Watkins Motor Lines, a less-than-truckload carrier based in Lakeland, Fla., has agreed to pay nearly $11 million to settle a lawsuit in the latest fallout from the Illinois CDLs-for-bribes scandal.

The suit resulted from a 1998 pileup in California. Part of the Watkins truck driven by Adem Salihovic overturned, and Sally Ruiz and another motorist died in the chain-reaction crash that followed. Salihovic has admitted to paying a bribe for his commercial driver's license. He has since given up his license rather than take a re-test.
According to published reports, the Ruiz family's lawsuit initially focused on Salihovic. But federal investigators want to know how Salihovic and as many as 90 other drivers suspected of paying bribes for licenses in Illinois and Florida ended up driving for Watkins.
Officials at the company reportedly have said they did not knowingly hire drivers who paid bribes for licenses, but admitted that Salihovic should not have been hired because he had a poor driving record.
In spring of 1999, Watkins fired two supervisors responsible for hiring at a terminal in Lyons, Ill., but wouldn't tell investigators whether those supervisors purposely bypassed company hiring procedures and hired unqualified drivers.
The company reached a settlement with the family of the other person who died in the crash last fall.