Winkler County, TX — Tuesday, March 2, 2026 — Hilliard Law is proud to announce that a Winkler County jury returned a unanimous $6.1 million verdict in favor of Odessa resident Miguel Garcia following a devastating 2021 tractor-trailer collision near Kermit, Texas. Joseph Barrientos, partner at Hilliard Law, led the trial team to victory in a case marked by complex liability disputes and significant evidentiary challenges.
The crash occurred on August 30, 2021, when truck driver Fredy Alan Castro crossed the centerline on Texas Highway 302, causing an offset head-on collision in rainy conditions. At the time, Garcia, then 58, was driving a Freightliner tractor hauling an empty oil tanker eastbound on Highway 302. Castro, then 27, was operating a Freightliner westbound while hauling two fully loaded sandboxes for Prime Partners, Inc., with a combined vehicle weight of approximately 80,000 pounds. Both drivers survived the catastrophic impact. Jurors returned the verdict after approximately three hours of deliberation.
The case presented significant hurdles from the outset. The initial Texas Department of Public Safety report concluded, based solely on a gouge mark in the westbound lane and without formal reconstruction, that Garcia had crossed the centerline and caused the crash. With no eyewitnesses, liability became a battle of accident reconstruction experts.
Barrientos successfully argued that the DPS report and the investigating trooper’s testimony regarding the point of impact were unreliable and had them excluded from the jury’s consideration. He also elicited testimony establishing that Castro had obtained his commercial driver’s license from the Mexican federal government just three days before being hired by Prime Partners, received no training or instruction before driving for the company, and did not meet Prime’s own hiring criteria, having held a CDL for less than two years.
Adding further complexity, late in the case Prime Partners, Inc. submitted a stipulation that Castro was a company employee rather than an independent contractor, triggering the “Admission Rule,” which resulted in the exclusion of Prime from the verdict form as well as evidence of Prime’s own negligence from the jury’s consideration. As a result, even though Prime’s own trucking regulation expert admitted in deposition that under federal motor carrier safety regulations, Castro was classified as a novice driver who should not have been operating the vehicle alone on the day of the crash, and that Prime was negligent in allowing him to do so,Defense counsel from Thompson Coe’s Dallas office secured rulings excluding this testimony about federal motor carrier safety violations, making Garcia’s burden even more difficult.
Despite those limitations, Barrientos and his team demonstrated that accident reconstruction expert Curtis Flynn of Flynn & Associates, Inc. had accurately traced the sequence of events and proved it was Castro, not Garcia, who crossed the centerline. Critical to the jury’s decision was Flynn’s detailed analysis of damage patterns on both trucks and physical roadway evidence found in the eastbound lanes.
“Miguel Garcia endured years of being blamed for a crash he did not cause,” said Attorney Joseph Barrientos. “This verdict gives him something no amount of money can fully capture: his name cleared and the truth on the record. We are grateful to the jury for carefully evaluating the evidence and delivering justice.”
Garcia endured weeks of hospitalization in El Paso, nine surgeries, and months of physical therapy. He was unable to work for two years following the crash and continues to live with permanent scarring and physical deformities. Throughout the trial, Garcia was supported by his family. When Judge John Pool read the verdict aloud, Garcia wept, expressing gratitude to the jury for clearing him of fault and to his trial team, including Hilliard Law paralegals Tina Garcia Tullos and Elsa Martinez, for their tirelessdedication to his case.
About Hilliard Law
Hilliard Law is a nationally renowned law firm based in Corpus Christi, Texas. With a history of success in personal injury and mass tort litigation, Hilliard Law is committed to providing aggressive representation and seeking justice for its clients. Bob Hilliard, Founding Partner, has led Hilliard Law to the forefront of national trial law firms. Having tried over 150 jury trials, Mr. Hilliard is a two-time winner of the National Law Journal’s prestigious Elite Trial Lawyer of the Year award for product liability and motor vehicles and has been recognized as a Super Lawyer for the past 23 years. Mr. Hilliard is double board-certified and recognized as one of the top 100 trial lawyers in the United States. In the past year alone, Hilliard Law’s 22-lawyer firm has secured over $200 million in verdicts and settlements.