By Ron Devlin
Republican & Herald, Pottsville, Pa.
The family of the Pennsylvania state trooper who died in a fiery crash on Interstate 81 in Cass Twp. has filed suit against the freight broker and motor carrier of the truck allegedly responsible for the incident, attorneys for the Morgan & Morgan law firm announced Wednesday.
Trooper Michael E. Pahira Jr., 44, died from injuries sustained when a tractor-trailer crashed into the rear of a truck he was inspecting off the highway’s southbound lanes shortly after 7 a.m. on July 1.
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Clancy Boylan, an attorney in the firm’s Pittsburgh office, filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania.
Defendants in the action are Augustin Freight Services LLC, an Alabama commercial motor carrier, and SNK Logistics LLC, a Texas freight broker.
The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages exceeding $150,000, according to court documents.
The suit, filed on behalf of Trooper Pahira’s estate, comes one week after Magisterial District Judge Edward Tarantelli ruled Michael Bon, a Massachusetts truck driver employed by Augustin, should face vehicular homicide and related charges in Schuylkill County Court.
Boylan attended Bon’s preliminary hearing at the county courthouse alongside members of the Pahira family.
The lawsuit alleges that the defendants’ negligence, reckless disregard for federal safety regulations and failure to vet and supervise drivers led directly to Trooper Pahira’s tragic death.
“This case highlights systematic safety failures that plague the trucking industry,” Boylan said. “Federal regulations require carriers to certify compliance with driver qualification standards, but those certifications are meaningless unless companies enforce them.”
SNK Logistics chose to hire AFS despite having knowledge of, or reasonable access to, AFS’s safety issues through publicly available information, Boylan alleged.
“A family and community have lost a beloved son, uncle and friend in Michael Pahira Jr., a valued public servant who dedicated his career to keeping roads safe for our families,” John Morgan, the firm’s founder, said in a news release.
In its complaint, Morgan & Morgan alleges that in the two years leading up to the crash, AFS — a carrier with only four drivers — had a vehicle out-of-service rate of 40%, nearly double the national average. In the year prior to the crash, AFS also had numerous driving and maintenance violations, the complaint alleges.
The carrier’s record, the law firm says, is available through the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s online Safety Measurement System.
Boylan expects the case will be heard in two to three years, possibly in federal court in Wilkes-Barre.
About 7:01 a.m. on July 1, traveling south on I-81, Bon’s truck veered off the highway and crashed into the rear of a tractor-trailer driven by Walter Reinoso of Queens, N.Y., which Pahira was inspecting, according to a state police affidavit of probable cause.
Reinoso’s truck was hauling trash to a landfill near Hegins, he testified during the preliminary hearing.
Bon, who has a Massachusetts Class A driver’s license, was hauling clothing.
Upon impact, Bon’s truck burst into flames.
Trooper Pahira, who was part-way beneath the front bumper of Bon’s truck, was pulled to safety by several bystanders.
A 2001 graduate of North Schuylkill High School and East Stroudsburg University, Pahira graduated from the Pennsylvania State Police Academy in 2007.
He began his career at Troop N in Lehighton, and later transferred to Troop L in Schuylkill Haven. He eventually transferred to the Frackville station as a Motor Carrier Enforcement inspector.
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