Woman wins $725,000 in tractor-trailer crash

A woman won a $725,000 settlement after a tractor-trailer driver struck the rear of her vehicle, ending the case a month before a scheduled trial in federal court.

Tiffany Pugh, 38, suffered a spinal-disc injury in November 2015 in the wreck on Interstate 44 in St. Louis County. Pugh was taken by ambulance to the hospital from the scene. She sustained a lower-back injury that required physical therapy and spinal-fusion surgery.

The driver of the tractor-trailer, Fang Junqing, 26, of Los Angeles County, California, hit Pugh at a low speed while she was stopped at a construction site on the highway in Webster Groves.

Junqing’s fluency in English was at issue in the case, as was his lack of driver training and experience with a big rig, according to court filings and a submission from Pugh’s attorney. Junqing filled out the incident report in Mandarin Chinese instead of the required English. He spoke only in Chinese during his deposition in January.

U.S. Department of Transportation regulations require tractor-trailer drivers to be able to communicate in “basic English,” according to court filings.

He had not taken the DOT-required “specific” and “practical” road and written tests, according to court filings. Ying Lan Trucking Express was responsible for ensuring Junqing met the requirements, court filings said. The company’s owner hired the driver as a favor to a friend, according to Pugh’s attorney, Patrick Bader of Bader & Murov in St. Louis.

Bader said he found Trucking Express had already been cited by the DOT for employing drivers who lacked enough English fluency to drive tractor-trailers, according to filings in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri.

Trucking Express also did not follow its own hiring, training and supervision policies, according to court filings. Junqing had no commercial-driving experience before working for Trucking Express, which had a policy requiring drivers to have nine months of recent experience, the court filings said. The company did not perform a drug test on Junqing after the wreck, as its own policy required.

Trucking Express “knowingly and intentionally violated D.O.T. regulations and company safety rules in hiring and entrusting Defendant Junqing,” a plaintiff’s filing said. “Those admitted violations resulted in the lack of proper vetting and training for safety, competency and qualification. … It was in the performance of that work, and due to his incompetency, that Junqing caused Plaintiff’s permanent, disabling injuries.”

Pugh’s surgery was successful, and she has returned to work and lives without severe pain or other symptoms, Bader said.

Lead defense attorney James E. DeFranco of Fairview Heights, Illinois, did not respond to an email or phone message for comment.