September 24 , 2005

WIDOW SUES DUMP TRUCK OWNER IN AVON CRASH – STATE ALSO PUT ON NOTICE OVER ROUTE 44 SAFETY

By Daniel P. Jones, David Owens and Christopher Keating, Courant Staff Writers - Hartford Courant
The estate of a father of five young girls killed in the fiery July 29 crash at the base of Avon Mountain has sued the Bloomfield company whose dump truck caused the accident - the first lawsuit seeking to freeze assets of American Crushing & Recycling and its principals.

Michael A. Stratton, a lawyer representing Ellen Stotler of New Hartford, the widow of Paul A. "Chip" Stotler III, also has put the state transportation commissioner on notice that she intends to sue the state for repeatedly failing to correct design and warning deficiencies on Route 44 on Avon Mountain.

"Unfortunately, the state waited until after this horrendous collision to put up the appropriate signs, and they still haven't developed a plan for putting up runaway truck ramps or closing the road to trucks entirely," Stratton said Friday. "Chip and his family paid a terrible price for that inaction."

Also on Friday, an attorney for American Crushing said his client had liability insurance for its truck on July 29. That contradicts the claim of Acadia Insurance Co. of Maine, which has alleged in federal court that the trucking company suspended its liability coverage in January 2005 and attempted twice, hours after the accident, to reinstate that policy.

In the July 29 crash, four people died and more than a dozen were injured when an American Crushing dump truck careened down Avon Mountain into a busy intersection. Twenty vehicles were charred or mangled. The truck driver was among the dead.

Hubert J. Santos, a Hartford attorney, issued a statement Friday disputing Acadia's allegations, saying "the truck involved in the accident had continuous liability coverage at all times," including the day of the accident. On several occasions, according to the statement from Santos, Acadia Insurance Co. and its agent, Webster Insurance, "issued updated certificates of insurance that clearly showed liability coverage in force as to all of American Crushing & Recycling's dump trucks."

The statement said the trucking company continues to cooperate with authorities investigating the accident. It did not elaborate further.

Also Friday, state Attorney General Richard Blumenthal told the motor vehicle commissioner that he has some authority to partially close a loophole in state law that enables commercial vehicle operators to operate without liability insurance.

Ellen Stotler filed the lawsuit against American Crushing and Recycling in Superior Court in Hartford. A hearing on her bid to freeze the company's assets and those of company principal David Wilcox, of Windsor, is expected in about two weeks, Stratton said.

Stratton's claims that the Stotler estate will sue the Connecticut transportation department drew a "no comment" from Chris Cooper, a DOT spokesman. Chief State's Attorney Christopher Morano said his office and Avon police had begun an investigation into allegations that the truck involved in the crash was not insured.

Gov. M. Jodi Rell asked Morano to initiate the criminal investigation after learning earlier this week of the allegations, which were made by Acadia, of Westbrook, Maine, in a federal lawsuit against the trucking company.

In that complaint, Acadia said that months before the crash, the trucking company had suspended liability, medical payments, uninsured motorist and collision coverage for the truck involved in the July 29 crash and for 11 other trucks.

While rescuers were removing the dead and injured from their vehicles, officials at American Crushing & Recycling were trying to get their insurance company to reinstate coverage retroactive to July 1. That effort, along with a second effort to have the insurance reinstated effective the day of the crash, failed, according to Acadia's lawsuit. Even if a court ultimately orders Acadia to pay claims arising from the accident, the trucking company's policy with Acadia limited coverage to $3 million - an amount that could easily be surpassed by expected claims, according to legal experts.

The trucking company, which began in 1963 as Wilcox Trucking, owns a fleet of dump trucks and several earth movers and a rock crusher, according to the company's website.

Windsor town records show Wilcox owns a four-bedroom Cape Cod-style home on Pilgrim Drive. The appraised value of the house and land are about $238,000, according to the records.

Stratton said he expects to see the company's books and that the company will have to show all transactions since the July 29 crash. He said that American Crushing's alleged attempt to reinstate insurance coverage within hours of the crash tells him that Wilcox was worried about his assets.

"Why would he be so anxious to move so quickly to ensure that he had complete coverage if he didn't have assets to protect?" Stratton said.

A bigger issue, Stratton said, is the state's negligence. He said state transportation officials knew that Route 44 on Avon Mountain was unsafe. "The bottom line is the state knew about the risk of runaway trucks down that mountain," Stratton said.

He said he also plans to pursue a case against the state for failing to regularly inspect trucks and get dangerous trucks off the road.

Blumenthal on Friday sent a letter to motor vehicles Commissioner Ralph J. Carpenter recommending that he issue a directive requiring all commercial operators to notify his department if their liability insurance lapses.

Blumenthal also said he believes there is a direct correlation between trucking companies that fail to carry required insurance and those that do not properly maintain their vehicles.

"The vast majority of trucking companies have insurance and maintain their trucks properly," Blumenthal said. "Their good names are sullied by the few bad apples."

Bill Seymour, a spokesman for DMV, said his agency is looking at options Blumenthal presents, as well as changes in state law.

In the meantime, the agency's commercial vehicle safety division will on Monday begin verifying insurance coverage for the 25 trucking companies
with the worst safety records that travel intrastate and interstate.

Insurance Commissioner Susan F. Cogswell said she cannot direct insurance companies that write policies for trucks and other commercial carriers to notify DMV if coverage of a carrier's liability policy lapses. It would require a change in state law for that to happen, she said, adding that she intends to pursue that change after the legislature convenes.

Blumenthal pledged to take action to close the loophole. Insurance companies are required to notify the agency if an individual vehicle owner allows coverage to lapse. And if that owner fails to obtain insurance, his or her registration can be suspended.

"There is no rational or defensible policy explanation for not requiring truck companies to meet the same standards," Blumenthal said.

The requirement that insurance companies report motorists who drop their coverage came up in 1993. Some legislators had been working for years to require insurance companies to notify the DMV when a motorist drops insurance. But lawmakers unwittingly left a gap in the requirement. The law says "no such notification shall be made for any cancellation of any policy of commercial" vehicles' insurance.

Transcripts of hearings and debates from 1993 show that the trucking exemption was never a key focus. In fact, during the Senate debate, not a single lawmaker mentioned a word about the exemption for commercial trucks, according to the transcript.

Michael Riley, president of the 1,000-member Motor Transport Association of Connecticut, said his group never lobbied for the reporting exemption.

"I never knew that was in the statute until I read it [Friday] morning," Riley said. "It seems to me like a major loophole that ought to be fixed. We agree with the governor. ... It's not something we would take up as a cause to exempt trucks from insurance reporting."

The bill sailed through the Senate 36-0 and the House, 145-0. One of those voting for the bill in the House was Rell, then a low-key Republican lawmaker from Brookfield.

"The bill did not in any way remove the responsibility of a commercial carrier to have liability insurance," said Rell's spokesman, Rich Harris.

Copyright 2005, Hartford Courant