Mark Solomon joined DC VELOCITY as senior editor in August 2008, and was promoted to his current position on January 1, 2015. He has spent more than 30 years in the transportation, logistics and supply chain management fields as a journalist and public relations professional. From 1989 to 1994, he worked in Washington as a reporter for the Journal of Commerce, covering the aviation and trucking industries, the Department of Transportation, Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court. Prior to that, he worked for Traffic World for seven years in a similar role. From 1994 to 2008, Mr. Solomon ran Media-Based Solutions, a public relations firm based in Atlanta. He graduated in 1978 with a B.A. in journalism from The American University in Washington, D.C.
The incident was horrific. The fault, in the eyes of the jury, was not in doubt. The monetary award was staggering. If upheld, the trucking industry could find itself confronting a new economic standard for juries meting out punishment in verdicts where a carrier is found at fault for a catastrophic accident.
On Feb. 6, a state appeals court in New Mexico upheld a January 2015 jury verdict that awarded $165 million to a New Mexico family, two of whom were killed in June 2011 when a tractor-trailer operated by FedEx Ground, the ground-delivery unit of Memphis-based FedEx Corp., slammed into a small pickup truck that was stopped or moving at a very slow speed along Interstate 10. The pickup's driver, Marialy Morga, died in the accident, as did her 4-year-old daughter Ylairam. Morga's 19-month-old son, Yahir, was seriously injured. The tractor-trailer driver, Elizabeth Quintana, also died. Quintana, who drove for the firm that FedEx contracted for delivery services, was driving at 65 mph when the vehicles collided, according to court documents.
Virtually all of the $165 million award, considered by several legal experts as an astounding figure in a case of this nature, compensates the Morgas for "non-economic" damages such as pain and suffering, physical impairment, and "loss of consortium." The latter is roughly defined in tort law as depriving the survivors the means of carrying on a future relationship.
Unlike "economic" damages, which cover such costs as medical claims and lost wages, and which can be calculated using established formulas, the amount of compensatory damages is, with a couple of exceptions, limited only by a jury's discretion. For example, the size of the award cannot, in legal parlance, "shock the conscience." Nor can a jury be influenced by passion, prejudice, the financial status of either party, or other elements that might conflict with a vetting of the evidence at hand. The jury did not award punitive damages in the case.
The appellate court ruling upholds a 2015 district court decision affirming the verdict and denying FedEx Ground's request either for a new trial or a reduction in the size of the award. The lower court rejected the company's argument that the amount was excessive and its size unsupported by the evidence, and that the jury was unjustly swayed by "improper factors" unrelated to the facts at hand.
The three-judge appellate panel ruled that the family's attorneys "presented sufficient evidence to support the jury's right to perform its unique function—award all compensatory damages, including any non-economic damages for pain and suffering and loss of life" incurred by the family.
In its appeal, the company was requesting that the appellate court "establish a threshold or an absolute financial limit on the value of life, despite the district court's and the jury's efforts to fulfill their assigned duty to quantify something that is legally unique, intangible and difficult to measure," the judges wrote. "We refuse to implement such a legal threshold or limit."
In a brief statement, FedEx Ground said that it is weighing its options, and that it disagreed with the appeals court ruling. Should the company pursue the case through the legal system, the next step would be an appeal before the New Mexico Supreme Court. The lead attorney for the plaintiffs, James Scherr, partner in the El Paso-based firm ScherrLegate, did not respond to an e-mail request for comment.
The award's amount stunned several legal observers. Robert Moseley, who oversees the transport practice at the law firm Smith Moore Leatherwood LLC, said he's unaware of any case of an appellate court upholding an award this vast. Moseley called the amount an "outlier" and the case a "poster child" for why states need to impose monetary caps on jury awards. Moseley said the amount clearly meets the "shock the conscience" criterion that courts warn jurors to be mindful of when they weigh the degree of monetary damages.
Brené W. Primus, a long-time transport attorney who runs his own practice, said in an e-mail that the award "does indeed raise the stakes for liability for accidents on the highway," and that it "underscores the need for shippers, brokers, and any other entity hiring motor carriers to use the utmost diligence in selecting, using, and monitoring the carriers they hire."
