 5-year-old.

Federal officials said the driver was "prohibited" from operating a commercial vehicle at the time of the crash after previously testing positive for cocaine.

Under HB 19, a jury now can't know that information about his driving status unless the trial moves into a "second phase," Breen said.

"They're not allowed to talk about the negligent hiring, the negligent training or the negligent retention of this driver," he said.

"At some point they [the jury] would learn this," if it's determined the driver was at fault, KXAN investigative reporter Matt Grant pointed out.

"Maybe someday the jury does hear about it," Breen said. "But, by then, it's too late. The confusion and the delay has done its harm. We have a saying amongst the victims we represent: justice delayed is justice denied."

Push for wider lawsuit reform

Now, the coalition that pushed for HB 19 said it wants lawmakers to go even further next session.

"It's not just about these 18-wheelers," said Texas Trucking Association president and CEO John Esparza. "What we're talking about is a community of business interest all over the state."

Esparza pushed to get HB 19 passed, claiming juries can be "biased," injuries exaggerated, medical bills "inflated" and large "nuclear verdicts" devastating. Testifying in front of lawmakers in 2021, he blamed "grossly inflated verdicts" for "driving up insurance costs" and "putting companies out of business."

It's unclear what direct impact HB 19 is having, or will have, on insurance rates. Since 2021, the year the law took effect, through 2023, commercial auto rates for all vehicle types have increased, on average, by 16.5%, according to a Texas Department of Insurance (TDI) calculation. The legislature tasked TDI with studying HB 19's impact on insurance rates. An updated report is expected to be released by Dec. 1.

"I believe it's still going to take time to see whether HB 19 is going to be effective," Esparaza said. "It's very difficult to see rates go down but we've got to start with providing the environment in which they can."

Esparza is part of a new business coalition, called the Lone Star Economic Alliance (LSEA), that just last month started calling for wider lawsuit reforms for "every employer" across all industries "from local retailers to landscapers and oil and gas providers." In a news release sent in September, the LSEA again blamed a "litigation environment" for pushing insurance policies "further and further out of reach." The Alliance -- whose website likens some civil suits to being "held for ransom" -- is already fueling controversy with some of its proposed new ideas to expand HB 19. A spokesperson said those changes could include:

• Capping pain and suffering judgments, called "noneconomic damages," in "all kinds of cases" -- from trucking accidents to slip-and-fall -- when someone is hurt or killed. (Texas already caps medical malpractice noneconomic damage claims at $250,000 per defendant. That was passed by the legislature in 2003 and signed by then Gov. Rick Perry)
• Regulating how medical bills are presented to juries. LSEA wants juries to see payments that were already made. If a patient has insurance and didn't use it, the jury would hear the amount of money insurance would have paid. For the uninsured, medical bills would be based on the average amount paid for those services based on the All-Payer Claims Database.
• Preventing juries from hearing factors like whether a driver was drunk or unlicensed in the first phase of a two-phase trial.
• Instructing juries that a company cannot be "punished" through pain and suffering awards, which are based on a plaintiff's injury, not a defendant's conduct. Punitive damages are awarded for negligence.

The Alliance is made up of more than 650 members from industries that include insurance, transportation, agriculture, construction, finance, food and beverage, home services, housing, law, medical supplies, oil and gas and other trade associations, according to a news release and the group's website.

In a friend-of-the-court brief to the Texas Supreme Court appealing a $100 million verdict against a trucking company, Texans for Lawsuit Reform (TLR), which is part of the Alliance, said it broadly wants "claims for negligent hiring and retention ... jettisoned altogether" and inadequate training only brought up in "in unusual circumstances."

'Nothing frivolous'

The president of TLR, Lee Parsley, said companies want to do "the right thing" when someone is injured.

"But far too often, companies are being sued by the person who caused the collision or by someone who wasn't injured," Parsley said in a statement. "Drawing the line between legitimate lawsuits and frivolous ones is not easy, but it's exactly what the Legislature tried to do with HB 19, which focuses the trial on the cause of the collision and the amount required to fairly compensate the plaintiff."

Parsley claims lawyers are "artificially inflating medical bills," which result in "unjustified awards" that "drive up insurance rates and the cost of the products and services we all need."

Attorneys KXAN spoke with pushed back on that.

"The jury, for instance, doesn't get some kind of made up medical bills put before them," Breen said. "They can only consider evidence -- that is, bills that have been paid, or bills that have been incurred. This imaginary boogeymen of, 'Oh there's all these made up Magic Kingdom bills that are being paraded in front of juries' is just not true."

State Rep. Jeff Leach, R-Plano, authored HB-19. His office did not respond to requests for comment when asked about the new proposals or the effectiveness, so far, of his law.

Esparza is optimistic lawmakers will take up even more lawsuit reforms next session.

"Your critics will say HB 19, and these other measures, are meant to just protect and shield businesses over the expense of victims," Grant said to Esparza. "What would you say to them?"

"Sure, I'd say that the frivolous lawsuit environment is an absolute business for these attorneys that prey on business creators, job creators, in this state," he responded.

