The $99.9 Million Verdict: A Georgia Trucking Case Where the Evidence Disappeared

Case result: In a wrongful death trucking case tried in Fulton County, Georgia, Flanagan Law, P.C. secured a $99.9 million jury verdict for the family of Tony Nguyen, who was killed when a tractor-trailer struck his disabled car at highway speed on I-20 near Fulton Industrial Blvd. The verdict included $66.25 million in compensatory damages for the full value of Tony’s life and his estate’s pain and suffering, plus punitive damages and attorney’s fees awarded after the jury heard how the trucking company acted in bad faith.

The Phone Call

On October 24, 2024, a world renowned trial attorney called me out of the blue.

This lawyer is a lawyer other lawyers study. He teaches trial advocacy. He has collected verdicts most attorneys only read about. And he opened the call with a test.

“Give me the first 30 seconds of your last opening statement.”

No warmup. No context. Just: show me how you talk to a jury.

I was a bit taken aback. At the time I was holding my one year old daughter in our kitchen. My wife heard the call, took our daughter, and told me I needed to take it. So I went upstairs to a quiet room and walked him through the opening from a trial I had finished three weeks earlier in Henry County.

The attorney listened. Then he told me why he was calling.

He had a case. A wrongful death trucking case he believed in completely, with a client he cared about, a widow who had lost her husband, a son who had lost his father. The trucking company and its insurer had refused every reasonable chance to resolve it. They had offered a fraction of their own policy and let multiple good faith settlement offers expire.

This lawyer had a conflict, with another big trial going to court the same day this case was set to start. What he needed was a trial lawyer who would take the case to verdict and mean every word of it.

Before he handed it over, he asked one more question. Could I stand in front of a jury, ask for a number the defense would call outrageous, and believe it in my soul?

Yes. That is the job. If you do not believe the number, the jury sees it, and they write it off. I told him I believed a jury should hear this case, and that when I asked for the verdict, I would ask with conviction.

That call is how Flanagan Law came to try the case of Tony Nguyen.

What Happened on I-20

Tony Nguyen was a young husband. Before dawn on a rainy morning, he was driving on I-20 when another driver came flying past traffic, lost control, and hit Tony’s car, knocking it across the highway and into the median wall. That driver got out of his own car and fled the scene, leaving Tony’s car against the wall.

Then came the tractor-trailer.

The truck was traveling in the left lane, in the rain, in the dark. The evidence showed it was missing a windshield wiper on the right side. The driver claimed his required onboard camera was unplugged. He gave shifting accounts of what he saw and when. What the physical evidence showed was simpler: he did not brake until right about the moment of impact, just over 9 feet according to our accident expert, and he crushed Tony’s car at highway speed.

The Company Behind the Truck

The tractor-trailer belonged to a carrier called TIAG, Transportation Inc. Agent Group Inc. This was not a trucking company the way most people picture one. It had no real training program and no meaningful safety structure.

Federal law puts real obligations on motor carriers. Rules govern how drivers are qualified and supervised, how trucks are maintained, and what equipment has to work before an 80,000 pound vehicle shares the road with families. TIAG put a truck on I-20 in the rain with a missing wiper and, by its driver’s own account, a disconnected camera.

Then, after the crash killed a man, the company made its worst decisions of all.

The Evidence That Disappeared

In a truck crash case, the proof of what happened sits almost entirely in the hands of the trucking company. The truck. The electronic data. The driver’s logs. The onboard video. If those things vanish, a family may never learn the truth.

Here, they vanished.

We needed to inspect the tractor-trailer. The company scheduled an inspection date with the family’s counsel, sent its own people out to examine the truck first, and then the truck was scrapped before our experts were scheduled to inspect it.

It went further. Representatives working with the defense gained access to Tony’s own vehicle at the storage lot, removed the airbag control module from his car, the component that stores the black box data describing a vehicle’s final moments, and took it. It was never seen again. That was the family’s property, holding the family’s evidence, and it disappeared.

The court examined all of it. In a 27 page spoliation order, the court found the trucking company had a duty to preserve critical evidence after the crash, including the truck itself, dash camera data, the driver’s hours of service logbooks, and the airbag control module, and that it failed to meet that duty.

This is what spoliation means in plain language: when a company destroys or loses evidence it was required to protect after a deadly crash, the missing evidence itself becomes part of the case. A grieving family should not carry the burden of a company’s disappearing proof. At trial, we made sure they did not.

The Trial

We tried the case to a Fulton County jury in two phases.

We built the case around the defendant’s conduct, from the condition of the truck, to the driver’s story that physics would not support, to every piece of evidence that should have existed and did not. Through discovery, expert testimony, and cross examination, we showed the jury what happened on I-20, what was missing, and why the missing evidence mattered.

And we showed them Tony. Not as a case number or a claim value, but as a husband and father whose life had immeasurable worth to the people who loved him.

In Phase 1, the jury awarded $66.25 million in compensatory damages: $60 million for the full value of Tony Nguyen’s life and $6.25 million for his estate’s pain and suffering.

In Phase 2, after hearing the evidence of the company’s post crash conduct, the jury added punitive damages and attorney’s fees.

The total verdict exceeded $99.9 million.

What the Verdict Means

No verdict brings a husband or a father home. What a verdict like this does is tell the truth out loud. It says Tony Nguyen’s life had extraordinary value. It says a trucking company cannot run an unsafe operation, destroy the proof, and expect a family to simply accept it. And it says that when a company bets a family will not fight, sometimes the family finds lawyers who will.

The imbalance in these cases is real. Within days of a fatal truck crash, the carrier and its insurer have investigators, defense counsel, and control of nearly all the evidence. The family has a funeral to plan. The only way to level that field is to move immediately: preservation demands, inspections, court orders, and a willingness to try the case rather than take a discount.

That is how this firm works. We prepare every case as if it will be tried, because the other side can always tell the difference.

If Your Family Is Facing a Trucking Company

If you lost someone you love in a tractor-trailer crash in Georgia, or you were seriously hurt in one, the evidence that proves your case is disappearing right now. Data gets overwritten. Logs go missing. Trucks get repaired or scrapped. Do not give a statement to the trucking company’s insurer, and do not accept an offer, before you talk to a lawyer who handles these cases.

Call Flanagan Law, P.C. We will listen to what happened, tell you honestly what your case involves, and if we take it, we will do the work, protect the proof, and be ready to try it.

Prior results do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome in any future case. Every case is different and is decided on its own specific facts and legal circumstances.