Primus added, however, that the panel may have believed the award was excessive, but that under the state's statutes was bound to uphold the verdict. The language used in the ruling leaves the "door wide open" for the state Supreme Court to reduce the award's amount, he wrote.
Perhaps in an effort to allay shipper and broker fears that the case could become a litmus test for other truck liability issues, Primus said the ruling did not herald any new or novel liability theories. It also does not involve "vicarious liability," where a party is held liable in the event of an accident even though it wasn't directly involved in the crash, he said.
Cases involving vicarious liability have been hot-button issues for shippers and freight brokers because they center on whether those parties should be held liable due to their alleged inability to vet the driver they chose.
Editor's note: The original story incorrectly referred to the venue as federal appeals court. DC Velocity regrets the error.
Logistics real estate developer Prologis today named a new chief executive, saying the company’s current president, Dan Letter, will succeed CEO and co-founder Hamid Moghadam when he steps down in about a year.
After retiring on January 1, 2026, Moghadam will continue as San Francisco-based Prologis’ executive chairman, providing strategic guidance. According to the company, Moghadam co-founded Prologis’ predecessor, AMB Property Corporation, in 1983. Under his leadership, the company grew from a startup to a global leader, with a successful IPO in 1997 and its merger with ProLogis in 2011.
Letter has been with Prologis since 2004, and before being president served as global head of capital deployment, where he had responsibility for the company’s Investment Committee, deployment pipeline management, and multi-market portfolio acquisitions and dispositions.
Irving F. “Bud” Lyons, lead independent director for Prologis’ Board of Directors, said: “We are deeply grateful for Hamid’s transformative leadership. Hamid’s 40-plus-year tenure—starting as an entrepreneurial co-founder and evolving into the CEO of a major public company—is a rare achievement in today’s corporate world. We are confident that Dan is the right leader to guide Prologis in its next chapter, and this transition underscores the strength and continuity of our leadership team.”
The New York-based industrial artificial intelligence (AI) provider Augury has raised $75 million for its process optimization tools for manufacturers, in a deal that values the company at more than $1 billion, the firm said today.
According to Augury, its goal is deliver a new generation of AI solutions that provide the accuracy and reliability manufacturers need to make AI a trusted partner in every phase of the manufacturing process.
The “series F” venture capital round was led by Lightrock, with participation from several of Augury’s existing investors; Insight Partners, Eclipse, and Qumra Capital as well as Schneider Electric Ventures and Qualcomm Ventures. In addition to securing the new funding, Augury also said it has added Elan Greenberg as Chief Operating Officer.
“Augury is at the forefront of digitalizing equipment maintenance with AI-driven solutions that enhance cost efficiency, sustainability performance, and energy savings,” Ashish (Ash) Puri, Partner at Lightrock, said in a release. “Their predictive maintenance technology, boasting 99.9% failure detection accuracy and a 5-20x ROI when deployed at scale, significantly reduces downtime and energy consumption for its blue-chip clients globally, offering a compelling value proposition.”
The money supports the firm’s approach of "Hybrid Autonomous Mobile Robotics (Hybrid AMRs)," which integrate the intelligence of "Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs)" with the precision and structure of "Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs)."
According to Anscer, it supports the acceleration to Industry 4.0 by ensuring that its autonomous solutions seamlessly integrate with customers’ existing infrastructures to help transform material handling and warehouse automation.
Leading the new U.S. office will be Mark Messina, who was named this week as Anscer’s Managing Director & CEO, Americas. He has been tasked with leading the firm’s expansion by bringing its automation solutions to industries such as manufacturing, logistics, retail, food & beverage, and third-party logistics (3PL).
Supply chains continue to deal with a growing volume of returns following the holiday peak season, and 2024 was no exception. Recent survey data from product information management technology company Akeneo showed that 65% of shoppers made holiday returns this year, with most reporting that their experience played a large role in their reason for doing so.
The survey—which included information from more than 1,000 U.S. consumers gathered in January—provides insight into the main reasons consumers return products, generational differences in return and online shopping behaviors, and the steadily growing influence that sustainability has on consumers.
