Left in the cold
Company picks up cargo, leaves injured trucker on the side of the road
By Charlie Morasch
staff writer
when she saw his tractor pull in front of the house late that night.
Stepping into the truck’s cab and its foul odor, she dropped the glass and called 9-1-1 when she saw Glenn.
Glenn Johnson lay on his cab bed clad in stained shorts and a T-shirt, surrounded by cups of urine. Gangrene had set in on his left foot and was infecting his entire lower leg. Feces were mixed with blood from cuts on his head.
“He had blood all over the top of his head and in the sleeper, too,” Dollie said in court. “It was a slaughterhouse.”
Glenn had spent more than four days lying injured in his truck cab while his then-supervisor at Golden Eagle Express Inc. sent a driver to pick up his load. The supervisor also instructed the company’s other drivers to leave Glenn alone. The drivers eventually ignored the orders and ended up saving Glenn’s life.
Glenn did, however, lose his left leg as a result of infection, and doctors told him his kidneys had gone into failure.
In August 2006, a Clark County, WA, jury awarded the Johnsons $2 million in a civil lawsuit the family won against Golden Eagle Express Inc.
That has been appealed, but the Johnsons’ attorney said Glenn’s story illustrates the courage among those in the trucking fraternity, many of whom work every day for companies that all too often care more about their bottom lines than the health and safety of their drivers.
“They picked up the canned goods but left Glenn to rot,” said Tom Boothe, the Johnsons’ attorney.
Building a case
A driver with 40 years under his belt, Glenn had pulled over at a public rest stop off of Interstate 5 on Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2002. There were wide-open desert views from the rest area, which is near Williams, CA.
Glenn was on the backend of a regular route from Woodburn, OR, south to Sacramento, CA, and back, when he started feeling dizzy. A callus on the bottom of his left foot throbbed more each passing hour until he couldn’t push in his clutch anymore.
“I couldn’t go no farther,” Glenn told the jury in Clark County, WA. “I couldn’t drive, I couldn’t do anything.”
He went to bed in his sleeper that Wednesday evening, but by Thursday morning Glenn found himself on the cab’s floor with a fresh cut on his forehead.
Still parked at the rest stop, Glenn, then 72, gathered his thoughts and did what always came natural. He called his boss at Golden Eagle Express Inc., which operated a terminal in Vancouver, WA.
“Don’t worry about it,” then-terminal manager Vance Crofoot told Johnson, according to court documents.
The terminal manager similarly dismissed calls from fellow Golden Eagle Express drivers Gabriel Sanchez, Jose Gomez and Jesus Mendez, who called Crofoot to tell him of Glenn’s condition.
According to court documents, Crofoot told them the company would send help.
Instead, the company sent a driver to pick up Glenn’s load of non-perishable canned food and left him on the road for four days until Sanchez took it upon himself to personally drive Glenn home.
Sanchez was the driver who had been dispatched to pick up Glenn’s load on Oct. 31, and called Crofoot to report the poor condition of his fellow driver.
“He can’t even stand up from the bed,” Sanchez recalled telling Crofoot, according to court documents.
But Crofoot told Sanchez to take the load to Oregon, and said he would take care of Glenn.
Sanchez, however, called his brother-in-law and independent driver Jesus Mendez and asked him to check on Glenn as he headed north past Williams, CA, the next day.
In the meantime, though his cell phone signal wasn’t strong, Glenn testified that he called Crofoot more than once and was assured that help was on the way.
“I told him I wanted to get home,” Glenn recalled during court testimony.
Mendez did check on Glenn on Friday, and took him a hamburger, fries and soda from a nearby restaurant. Mendez found Glenn shaking and having difficulty speaking, he testified. It took about five minutes for Glenn to struggle to the truck door to let Mendez in. Mendez saw that the cab was littered with cups of urine.
Attorneys representing Golden Eagle questioned Mendez and other witnesses about why Glenn didn’t request more help. Mendez said that Glenn was confident Crofoot would send help. Crofoot assured Mendez that he would take care of Glenn.
“That’s why I called Vance because he’s the boss,” Mendez said in court.
Mendez left and called Crofoot twice because of his concern for Glenn’s health.
Mendez left to deliver his load. Glenn remained at the rest stop until Sunday morning, Nov. 3, 2002.
Sanchez had called Jose Gomez, another Golden Eagle Express driver, to tell him about Glenn being stranded on the road. Gomez talked to other drivers on his CB and asked if anyone could help. One driver said he could help take Glenn to Woodburn but couldn’t go to Portland.
Early Sunday morning, the drivers drove Glenn’s truck to a McDonald’s parking lot off of I-5 at Woodburn, where Gomez called an ambulance for help.
