Trucker Hits a Load of Legal Bull in Texas

This can be a cruel world. You can be rolling along at a nice clip when out of nowhere fate is staring you down. In that instant, the direction of your life changes.

Don’t mistake that for deep thoughts.

I’m just telling you exactly what happened two years ago to Bill Berleen Jr. on a lonely stretch of interstate highway south of Pecos, Texas.

A long-haul trucker for most of his 30 working years, Berleen was hauling equipment on a run that began in Louisiana and was scheduled to end in Northern California.

Then, at 4:15 a.m. on April 17, 1998, his headlights illuminated the face of a 2,000-pound bull, staring into Berleen’s cab from the middle of the highway.

In one sense, the bull and Berleen’s 80-foot tractor-trailer rig played to a standoff. The bull was killed; the rig was totaled.

But for Berleen, the outcome was far from a draw. The collision has altered the course of his life. Now 52, he and his wife, Suzanne, are sitting at their dining table in Mission Viejo and wondering what will come next.

A Life Changed in a Heartbeat

The Berleens owe tens of thousands of dollars in medical bills.

Bill has an enfeebled grip in his right hand and, he says, persistent pain in his right arm and back. He hasn’t worked since he was flown from the accident scene to a Lubbock hospital. Suzanne has gone back to work, but her secretarial pay doesn’t make much of a dent in their mounting bills or in providing for their three children still living at home.

Berleen’s injuries weren’t as serious as first feared, and even he expected to heal quickly and be back driving. At least, he’d hoped so: He didn’t have medical insurance.

But he didn’t heal. In time, he thought the insurance company for the bull’s owner should help out. After all, it wasn’t as though Berleen hit a possum or armadillo or a gopher. This was a bull that should have been penned.

Berleen figured it would be relatively simple. He’d find a lawyer who would handle things.

Instead, he hears the clock ticking. With a two-year window to file a claim about to run out, he’s yet to find a Texas lawyer to handle his case. He says he’s gotten the impression that the culture of that particular part of west Texas says you don’t go after certain ranchers whose cattle stray onto the highway.

Odd as it sounds, the bull was exhumed a few days after the accident, and a local brand inspector identified it as belonging to a local rancher.

I can’t independently verify Berleen’s claims. I tried unsuccessfully to reach two attorneys who had considered Berleen’s case. One said he’d be happy to discuss the case with me but then didn’t return my prearranged subsequent phone call.

Berleen, however, showed me a letter that another attorney had sent him in October of 1998.

“After an extensive investigation and much soul-searching,” he had decided not to represent Berleen.

The attorney wrote that after the brand inspector identified the owner, “he went on a tirade about how Mr. Berleen had no business bringing a claim. . . . The Sheriff’s office and other local authority figures have been even less helpful. In fact, they are downright hostile. . . . A judgment is going to be hard to come by in view of apparent strong local partisanship favoring the rancher.”

I contacted the Pecos rancher by phone, and he told me he has “no liability” in the incident. Other than confirming that the deceased animal was a bull, the rancher said he didn’t want to discuss the situation.

Berleen says he’s been done in by “the good ol’ boy” network in west Texas.

I can’t confirm that, either, but soon it won’t matter.

Berleen still has hopes for finding a lawyer, but it sounds like a dead duck to me.

“We’re at our end,” Berleen says, forlornly. “I don’t know what else to do. We’re hoping to get someone with the chutzpah to take the case and run with it.”

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821 or by writing to him at the Times Orange County Edition,1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or by e-mail to [email protected].