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Last week, David “Heavy D” Sparks, one of the big-bearded Diesel Brothers guys of YouTube and Discovery Channel fame, was taken to jail over failure to pay about $850,000 in fees related to a Clean Air Act lawsuit. After being locked up for three days, he had a hearing where a judge ordered his immediate release.
While it initially looked like he was just flouting criminal fines when this story first broke last week, that’s not exactly the case.
Sparks gave an intro to his side of the story in an Instagram video (embedded below), promising to go deeper in an upcoming video on his YouTube channel. As he explains, and we can verify with other coverage and court documents, he wasn’t shirking fines imposed directly by a government agency—he was dodging responsibility to pay legal fees related to a civil suit brought up by a private organization, the Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment (UPHE).
He describes his release as “vindication,” which I’m not entirely sure I agree with—but then again, I wasn’t the one who got locked up.
After pawing through some docs and updates, here’s the update on this case:
The whole thing started when the UPHE brought a lawsuit against the Diesel Brothers for violating the Clean Air Act by building emissions-deleted diesel rigs. A court ruled in favor of the physician’s group. So the fees weren’t exactly a fine imposed by a government agency, but Sparks was ordered to pay by a judge when UPHE won its initial suit, which Sparks didn’t do. Hence, the arrest.
In a hearing on Thursday, Sparks’ lawyer, Cole Cannon, made the case that “he got arrested not for a crime, but for a paperwork dispute.” I mean, a paperwork dispute can definitely be a crime, but the judge decided Sparks didn’t need to be in jail over this particular disagreement, so his release was ordered immediately.
The exact outcome, as in what Sparks would still have to pay in relation to this matter, hasn’t been disclosed yet.
The UPHE’s position is that emissions-deleted diesel trucks pollute more than 30 times the toxins that a regular truck does. Sparks and company’s main defense seems to be that they have only built a small number of deleted trucks, and that they’re mainly used for show and display purposes. The core of the argument for his release seems to be that the fine he was avoiding was related to legal fees, rather than a criminal penalty.
In his video, Sparks essentially says the physician’s organization sought an outsized amount of money for emissions violations, and tarnished his name by dragging this suit out over a long period of time.
I’m not going to say Sparks deserves to be incarcerated, but I think this is a situation where both sides are chasing their objectives through technicalities. Here’s my opinion and perspective, considering all the publicly available info:
Sparks says that the UPHE wanted to “drag his name through the mud” with its lawsuit, and that their financial demands were only for lawyer fees, not fines to be paid to government agencies for violations.
I don’t really understand why that second part matters—if he was ordered to pay X by a judge, that’s the ruling, regardless of what exactly the money was meant to cover. But I agree that the UPHE’s primary objective was probably more about raising awareness than a specific figure of financial restitution.
Sparks talks about how the fees were disproportionately high, as he was sued for “$114 million,” which he described as “absurd,” since he only had “20 trucks, limited-mileage, off-road trucks for the most part,” or “$5 million per truck.”
However, something I haven’t seen anyone acknowledge is that, yeah, the Diesel Brothers might only have 20 trucks, but Sparks personally has almost 4.5 million subs on YouTube, 3.8 million IG followers, plus other social channels, and he had a whole dang mainstream TV show for years. It’s fair to say his videos and influence have contributed to coal-rolling antics nationwide. Of course, that would be tough to quantify.
The Diesel Brothers have a very public and somewhat antagonistic online persona, so while Sparks certainly has a right to be mad about being a poster boy for emissions violations, he can’t really be surprised that happened, either.
Ultimately, I suspect there will be some kind of undisclosed settlement paid, and Sparks will keep on doing his thing.
Automotive journalist since 2013, Andrew primarily coordinates features, sponsored content, and multi-departmental initiatives at The Drive.