The Johnsons’ attorney, Boothe, said a private ambulance company arrived, but the emergency personnel told Gomez they couldn’t treat Glenn and then left the scene.
“We don’t know why the ambulance didn’t render aid – which is shocking,” Boothe said. “But that’s what they did.”
Boothe said authorities are still investigating the ambulance company for possible negligence.
After the ambulance left, Glenn was alone again.
Later Sunday, Sanchez noticed Glenn’s truck parked at the McDonald’s lot in Woodburn.
“It was a big surprise to see him right there,” Sanchez said in court. “He should be home by now.”
Sanchez and his wife Guadeloupe drove Glenn to a small clinic in the area, where he again was refused medical treatment.
“They say, ‘bring him inside,” Sanchez testified. “I say ‘I can’t, I can’t, he was out of it.’ ”
Sanchez took matters into his own hands at that point. He got Dollie Johnson’s phone number from Crofoot to get directions to the Johnsons’ Portland home.
“Please bring my husband home,” Sanchez remembered Dollie shouting through her phone.
Glenn’s cell phone records revealed calls to Golden Eagle Express and several random misdialed numbers during his time at the Williams, CA, rest stop. Boothe attributed the misdialed calls to Glenn’s rapidly declining health.
“He was so reliable,” Boothe said. “His first call was to the dispatcher to say, ‘I can’t make it.’ ”
Sanchez and an unidentified driver piloted Glenn’s truck from Woodburn to Portland. Boothe said they kept the windows down because “the stench was so bad.”
They arrived at Glenn’s home about 10 p.m. Dollie remembered the shock when she first saw Glenn – a strong man and a driver that had made a career out of making runs 26 to 28 days of each month.
Glenn couldn’t speak and his eyes rolled back into his head, she said.
Dollie called 9-1-1. In their confusion, the emergency medical technicians who responded prepared to have Sanchez arrested for what they believed was abuse. Dollie stopped them.
During the following two weeks Glenn’s toe and left leg were amputated, he was told his kidneys had been damaged and Golden Eagle Express terminated his contract. He tumbled out of his hospital bed after simply trying to sit up, and Golden Eagle Express took years to pay Johnson for his final load.
“The company never did a thing,” Boothe said. “Never a call. Never a card. All they did was fire him two weeks later.”
During the trial, Mendez testified that since his time at Golden Eagle, Crofoot had been fired from two more dispatch jobs.
Turning the page
Boothe and OOIDA leaders have discussed proposing legislation that would require dispatchers to call local law enforcement when they know a driver is injured on the road.
The Association has considered pursuing such legislation but is proceeding carefully, said Rod Nofziger, OOIDA’s director of government affairs who is based in Washington, DC.
“Our position is these are valid concerns and we want to try and find a positive solution. However, we want to do it in a prudent manner so the benefits outweigh any negative things that might come from motor carriers taking advantage of a situation,” Nofziger said.
Glenn’s untreated injuries cost him his left leg and damaged his kidneys, leaving him mostly wheelchair bound and unable to drive.
The Johnsons had difficulty putting a dollar figure on the full impact of Glenn’s injuries, but got the full $2 million they requested from the 12-member jury, which included a trucker.
Boothe said two jurors told him they’d have awarded more if the Johnsons had asked for more.
In court, Dollie said the accident has prevented the couple from taking simple trips to go out to eat and visit friends. The kidney damage Glenn sustained requires him to be near a bathroom most of the time and frustrates him, according to court documents. He can’t button his shirts or pull his pants on, Dollie said.
“He gets very depressed, he gets impatient,” Dollie said in court.
Those in the courtroom were visibly moved, Boothe said, when Dollie demonstrated how she helps Glenn get into his wheelchair.
The Johnsons are in their mid-70s and preparing to celebrate 50 years of marriage in October this year.
Shortly before Glenn left home to haul his last load, Dollie bought him a pickup truck as a surprise.
But the leg amputation has left him unable to drive it. Instead, Boothe said, Glenn uses his electric wheelchair for brief strolls when he gets cabin fever.
“If you’re a gearhead, imagine you wheel down the driveway and in front of your house is a beautiful red pickup truck you’ll never be able to drive,” Boothe said.
“Here’s a guy who at 72 chose to keep driving because he loved the freedom of the road. But now he has to struggle down three steps to get into the electric wheelchair in his garage.”
Boothe said Glenn and Dollie realize they may never see the $2 million the jury awarded them.
he Johnsons declined to be interviewed, saying they feared published comments could hurt their lawsuit’s chances as it proceeds through the appeal process.
Dollie did say one thing.
“I hope no other trucker has to go through what we’ve been through,” she told Land Line.
