The $65 Million I-25 Overpass Verdict and What It Means for Colorado Heavy Haulers

What the Larimer County Jury Decided

On September 22, 2026, the lawyers for the family of Megan Arneson announced that a Larimer County, Colorado jury had returned a $65 million verdict against a truck driver and the Fort Collins company he drove for. The money goes to her son, who was 10 when the crash happened and is 14 now. The firms involved, Dulin McQuinn Young and the Dan Caplis Law Firm, called it the largest trucking crash verdict in Colorado and the largest jury verdict ever in Larimer County. CDLLife and CBS Colorado both covered it. The trial ran five days.

If you haul equipment anywhere along the Front Range, this is the case to understand this fall. It came out of a load that was never set up right before the truck pulled onto Interstate 25. A verdict this size changes how carriers and underwriters look at commercial truck insurance in Colorado, and it is worth knowing why.

How an Excavator Arm Brought Down Part of a Bridge

The crash happened on August 8, 2022, around 6 in the evening, on northbound I-25 near Mead, where Weld County Road 34 crosses over the interstate. According to CBS Colorado, the truck was hauling an excavator and the Colorado State Patrol determined the machine had been loaded improperly, so its arm stood higher than the bridge allowed. The law firm release put it more plainly, the arm was never lowered. It hit the overpass and knocked concrete loose onto the road. Megan Arneson, a 32 year old preschool teacher driving home with her son after a day at Water World, was behind the truck. A piece of concrete came through her windshield and killed her. Her son had minor injuries.

The driver, Darnell Yingling, pleaded guilty to vehicular homicide for reckless driving in November 2023, as CDLLife reported. CBS Colorado also reported that he had received his unrestricted commercial driver's license only days before the crash.

The Case Was Built on Training and Inspection, Not Just the Driver

The lawsuit named the driver, but the claims against the company were about what happened before he ever turned the key. The family alleged that the employer failed to train him properly and failed to inspect the load before it left the yard. Those are company level failures, and a jury treated them as worth tens of millions of dollars. When a new CDL holder is handed a trailer with heavy equipment on it, somebody with experience should be checking the boom position, the tie downs and the overall height before that unit rolls. The jury was convinced nobody did, and the company paid for it alongside the driver.

Colorado Caps Part of the Award. Here Is What It Does Not Cap

A $65 million headline is not the same as a $65 million check, and the reason matters for how you insure. Colorado limits the noneconomic portion of a wrongful death award, the grief and loss of companionship side. For a claim that arose in 2022 that cap was $598,350. House Bill 24-1472 raised it to $2,125,000 for lawsuits filed on or after January 1, 2025, according to a summary from the law firm Wilson Elser. Economic damages, meaning the lost income and support a 32 year old parent would have provided over a lifetime, are not capped at all. No public breakdown of the $65 million between those categories had been released as of this writing.

Set that against the federal floor. The minimum liability limit for a for-hire carrier hauling non hazardous freight is $750,000 under 49 CFR 387.9. Even with the noneconomic side cut to the cap, the economic side of a wrongful death claim involving a young working parent runs into the millions on its own. A carrier at the federal minimum, or even at $1 million, is looking at a judgment many times its policy limit, and the excess lands on the business and its owner.

What a Colorado Heavy Hauler Should Take From This

Three things. First, write a pre trip for equipment loads that includes a measured height, not an eyeball. The boom goes down, the stick folds, and somebody measures from the pavement to the highest point, because the clearance on one Colorado span tells you nothing about the next one. Second, document the training. If a new driver is moving excavators, skid steers or anything else that changes height depending on how it sits, keep a written record that someone taught him how to position and secure it. The allegation here was that the training never happened, and a written record is how a carrier answers that claim. Third, look at your commercial auto liability limit as the number a Larimer County jury would see, not the number a broker requires. Higher primary limits or an umbrella is the biggest single change a small fleet can make.

Cargo coverage is the other piece. The excavator itself is a motor truck cargo claim, and a policy built for general freight may not be written with heavy equipment in mind, so read the valuation and securement conditions before the next haul.

If you run flatbeds, lowboys or tow and recovery units in Colorado, we can quote limits that actually match the exposure this verdict just put a number on. Get a truck insurance quote in under a minute at our quote form, or call or text 423-264-4255. You can also start on our Colorado truck insurance page to see how we handle Front Range and mountain corridor operations.