Faulty Highway Construction Design Leads to Settlement

In the fall of 2018, a settlement was reached with a local roadway construction company in the death of a Richland County resident who was fatally injured in a motorcycle wreck due to a faulty construction design. While driving down the entrance ramp on Interstate along 1-20 East to 1-77 South, the client’s wheels of his motorcycle caught the drop-off, causing him to suddenly lose control, and ejecting him from the motorcycle.

After initiating a lawsuit for wrongful death and survival and, as a result of an aggressive discovery strategy, we learned the grade elevation difference was several inches over the maximum allowed, and the required warning signs were not placed in the proper areas, per mandatory SCDOT road standards and specifications and the construction company’s contract with SCDOT. The shortcomings of the construction company made the highway unreasonably dangerous and, as a result of the construction company’s reckless grade elevation difference between adjacent travel lanes, my client sustained fatal injuries.

An expert witness was retained in this case. After reviewing the case file, the expert opined that a drop off exceeding two inches in the middle of a travel lane open to the public was an “unfathomable” breach of the standard of care and one of the most egregious violations he has seen in his engineering career.

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