Stewart Tilghman Fox Bianchi & Cain, P.A. represented two young siblings who were tragically orphaned when a commercial truck driver slammed into their parents’ vehicle. The crash, which also claimed the lives of a woman and seven-year-old in another car, occurred after the parents had dropped their children off at an aunt’s house before setting out up the interstate highway to a city in Florida’s treasure coast, where they had just bought a home.
From the outset, the defendants and their legal team took the position that there was no case at all. They called it an unavoidable accident, the kind of tragedy no one could have prevented. To support that narrative, the defense produced dash cam footage from the truck and a phone record report, an "advanced logical extract," meant to show the driver hadn't been using his phone in the moments before impact.
But our firm did not accept that account at face value.
Uncovering What the Defense Left Out
Our legal team reviewed the dash cam footage frame by frame, again and again. That led us to discover something critical: the footage showed brake lights visible in front of the truck for a solid 45 seconds before the crash, signaling danger ahead. An attentive driver would have had ample time to react. This one didn't.
To understand exactly what the truck driver could and couldn't have seen, our team procured an exemplar truck that was the same year, make, and model as the one involved in the crash. We invited our experts to inspect it, and drive it for over 150 miles in the vicinity of where this crash happened, recreating the truck driver’s vantage point to uncover what a reasonably attentive driver should have noticed.
The dash cam footage and the driver's sightline were only part of the picture. The "advanced logical extract" the defense pulled as a way to determine the driver's phone use left out critical evidence of phone usage. When our team pushed for a full file extraction of the phone, the truth came out: the driver had been watching YouTube videos with his phone propped on the dashboard from the moment he got into his truck until only moments after the crash occurred.
A Settlement That Reflects What Was Taken
Having established liability, our team turned to demonstrating the full weight of what these two children lost: Their parents. Stability. Guidance. A future they'd expected to have and now never would.
The settlement: $22 million.
When the defense claims there is no case, Stewart Tilghman Fox Bianchi & Cain, P.A. doesn’t take it as the last word. By re-examining the evidence, hiring the appropriate experts to run their own analysis, and insisting on a complete record, rather than one curated by the defense, our firm was able to uncover the truth and secure meaningful, lasting support for two children who deserve nothing less.