TRUCKERS VS. THE BAR

The testimony was damning in its simplicity. "Everything was a lie to get paid," said Damian Labeaud — a self-described "slammer" who spent years deliberately driving cars into eighteen-wheelers on New Orleans highways, on behalf of personal injury attorneys who would then sue the trucking companies for millions.

Labeaud's words, delivered last week from the witness stand in federal court, cut to the heart of what prosecutors are calling one of the most audacious insurance fraud conspiracies in American legal history.

On trial are attorneys Vanessa Motta — a former Hollywood stuntwoman turned personal injury lawyer — and Jason Giles of the King Law Firm, accused of orchestrating yearslong schemes in which cars were deliberately rammed into tractor-trailers, passengers filed false injury claims, and attorneys collected the insurance payouts.

One cooperating witness admitted involvement in at least 120 staged wrecks and acknowledged keeping between $100,000 and $150,000 in cash at his home for payments. The scheme allegedly ran from 2017 to 2020, when it began to unravel. A key cooperating witness, Cornelius Garrison, was gunned down at his mother's doorstep four days after his name appeared atop a federal indictment — a murder that is the subject of a separate upcoming trial.

For the trucking industry, the case has become a rallying cry. The Louisiana Motor Truck Association says its members were "deliberately targeted" in schemes that "inflicted severe financial damage, threatened livelihoods and tarnished the reputations of professional drivers who did nothing wrong."

The industry's frustration extends well beyond the courtroom. Trial lawyers spent $74 million on some 1.37 million advertisements across Louisiana in an eighteen-month period through mid-2025 — a figure the association cites as evidence that the state's legal climate has become structurally hostile to carriers.

Both Motta and Giles have pleaded not guilty. Motta's defence argues she was deceived by her own fiancé, calling him a "master manipulator" who exploited their relationship. The jury is expected to deliberate before month's end.

Whatever the verdict, the case has already reshaped the debate over tort reform — and left an industry asking how many more trucks were targeted that nobody ever caught.