When East Texas plaintiff lawyer Jim Parsons learned that a trucking company was willing to pay $1.6 million to end his client’s tort case, he got the defendants to agree to something else that’s exceedingly rare in modern civil litigation: a sincere personal apology.

Apologies are unusual in tort cases for a variety reasons, chief among them that defendants are loath to offer anything more than broad condolences to a plaintiff that has sued them for fear of admitting liability.