Injuries Caused by Mud on the Road Results in $230,000 Virginia Settlement

f you are a landowner, you have a duty to make sure your activities don’t pose a danger to users on nearby highways. This was illustrated recently in Virginia when a $230,000 settlement was made for injuries caused by mud on the road.

A report in Virginia Lawyers Weekly stated a case was brought by a passenger who was injured in a crash.

The driver was on a curvy, two-lane road in Virginia when he hit mud on the road and lost control of the vehicle. The car slid over a yellow center line and hit another vehicle head on.

Accident investigators found the wreck scene was below a large farm. Contractors were cutting the corn the day of the accident, causing mud to run off the land and onto the road where it posed a slippery hazard.

The injured passenger suffered a fractured left wrist, a fractured collar bone, and a collapsed lung.

The passenger filed a claim against the farm and the independent contracting company that was cutting the corn. It claimed negligence on behalf of both parties citing their failure to warn of dangerous conditions on the road.

Under the Code of Virginia landowners or people working on the land have a duty not to deposit or leave on a highway, soil, sand, gravel and mud or any other substance that will create a hazard to drivers.

The passenger made at full recovery from the injuries. A three-way settlement was reached between the plaintiff, the farm’s insurance carrier and the insurance carrier for the company hired to cut the corn.

The plaintiff was represented by Matthew J. Zwerdling of Richmond.

In Virginia, landowners have a range of duties to drivers including keeping livestock off the road.

In a tragic recent case, a 49-year-old passenger was killed when a bull ended up on the roof of her car.

The driver of the car she was traveling in hit a bull on the road. The animal escaped from a pen at a nearby farm. The bull was thrown onto the car, crushing the metal.

The passenger’s grave injuries included a T-4 burst fracture of her vertebral spine leading to paralysis. She a complicate series of operations but died nine months later from complications associated with the injury, including respiratory failure, severe decubitus ulcers, and infections.

A wrongful death lawsuit was filed against the driver of the car that hit the bull and the cattle owners who owned the farm the bull escaped from. The case was led to a payout of $1.02 million to the estate of the passenger.

If you have been injured on the roads of Virginia or North Carolina, please call our auto accident injury team at (757) 333-3333.