In a session conducted via Zoom last Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Judge Sam R. Cummings partly granted, and partly denied, the motion of Weather Group, LLC, for summary judgment in the case brought two years ago by the mother of a storm chaser killed in a horrific wreck outside Spur in 2017.
On March 28, 2017 a two-vehicle crash west of the city resulted in the deaths of 3 storm chasers after the Chevrolet Suburban driven by Randall Yarnell and occupied by Kelley Williamson, both storm chasers from Cassville, Missouri, working for the Weather Channel, disregarded a stop sign at highway speed and struck the Jeep Patriot of Corbin Lee Jaeger of Peoria, Arizona. All three men died instantly.
In March 2019 Jaeger’s mother, Karen Di Piazza of Arizona, filed a $125 million negligence and wrongful death suit in Texas against 17 defendants, including the parent company of the Weather Channel television broadcast. Three defendants remain party to the suit.
While the court’s decision last week prevents more generous Arizona law from applying in the plaintiff’s request for exemplary and punitive damages, it also stipulates that the court cannot summarily decide material claims of the defendant’s liability. Those will have to go to jury trial.
In what plaintiff’s attorney Robert A. Ball described as a mixed result for his client— whose claim for other, actual damages would be decided at trial—there is an “absence of case law on this issue, one way or the other” regarding jurisdiction in a diversity case (that is, where various states’ laws could apply). Texas law limits awards of punitive damages more strictly.
Other key issues on which the defendant requested summary judgment remain to be tried in court: the scope of agency by independent contractors; consideration of storm chasing as an “inherently dangerous activity”; and negligence in hiring and supervision, all related to the question of whether the television channel bears any vicarious liability in the fatal wreck.
Ball said his legal team had reviewed four years’ worth of Weather Channel broadcasts prior to the crash and uncovered “the needle in the proverbial haystack” showing that the program had in one case aired, but then blacked out, live storm chaser footage showing Yarnall and Williamson running a red light. The driving infractions were numerous, the plaintiff’s suit alleges, and had the Weather Channel halted such actions the fatal collision might have been avoided.
Those matters remain for a jury trial scheduled to begin at 9:00 a.m. May 3, 2021, according to the judge’s order.
In the meantime, Ball said that mediation is set for this Thursday via Zoom. “We hope all parties will go in with open minds,” he said.
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