More lawsuits filed in student nurses’ deaths

LEESBURG — Three new lawsuits were filed Tuesday in connection with a traffic incident which claimed the lives of five student nurses, including a Leesburg woman, and injured two others.

The suits are in addition to four suits that were filed last week on behalf of the parents of three students who were killed in the incident and one who was injured.

The incident took place on April 22 as seven Georgia Southern University nursing students in two vehicles were stopped in traffic on Interstate 16 in Byron County near Savannah.

The students were en route to a Savannah hospital for the final days of nursing clinical rotations at a Savannah hospital when, according to the Georgia State Patrol, a tractor-trailer truck driven by John Wayne Johnson crashed into the rear of a Toyota Corolla driven by Emily Clark, with passengers Caitlyn Baggett and McKay Pittman.

The force of impact was great enough, according to the trooper on scene, to carry the semi over the top of the Corolla. It then collided with the rear of a Ford Escape, in which students Abbie Deloach, Brittney McDaniel and Morgan Bass, a resident of Lee County, were traveling.

Clark, Baggett, Pittman, Deloach and Bass were killed, with McDaniel and Richards suffering severe injuries.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs say the latest lawsuits were filed in Atlanta by the law firm of Fried Rogers Goldberg LLC on behalf of the parents of McKay Pittman, who was killed in the crash.

Fried, along with the Atlanta law firm of Clark & Smith, filed a wrongful death suit on behalf of the parents of Morgan Bass, attorneys say.

According to Joseph Fried, lead attorney for the plaintiffs, on Wednesday the Fried Rogers Goldberg firm also filed a personal injury lawsuit on behalf of nursing student Brittney McDaniel in the State Court of Chatham County.

Defendants named in the law suits include Total Transportation of Mississippi LLC, owner of the tractor-trailer rig, and its parent company, US Express Enterprises Inc., Fried said.

Fried alleges that new evidence shows that Johnson had been fired in 2011 from another trucking company for falling asleep at the wheel and wrecking a tractor-trailer rig.