A 26-year-old Nebraska man who struck and killed a jogger on a dark Lincoln street last August has filed a lawsuit against the dead man's estate, claiming the crash left him with severe post-traumatic stress disorder and seeking at least $50,000 in damages. The jogger, Anthony Miller, was 37, a father of two young daughters and an award-winning nurse.
Gavin Maas filed the legal complaint in Lancaster County on April 6, court documents reviewed by the Daily Mail show. The filing alleges that Maas "sustained permanent physical and emotional injuries" from the collision and now requires "lifelong treatment." He says he has been hospitalized multiple times, completed a 21-day PTSD rehabilitation course at an out-of-state facility, and suffers from suicidal ideations and dissociative episodes.
Read that again: the driver is suing the family of the man he killed.
The crash occurred at about 4:45 a.m. on August 31, 2025, on South 27th Street in Lincoln, roughly 60 miles southwest of Omaha. Anthony Miller and his wife, Bailey Miller, were jogging together in the early-morning darkness. The complaint states that Bailey was wearing reflective gear and that Maas was able to spot her and give ample space on the road.
Anthony Miller, the complaint alleges, was "wearing dark clothing without any visible reflective gear in the darkness of the early morning" and was running in the middle of the road. Maas says he collided with Miller "almost simultaneously" with seeing him.
The filing says Maas immediately left his vehicle after realizing he had hit the runner and "attempted life-saving measures." Miller was later declared dead at a hospital. He left behind two daughters, ages one and three at the time, and a career as an award-winning nurse at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.
No charges were pressed at the time of the accident, the Daily Mail reported, citing local station KOLN. Police do not believe Maas was impaired.
Maas's complaint lays out a detailed picture of psychological damage. It states that he "suffers from an array of physical and emotional symptoms" and that his "brain and body will never return to their condition before 4:46 a.m. on August 31, 2025." The filing adds a note about guilt:
"Gavin's trauma is compounded by the feelings of guilt that he carries over suffering from PTSD while knowing the Miller family is grieving the loss of a husband and father."
Sam Colwell, Maas's lawyer, said his client does not want the Miller estate to pay the costs directly. Colwell framed the lawsuit as a dispute with an unnamed insurance company, saying it stemmed from "an insurance company that wrongly denied coverage for Gavin's severe and well-documented PTSD arising out of this tragic accident." He said he hoped insurance companies would "do what their policy requires."
In a statement provided to the Daily Mail, Colwell described Maas's reluctance to file suit:
"He was hopeful that this matter could have been resolved without a lawsuit; however, circumstances outside of his control left no reasonable alternative."
Colwell added that Maas "is mortified that an insurance company forced him into this position and wishes that he could just return to his normal life as a 26-year-old middle school teacher." Maas teaches at Irving Middle School and coaches wrestling, basketball, and track.
The lawyer also offered a personal portrait of his client: "Gavin is a person of strong faith. He prays every night for the Miller family. He prays for continued guidance as he navigates ongoing treatment."
There is no question that killing someone in a traffic accident, even one in which you bear no criminal liability, can inflict genuine psychological harm. PTSD is real. So is the grief of a young widow with two toddlers who watched her husband get struck and killed during a morning jog.
But the legal system is supposed to sort out who owes what to whom. And the basic facts here raise hard questions about whether this lawsuit, whatever its insurance-dispute mechanics, represents a grotesque inversion of accountability. Anthony Miller is dead. His daughters will grow up without a father. His wife was running beside him when the car arrived. The driver walked away physically.
Colwell's framing, that an insurer forced Maas's hand, may carry weight in a courtroom. But it does not change the name on the complaint. The suit was filed against Anthony Miller's estate. That means the Miller family, already burying a husband and father, now faces legal process initiated by the man who killed him. Whether or not the real target is an insurance company, the family is the one served with papers.
Cases like this one test the boundaries of a legal system that Americans expect to protect victims and hold wrongdoers accountable. When a San Francisco judge recently signaled probation for a driver who killed a family of four at 70 mph, the public reaction was fierce, and rightly so. People understand, instinctively, that consequences should flow toward those who cause harm, not away from them.
The complaint's emphasis on Miller's dark clothing and his position in the road reads as an attempt to shift blame to the dead man. Maybe Miller made a poor choice running without reflective gear at 4:45 a.m. But that choice cost him his life. Maas's choice to drive on that road at that hour cost Miller his life, too. One of them paid the ultimate price. The other is asking for $50,000.
Across the country, Americans have watched courtroom proceedings that seem to prioritize the claims of perpetrators over the suffering of victims. Whether it involves violent crimes aboard cruise ships or random attacks in retail stores, the pattern erodes public trust in the justice system's ability to distinguish between those who deserve protection and those who deserve accountability.
Several facts remain unclear. The specific insurance company that allegedly denied Maas's claim has not been publicly identified. The complaint does not appear to detail what permanent physical injuries, beyond emotional ones, Maas sustained. The exact case number and full docket information have not been reported. And the Daily Mail noted that it contacted both the Lincoln Police Department and the Miller family for comment, without indicating that either responded.
Whether Maas's PTSD claim is legitimate is a medical question. Whether his lawsuit is appropriate is a legal question. But whether a driver suing the estate of the man he killed passes the basic smell test of fairness, that is a question any American with common sense can answer.
The broader debate over how the legal system handles cases where prosecutors and courts make choices that baffle ordinary citizens is not going away. If anything, cases like this one sharpen the frustration.
Anthony Miller's two daughters are too young to understand any of this. Someday they will be old enough to read the court filings. When they do, they will learn that the man who killed their father asked a court to make their family pay for his suffering. No amount of legal framing changes what that looks like.
A legal system that allows the living to bill the dead for the cost of killing them has lost its grip on the meaning of justice.
