Tamara Burgett was in her early sixties when her car came upon an Amazon truck parked illegally in the middle of a single-laned Isle of Wight highway. She stopped — causing the car behind her to rear end her forcefully.

Now, she’s suing the e-commerce giant and its local delivery partner based out of Chesapeake, DJC Logistics, for a total of $20 million.

The crash in the afternoon of Dec. 2, 2022, left Burgett with a mild traumatic brain injury and ankle reinjury requiring surgery, said her lawyer, David Holt.

But Burgett’s injuries aren’t the focus of the lawsuit. Holt is arguing Amazon’s delivery practices are primarily at fault.

“Safety is our top priority,” said Dannea DeLisser, an Amazon spokesperson.

While the company is limited in sharing information in ongoing lawsuits, DeLisser stressed that the driver involved in the crash was an employee of DJC Logistics — an independent business.

DJC Logistics did not respond to questions via email and voicemail.

Amazon sometimes contracts delivery service partners (DSPs) — regionally-based companies like DJC Logistics — to complete deliveries from Amazon distribution and delivery centers to front doors.

Before the collision, a DJC Logistics employee was delivering packages from Amazon’s Norfolk delivery center to homes along the 14000 block of Courthouse Highway, a tree and front lawn-studded two-lane road South of Smithfield.

The lawsuit claims that the driver had parked in the middle of the road to make a delivery because he was pressured by Amazon’s tracking systems to complete the delivery within a certain time.

Amazon’s hundreds of thousands of DSP drivers, on average, are expected to deliver an average of 250-300 packages in an 8 hour work day, according to a CapitalOne report updated earlier this month on the company’s commerce. That calculates out to 1.7 packages delivered every minute.

Drivers are required to drive an Amazon-approved van, retrofitted with an AI-camera that in real time tracks a driver’s stops, turns and speed. Amazon apps, such as the “Flex” app, require a driver to follow a certain GPS route, and tell a driver when they can use the restroom or take a break.

Amazon delivery drivers have filed lawsuits against the company, alleging that the “harsh work quotas” and “elaborate tracking” forces them to forgo using the bathroom, or urinate in bottles.

If a driver is behind schedule, they may receive messages telling them that they need to pick up the pace, and falling too far behind can significantly reduce their pay or even cause them to lose days of work.

Amazon’s delivery quotas and production pressures have led to increased worker injuries, according to a May 2022 study by the Strategic Organizing Center, a union-based research center.

Amazon contract drivers have had more than double the rate of safety violations than that of other package delivery carriers, such as Fed Ex, according to a 2024 CBS News analysis of federal motor carrier safety data.

The lawsuit, filed in the Circuit Court of Norfolk, claims it was this system of pressures that led the Amazon DSP driver to stop his delivery vehicle on the highway and block Burgett’s lane of travel, instead of parking in a safer location.

The crash occurred on a dry afternoon, and Burgett’s injuries resulted directly from another driver that rear-ended Burgett, after she had stopped behind the Amazon delivery van that was parked without its hazard lights on, Holt said.

Burgett’s case joins over a hundred others across the country that are suing Amazon and its local delivery service partner for vehicle accidents resulting in injury.

Last Fall outside Atlanta, attorney Joe Fried tried a case against Amazon and its DSP, Fly Fella Logistics, after an 8-year-old boy was struck and dragged by a delivery van while riding an e-bike across a residential street. The case resulted in a $16.2 million jury verdict that placed the bulk of the responsibility on Amazon for “not training the driver involved properly,” according to Fried and Goldberg LLC.

A North Carolina motorcyclist sued Amazon for 100 million dollars in Virginia Beach after he lost his leg in a 2021 crash with a delivery van. The driver of the van said he was checking the Amazon-mandated Flex app for directions when he turned into Justin Hartley’s motorcycle traveling on Blackwater Road.

The $20 million amount in this case was “a strategic decision,” said Holt, Burgett’s lawyer. Juries in the state are limited by the amount specified in the original complaint in deciding what to award a plaintiff for their injuries.

Burgett was an artist, Holt said. Her home housed a studio and was filled with her works of art that she would sell. “Things are different now,” Holt said. Suffering from chronic pain, emotional distress and mental health issues as a result of the crash, her “brain has been rattled and it won’t work the same as it used to,” he said.

Burgett has already settled with the DSP delivery driver involved in the crash.

Holt does not want to share the amount, at the risk of impacting the jurors who will preside over the case in a trial scheduled for March 24, 2026.

Nori Leybengrub, nori.leybengrub@virginiamedia.com