The parents and son of a man killed when his SUV was rear-ended by a moving van on a northwest Georgia expressway have settled their claims for $7.2 million.

According to plaintiffs attorney Joe Fried, substantial problems needed to be overcome before he and Fried Rogers Goldberg senior associate Brian Mohs were able to nail down the settlement. Among them: The man's SUV was disabled in the middle of the road because of an accident he caused.

“At first blush, this looks like a very hard case, if it's a case at all,” said Fried. “When we first met with the family, we told them that. They were being told by the trooper there was no fault because it was so dark, and our guy definitely caused the first wreck.”

There was also witness testimony that the deceased, 22-year-old Malcolm Jordan, was driving erratically before he hit a van in front of him just before midnight.  

It was only after discovery revealed the defendant truck driver may have been texting prior to hitting Jordan and was in violation of several Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration regulations, that the case began to show promise, Fried said.

The defendants were represented by Michael Hoffer and Alexa Morris with Cruser, Mitchell, Novitz, Sanchez, Gaston & Zimet.

Hoffer, who recently left the firm to launch a plaintiffs practice, said he knew going in the case might be more difficult to defend than it initially appeared.

“On our side, I think it was a good result for a trucking case with a fatality,” said Hoffer. “Any time you're dealing with a case when there's a deceased person on the other side, you have to be careful, even when you think liability is going to favor you and your client.” 

“And those guys are good,” he said. “They turned a case about their client being in the middle of the road into a case about record-keeping and compliance.”

According to Goldberg, court filings and the plaintiffs summary, Jordan was driving along Interstate 75 in Gordon County in June 2016 when he hit a van in front of him.

The van pulled to the side of the expressway and put on its flashers, but Jordans' Nissan Xterra was disabled and stuck in the center lane. It's unknown whether his lights remained on, but “his flashers were definitely not on,” Fried said.

Other vehicles avoided Jordan's dark-colored vehicle, but the driver of an Arnold Moving Co. box truck saw it too late and, despite swerving to the left, hit the SUV and sent it spinning into the guardrail where it burst into flames.

The moving van driver, Vladimir Balsa, and other good Samaritans were able to get Jordan out of the burning SUV. He was flown to Grady Memorial Hospital's burn unit, where he died 20 days later.

Gordon left behind a son, then 1, and was engaged to the child's mother.

 Jordan's parents and estate executors, Sherry Bell and Bobby Jordan, and the child's mother, Heather Douthitt, sued Arnold, Balsa and the company's liability carrier, Technology Insurance, in the Northern District of Georgia's Rome Division later that year.

“At the beginning, they had no interest having a [settlement] discussion, and frankly I didn't blame them,” Fried said.

The fact there was texting going on just prior to the accident proved useful, particularly driver Balsa's efforts to explain it, Fried said.

“He took the position that the person in the seat next to him was texting on his phone, but that didn't follow, because the texts were in Spanish and that person didn't speak Spanish,” Fried said.

Balsa's companion then testified that he had typed in the words relayed by Balsa and then shown him the response texts.

“So he's holding the cellphone up in the driver's face while they're driving to show it to him,” said Fried. “That's worse than texting!”  

Balsa also testified that his low-beam headlights were on at the time, even though no one was approaching, which is a violation of FMCSA rules.

“So, if he had been using his high-beams, he would have had twice the time to see us,” said Fire. “Our argument was that he was distracted by his cellphone and he was using his low-beams,” Fried said.

Further research revealed Balsa had not reported some traffic violations during his annual reviews that, had they come to light, would have barred him from driving for the company, Fried said.

“We made a policy-limit demand for $10 million and did not agree to mediate, but we did agree to negotiate,” he said.

The parties initially agreed to settle for $7.25 million late last year, said Fried. The need to set up a settlement protection trust, appoint a guardian ad litem for Jordan's 2-year-old boy, and other details meant that it was only last week that District Judge Harold Murphy signed off on the deal.

“Of course, no amount of money can make up for the fact that this child will grow up without a father,” Fried said.