Plaintiff urges judge to force Navistar to produce internal crash-investigation files in Alexander burn case

DESMOND ALEXANDER v. DALTON and NAVISTAR — Dec. 3, 2025 — Clayton County State Court, Judge Tammy Long Hayward presiding.

Plaintiff counsel Drew Ashby told the court that Navistar’s internal investigative files and field reports are “the lynchpin” of a products-liability case over a tractor-trailer crash that left the plaintiff catastrophically burned. Ashby said Navistar keeps an internal database called Team Connect and a product-integrity group (PIG) that creates field reports and engineer notes for almost every crash notice; those files, he argued, “exist nowhere else in the world” and are necessary to prove notice, design defects, and punitive damages (plaintiff opening, summarized from hearing).

“Navistar creates these internal files for every notice of a crash,” Ashby said. “We’ve asked for these, and Navistar refuses.” He told the judge plaintiffs narrowed their requests to collisions and fires involving trucks with fuel tanks mounted outside the frame rails, and asked for a targeted query of Team Connect, specified field reports, and non-privileged PIG files. Ashby warned that without those documents Navistar will argue plaintiffs cannot prove substantial…