"Do you feel the majority of the lawsuits are frivolous?" Grant asked.

"A good number of them are," Esparza said.

Esparza didn't define "frivolous," but LSEA's website said it opposed lawsuits filed by someone "who was not injured or who caused his own injury." Opponents of the law say it should be left to judges and juries to decide the merits of a case.

For Rosenberg, the terms "frivolous" and "nuclear verdicts" are an insult.

"There's nothing frivolous, even close to frivolous, about their loss," Rosenberg said of his wife and daughter. "About anybody's loss."

Fatal crashes on the rise

Fatal trucking accidents are happening more often each year in Texas than anywhere else in the country, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. Large trucks are defined as any medium or heavy truck, excluding buses and motor homes, with a gross vehicle weight greater than 10,000 pounds.

Just last week, an Austin man was killed in New Braunfels after being struck by an 18-wheeler. The cause of the crash is being investigated.

In 2022, nearly 6,000 people were killed in large truck crashes nationwide. In Texas, 17% of all fatal crashes involved a large truck, exceeding the national average of 13.5% that same year.

Among those killed in a Texas trucking crash: Tracy Rambosek.

In May, video taken inside the cab of an 18-wheeler shows a truck driver allegedly texting before crashing into the 66-year-old on I-35 in Bell County near the city of Troy.

Troy police are "reviewing" the video for potential criminal charges and the case remains active, according to the chief.

Rambosek's husband filed a wrongful death lawsuit for more than $1 million, seeking accountability and accusing the driver and his company of negligence.

"He wants justice for his family," his attorney Ryan Zehl said. "And that's all he can get at this point because his wife is gone."

KXAN reached out to the trucking companies referenced in our reporting but did not hear back.

Lawsuits like this, and the drivers' alleged behavior, are not lost on truck drivers and insurance companies.

"It's a very dangerous job," said Richard "Tony" Barber, a trucker who's been behind the wheel for almost 30 years.

"I come from a trucking family. Most of my uncles, my dad, everybody drove a truck," he said. "You don't want to hurt nobody ever. That's not the goal. The goal is for everybody to go home the same way they left."

Trucking accidents overall -- where someone was hurt but not killed -- are down nationwide but holding steady in Texas.

In April, the driver of an 18-wheeler was arrested on a DWI charge after allegedly crashing into 10 parked cars in east Austin. Austin police said nobody was injured.

And, again just a week ago, five semi-trailers and two passengers were all involved in a crash that shut down I-35 at Grand Avenue Parkway in Pflugerville. Three people were injured, including one person who was airlifted to the hospital, according to fire officials. It's unclear what caused that crash.

As of September, crashes involving large trucks in the Lone Star State resulted in 7,122 injuries. Since 2020, 47,077 people have been hurt in Texas. Nationally, there were 45,144 injuries this year as of September and 324,392 since 2020, according to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.

We met Barber, whose route took him through Central Texas, at a rest stop in Williamson County. Recently, he said insurance representatives have attended his company's safety classes to offer advice on how to avoid being sued.

"He gave us a wide range of things that we could get sued for that none of us really would have thought about," he said, mentioning the use of cell phones with hands-free headsets. "Everything has changed and it's changed in the last five years. It wasn't 10 years ago. This is recent."

For Barber, safety is top of mind, along with the rising cost of insurance -- and what that means for businesses that might have less to spend on other things.

"Yeah, that's expensive," he said of the rising costs. "It's hurting all the companies."

Consumer advocate Ware Wendell, with the nonpartisan group Texas Watch, doesn't believe HB 19 will drive down costs. He wants the Texas Department of Insurance to review insurance rates before they go into effect. Wendell testified against the bill and said there doesn't need to be more "special trial procedures." Judges, not lobbyists, he said, should decide what evidence is seen by a jury.

"There is no reason for a trucking special privileges bill in this state and there's certainly no reason to expand it," said Wendell this month at the Texas Capitol. "It's going to take our roads, which are already the most deadly in the country, far and away, and make them even less safe."

"I have one question for them," Wendell said when asked what he would say to the LSEA. "Have you no shame?"

KXAN shared the Alliance's wish-list ideas with Rosenberg. He believes those measures, if passed, will do nothing to drive down fatalities -- which is his primary goal.

"It basically is, in my opinion, a license for the trucking companies to not care," he said.

The driver -- who authorities blamed for the crash that killed Rosenberg's wife and daughter -- was never arrested or charged with a crime. Rosenberg filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the driver and company, which settled confidentially before HB 19 took effect.

The process was never about the money, he said, and something he wishes he never had to endure.

"I can't tell you how amazing both my wife Leslie, and my daughter, Sophie, were as human beings. I could go on for hours," Rosenberg said. "It's immeasurable the impact they would have continued to have."

His pursuit of justice, he fears, would only be harder today.

Photojournalist Todd Bailey, Graphic Artist Wendy Gonzalez, Director of Investigations & Innovation Josh Hinkle, Investigative Photojournalist Chris Nelson and Digital Director Kate Winkle contributed to this report.