How ‘nuclear verdicts’ are driving up trucking costs — and the price of almost everything
Moving freight across the U.S. always carries risk. But in recent years, a fast-growing threat to the economics of trucking has erupted — not on the highway, but in the courtroom.
“Nuclear verdicts,” legal and insurance shorthand for jury awards exceeding $10 million, have become more frequent and ever larger. What was once remarkable is now everyday news. That relentless climb is fundamentally reshaping the economics of trucking and, by extension, the cost of goods for ordinary Americans.
A forensic analysis of federal and trucking industry litigation data sources published by the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) in late 2025 found that truck-tractor tort case filings grew at an average annual rate of 3.7% between 2014 and 2023. The upswing in verdict size is even more striking: The median nuclear verdict reached $36 million in 2022 — roughly 50% higher than the median in 2013 — and the share of verdicts exceeding $50 million jumped by 6.4% over that span.
An ATRI 2020 foundational report found that verdicts over $1 million jumped from 79 cases in the first half of a 14-year study window to 265 in the second half — a 235% increase — with awards over $10 million nearly doubling in the same period.
Over the eight years from 2010 to 2018, the average verdict in cases exceeding $1 million shot up from $2.3 million to $22.3 million. That 967% increase far outstrips inflation, which averaged 1.7% per year during that same time period.
What’s fueling the rise of ‘thermonuclear’ verdicts?
As jury awards skyrocket, terminology strains to keep up. Hence, now the worst cases are “thermonuclear verdicts,” defined as awards exceeding $100 million. The trucking industry has incurred some of the most staggering hits.
In 2024, a St. Louis jury awarded $462 million — including $450 million in punitive damages — against trailer manufacturer Wabash National in a fatal underride tractor-trailer crash. A judge reduced the award, and later the case was settled — yet the initial verdict sent tremors through the industry.
The forces pushing litigation costs beyond the rate of general inflation share a name among insurers: “social inflation.” These include a more litigious public, the rise of third-party investors who fund lawsuits in exchange for a cut of the award, growing anti-corporate sentiment in jury pools and increasingly aggressive tactics by plaintiff attorneys. The latter includes the “reptile theory.” This slippery courtroom technique frames cases in terms of public safety and corporate danger, prompting jurors to render outsized verdicts as a broad social message.
The use of outside investors who bankroll lawsuits in exchange for a cut of any settlement removes financial pressure on plaintiffs to settle early. ATRI’s 2025 report flags this as a “developing legal threat,” warning it pushes investors to maximize payouts.
The financial shock is felt first in the insurance market. Swiss Re, the global reinsurance giant, in a 2024 Sigma report, was blunt about trucking’s exposure. It scored the sector as “one of the most affected by mega verdicts,” with excess coverage “seeing rate increases of more than 75%.” The upshot is that trucking companies are “finding it increasingly difficult to secure adequate insurance cover and are being forced to assume more risk than they have in the past.”
Marsh, the global insurance broker, warned in a 2024 advisory that the dynamic is leaving many organizations “unable to purchase sufficient limits to fully transfer the risk.” Some insurers, including Zurich and AIG’s Lexington unit, have significantly reduced their participation or exited the commercial trucking market entirely.
Who ultimately pays the bill?
The colossal costs generated inside the courtroom chug right through the supply chain, eventually hammering consumers.
Over the next decade, commercial vehicle litigation will contribute 15% to the inflation of food prices, according to research by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Institute for Legal Reform, modeled with The Brattle Group.
What’s more, every $1 million increase in tort costs is associated with a $2 million reduction in U.S. gross domestic product. The same model projected that meaningful tort reform could add an average of $52.3 billion per year to GDP over a decade, create 5.7 million jobs and reduce food-at-home costs by 15%.
It’s simple math: As verdicts surge, insurance costs soar. This squeezes margins and pushes some motor carriers out of the market or off high-risk routes. As this capacity tightens, freight rates increase. And as freight rates mount, so does the price of goods, everywhere from the grocery store and pharmacy to the home-improvement center.
Swiss Re’s 2025 Behavioral Social Inflation Study adds a sobering long-term dimension: 76% of U.S. consumers now believe jury damage awards are too low, up from 58% in 2016. Among adults under 40, that figure rises to 83%. As younger cohorts make up a larger share of jury pools, the litigation environment for commercial defendants is only becoming more hostile.
What’s being done to stop it?
Reform advocates have pushed for action at both the state and federal level. In September 2025, three Republican members of Congress introduced the Forum Accountability & Integrity in Roadway (FAIR) Trucking Act. If passed, it would route large interstate trucking cases into federal courts, removing them from state venues that plaintiff attorneys select for favorable outcomes. American Trucking Associations President & CEO Chris Spear endorsed the bill. He said it would close loopholes “that the plaintiffs’ bar exploits to move cases to judicial hellholes and engineer these lopsided verdicts.”
Opponents of reform argue that nuclear verdicts serve a necessary function — holding large companies accountable when safety failures cause death or catastrophic injury, and that damage caps could effectively shield negligent operators from full accountability. That debate is ongoing, and any federal legislation faces a difficult path through Congress.
Nuclear verdicts are no longer rare. And thermonuclear verdicts — once almost unthinkable — are now a known and priced category of high risk.
The resulting cost impact does not magically dissolve. No, it rolls, steadily and virtually invisibly, through the supply chain — until it hits consumers smack in the wallet.
Ella Rae Greene, Editor In Chief
