JACKSON, Miss. — A Hinds County, Mississippi, jury has awarded a construction worker $1.8 million in a lawsuit against a truck driver who used a train horn that was hooked to his rig.
According to court documents, Robert Kelly claimed that the truck horn caused him to lose hearing and that the truck driver, Jerry Garland, was negligent in using the excessively loud horn.
The jury agreed.
Under Mississippi tort law, however, non-economic damages are capped at $500,000, meaning Kelly’s final award will be $787,597.
The incident involving the horn happened in May 2020 when Kelly was working a construction job laying asphalt in Florence, Mississippi.
Court documents showed that Garland honked at Kelly because he was standing in front of his rig.
Both were working for commercial paving contractor Adcamp at the time. Garland was an independent contractor, and Kelly was an Adcamp employee.
Garland blasted the three-trumpet Union Pacific horn for around 10 seconds, and Kelly claims that caused permanent hearing loss, according to the court.
Union Pacific officials told the court that the horn’s sound output is 145 decibels, more than a jet engine, which is around 140 decibels.
According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s classification of permissible noise exposure, the maximum safe decibel level is 115 without hearing protection.
Kelly claimed in his lawsuit that the honking was not necessary.
“There was no need to pull within close proximity of the plaintiff and blow his train horn for an extended period of time,” the lawsuit states. “There was no emergency. There was no traffic, and the defendant had nowhere to be by a specific deadline. The train horn itself was an OSHA violation on the work site. This is further evidence of negligence. The defendant’s actions were not reasonable.”
As a result of his injuries, Kelly was out of work for three months before resuming his job for another two years.
Born in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and raised in East Texas, John Worthen returned to his home state to attend college in 1998 and decided to make his life in The Natural State. Worthen is a 20-year veteran of the journalism industry and has covered just about every topic there is. He has a passion for writing and telling stories. He has worked as a beat reporter and bureau chief for a statewide newspaper and as managing editor of a regional newspaper in Arkansas. Additionally, Worthen has been a prolific freelance journalist for two decades, and has been published in several travel magazines and on travel websites.
