Family sues driver, companies in fatal crash

By Tasha Kates

Published: October 21, 2008

The family of a 16-year-old Albemarle High School junior killed in a car accident has filed a $15 million lawsuit against a tractor-trailer driver and the company for which he worked.

Clinton and Michele Aichs, parents of Sydney Aichs, filed the suit against Kenneth Barbour earlier this month, according to court documents filed in Albemarle County Circuit Court. The suit also names Don B. Swisher Trucking Corp. and McCann Delivery Service Inc.
“Mr. and Mrs. Aichs were forced to file this lawsuit because the defendants have refused to fully accept responsibility for their acts and omissions in the days before, and of course the day of, Sydney’s death,” wrote J. Gregory Webb, the Aichs’s attorney, in an e-mail. “The Aichs are seeking justice through the only means provided to them.”

Early in the morning on May 9, Sydney Aichs was making a left turn onto U.S. 29 from Ashwood Boulevard. Authorities have said Barbour failed to stop for a red light, hitting Aichs’s car with his tractor-trailer. She was pronounced dead soon after the accident. Barbour, 55, was indicted in June in Albemarle Circuit Court on charges of involuntary manslaughter and reckless driving.
The Aichs’s lawsuit claims that Barbour, a Waynesboro man who drove the night shift for Swisher, didn’t slow down May 9 when the traffic light turned yellow on U.S. 29. Instead, Barbour kept going through the light without braking or honking his horn, the suit said, ultimately hitting the driver’s side of Aichs’s 1999 Chevrolet Cavalier.

Barbour could not be reached for comment for this story. Webb said the Aichs family also declined to comment.
The lawsuit also claims that the brakes on Barbour’s tractor weren’t in service, something that he was supposed to have checked during the pre-trip inspection required by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. According to the suit, Barbour also drove for the company while he was “ill and/or fatigued, or while his ability or alertness was so impaired as to cause his operation of the tractor-trailer to be unsafe and hazardous to other motorists …”
Swisher and McCann are accused of failing to maintain their equipment and of failing to train and supervise Barbour under the suit. The document also makes mention of federal violations against the companies, which included failing to conduct post-accident alcohol testing on Barbour and for failing to mark a commercial motor vehicle with a legal name and/or a U.S. Department of Transportation identification number.

A Don B. Swisher Trucking Corp. spokeswoman said Tuesday that the Staunton-based company is prohibited from commenting on the lawsuit.
The Aichses are alleging negligence against Barbour and both companies. In addition to seeking $15 million in compensatory damages from all three parties, the family is requesting $350,000 in punitive damages from Barbour.
Webb said the Aichs family has suffered greatly as a result of Sydney Aichs’s death.

“I cannot adequately express in words what they’ve lost,” Webb said. “It was just a senseless, awful, horrific tragedy.”
The fatal accident triggered a review of the intersection by the Virginia Department of Transportation in early July. According to the agency’s report, there were 102 crashes at that intersection from 2003 to 2007. None of the crashes was fatal, but 47 people were injured in those accidents.
According to VDOT, the U.S. 29-Ashwood Boulevard intersection ranks third in Albemarle County for the number of fatal and injurious accidents from 2004 to 2006.

The speed limit on U.S. 29 between Polo Grounds Road and Airport Road was reduced in July from 55 mph to 45 mph. The Forest Lakes Community Association also has shifted back the subdivision’s entrance sign so that drivers have better visibility of oncoming traffic.
Barbour is scheduled for trial Feb. 11 in Albemarle Circuit Court on his criminal charges. Webb said a trial date for the civil suit hasn’t been set, but he hopes to get a two-day jury trial set for the latter half of 2009.