Among the results, 62% of consumers said that having more accurate product information upfront would reduce their likelihood of making a return, and 59% said they had made a return specifically because the online product description was misleading or inaccurate.
And when it comes to making those returns, 65% of respondents said they would prefer to return in-store, if possible, followed by 22% who said they prefer to ship products back.
“This indicates that consumers are gravitating toward the most sustainable option by reducing additional shipping,” the survey authors said in a statement announcing the findings, adding that 68% of respondents said they are aware of the environmental impact of returns, and 39% said the environmental impact factors into their decision to make a return or exchange.
The authors also said that investing in the product experience and providing reliable product data can help brands reduce returns, increase loyalty, and provide the best customer experience possible alongside profitability.
When asked what products they return the most, 60% of respondents said clothing items. Sizing issues were the number one reason for those returns (58%) followed by conflicting or lack of customer reviews (35%). In addition, 34% cited misleading product images and 29% pointed to inaccurate product information online as reasons for returning items.
More than 60% of respondents said that having more reliable information would reduce the likelihood of making a return.
“Whether customers are shopping directly from a brand website or on the hundreds of e-commerce marketplaces available today [such as Amazon, Walmart, etc.] the product experience must remain consistent, complete and accurate to instill brand trust and loyalty,” the authors said.
When you get the chance to automate your distribution center, take it.
That's exactly what leaders at interior design house
Thibaut Design did when they relocated operations from two New Jersey distribution centers (DCs) into a single facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 2019. Moving to an "empty shell of a building," as Thibaut's Michael Fechter describes it, was the perfect time to switch from a manual picking system to an automated one—in this case, one that would be driven by voice-directed technology.
"We were 100% paper-based picking in New Jersey," Fechter, the company's vice president of distribution and technology, explained in a
case study published by Voxware last year. "We knew there was a need for automation, and when we moved to Charlotte, we wanted to implement that technology."
Fechter cites Voxware's promise of simple and easy integration, configuration, use, and training as some of the key reasons Thibaut's leaders chose the system. Since implementing the voice technology, the company has streamlined its fulfillment process and can onboard and cross-train warehouse employees in a fraction of the time it used to take back in New Jersey.
And the results speak for themselves.
"We've seen incredible gains [from a] productivity standpoint," Fechter reports. "A 50% increase from pre-implementation to today."
THE NEED FOR SPEED
Thibaut was founded in 1886 and is the oldest operating wallpaper company in the United States, according to Fechter. The company works with a global network of designers, shipping samples of wallpaper and fabrics around the world.
For the design house's warehouse associates, picking, packing, and shipping thousands of samples every day was a cumbersome, labor-intensive process—and one that was prone to inaccuracy. With its paper-based picking system, mispicks were common—Fechter cites a 2% to 5% mispick rate—which necessitated stationing an extra associate at each pack station to check that orders were accurate before they left the facility.
All that has changed since implementing Voxware's Voice Management Suite (VMS) at the Charlotte DC. The system automates the workflow and guides associates through the picking process via a headset, using voice commands. The hands-free, eyes-free solution allows workers to focus on locating and selecting the right item, with no paper-based lists to check or written instructions to follow.
Thibaut also uses the tech provider's analytics tool, VoxPilot, to monitor work progress, check orders, and keep track of incoming work—managers can see what orders are open, what's in process, and what's completed for the day, for example. And it uses VoxTempo, the system's natural language voice recognition (NLVR) solution, to streamline training. The intuitive app whittles training time down to minutes and gets associates up and working fast—and Thibaut hitting minimum productivity targets within hours, according to Fechter.
EXPECTED RESULTS REALIZED
Key benefits of the project include a reduction in mispicks—which have dropped to zero—and the elimination of those extra quality-control measures Thibaut needed in the New Jersey DCs.
"We've gotten to the point where we don't even measure mispicks today—because there are none," Fechter said in the case study. "Having an extra person at a pack station to [check] every order before we pack [it]—that's been eliminated. Not only is the pick right the first time, but [the order] also gets packed and shipped faster than ever before."
The system has increased inventory accuracy as well. According to Fechter, it's now "well over 99.9%."