A wrongful death lawsuit was successfully settled during mediation. The suit was filed on behalf of the two surviving sons of the Plaintiff. The Plaintiff, her husband, and two young sons were driving their Nissan truck on I-295 near Jacksonville when the rear end locked up, causing the truck to spin out of control and hit a tractor-trailer. The passenger door flew open and the Plaintiff was ejected and killed.
The week of the accident, the Plaintiff’s husband took the truck to the Nissan dealership in Duval County for service when he heard a whining noise in the rear end. When he picked up the truck the day before the wreck, the dealer’s mechanic, who performed the work, said that he had filled the truck with fluids and had test-driven it. However, immediately after the accident, there was no fluid in the differential and the odometer indicated that the truck had not been test-driven.
Nance Cacciatore alleged that the Nissan truck had both design and manufacturing defects and was not serviced properly by the dealer. Specifically, the accident was caused when differential fluid got out through the front pinion seal. The lawsuit stated that the dealer’s mechanic neither adequately repaired the truck nor warned the Plaintiff not to drive it until a new differential, which had been ordered, was installed.
Nance Cacciatore hired metallurgical experts from the University of Florida to conduct extensive tests on the truck, including the use of an electron scanning microscope, to show that the fill plug and drain plug had not been removed by the mechanic to fill the differential with fluid. A mechanical engineer, an accident reconstructionist, and an economist rounded out the expert team.
