A $5.04 million settlement in a Middlesex County suit, claiming a tractor-trailer driver treating with methadone was asleep at the wheel when he slammed into another vehicle, was paid on March 20.

In March 2014, Heidi Bennett was stopped at a red light on U.S. 9 in Old Bridge when a tractor-trailer driven by Stephen Seidl struck her car at a high rate of speed, after which the car was driven several hundred feet and became engulfed in flames. Bennett, then 50 and a wife and mother, died at the scene of the accident.

Seidl was under the influence of methadone, which is used to treat narcotic addiction, and Xanax, an anti-anxiety drug, said the plaintiffs' lawyer, Paul Garfield of Davis, Saperstein & Salomon.