Deaton, Inc. v. Burroughs

This is an appeal from a judgment entered on a jury verdict in favor of the plaintiff in a wrongful death action which arose out of a collision between two flatbed tractor-trailer trucks.

David Tate drove a tractor-trailer truck as an employee of Deaton, Inc. (Deaton). At approximately 1:00 a.m. on November 17, 1980, Tate left Birmingham, Alabama, driving a Deaton flatbed tractor-trailer truck northbound on Interstate Highway 59 en route to Knoxville, Tennessee. The Deaton truck was loaded with 40,000 pounds of steel beams, some of which extended more than two feet beyond the forty-foot…