Estate of Dwyane Haskins Settles Lawsuit With Truck Driver, Owner Involved in Fatal Crash

The estate of the late Dwayne Haskins has agreed to a settlement with the owner, broker and driver of the dump truck that hit and killed the former Steelers quarterback, said Rick Ellsley, the lawyer of Haskins’s widow, in a statement Friday.

On April 9, 2022, Haskins was struck by the dump truck while attempting to cross the westbound lanes of Interstate 595 in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Haskins was pronounced dead at the scene. He was 24.

Ellsley wrote in the statement on Friday that settlements had also been established with “various other parties” but that the case would “proceed in Broward County Circuit Court against multiple other defendants,” according to NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport. 

Friday’s news comes after Ellsley filed a lawsuit in April, alleging that the dump truck driver was speeding, driving recklessly while carrying a load of cargo immensely above the legal weight limit, driving a truck with “brake system problems” and traveling with “low tread tires with separated sidewalls.”

The lawsuit also claimed negligence on behalf of the Florida Department of Transportation, the manufacturer of the signs on Interstate 595 as well as the rental car company. Then, Ellsley wrote in the lawsuit that Haskins was “targeted” and “drugged as part of a blackmail and robbery conspiracy” the night that he died. Per ESPN, the lawsuit listed several defendants that included four people, a golf driving range, a hotel and two restaurants. 

An autopsy report obtained by the Miami Herald indicated that Haskins’s blood alcohol level was 0.20 when he died, which was above Florida’s legal limit of .08. Haskins also tested positive for ketamine and norketamine, drugs that typically are utilized as medical anesthetics.

Currently, no charges have been filed in Haskins’s death. The coroner ruled that the quarterback’s cause of death was multiple blunt force injuries and that the death was considered an accident.