Truck Accident Wrongful Death Cases

Answer:

I just met with a client a week or so ago on a trucking case that we’re handling, and the client asked a question that I thought I would share here today because it’s a great question regarding trucking cases or cases where someone has been injured or killed by an 18-wheeler, tractor trailer, or some other large commercial vehicle. The question was how is this case any different from a regular car wreck? There is so much packed into that question that really gets to the heart of why these trucking cases are different. Let me just walk through a few of these points with you here today.

A tractor trailer case is a unique animal among personal injury cases. It’s different because the trucks that are involved are bigger, heavier, more extensively regulated, have drivers who have to pass an additional level of certification to get a commercial driver’s license to operate those bigger, heavier vehicles, and all of that is in place because the size, the weight, the way that they’re made just poses a unique risk on the roads. There’s an entire agency in our federal government, the Federal Highway Transportation Safety Administration, and within it the Federal Motor Carriers Administration, that are all set up to regulate these vehicles because they pose unique dangers on our highways when not operated properly.

One big difference in these cases is, typically, the damages that we see. Because trucks are bigger and heavier, injuries are much worse than when you just have two cars involved or two regular passenger vehicles involved. It’s just a matter of physics. The fact that you have layers of regulation on these companies and their drivers, too, creates a different type of case and setting for showing negligence, for showing wrongful conduct on the part of the driver or the company when a wreck is the fault of that tractor trailer. You need someone experienced in those regulations and in the context of tractor trailer cases handling the claim in order to work through those nuances.

Another big difference, separate from the wreck itself, is the fact that in most cases where a tractor trailer or other large commercial vehicle is involved you may be dealing with an insurance carrier that only covers tractor trailer vehicles or commercial vehicles. There is a subset of insurance carriers out there that really deal heavily in this field and specialize in those types of claims, and you’ve got to know what you’re doing when dealing with them. Also, a significant number of the larger trucking companies are just companies that own their own trucks, big corporations that run their own trucks, are self-insured, so you may not be dealing with an insurance company at all; you may be dealing with corporate representatives or a third-party claim handler who is handling the claims on behalf of that self-insured company, which gets into completely different dynamics than the typical car wreck case where you’re working with a lot of different insurance carriers who cover automobiles. That’s a big difference.

In terms of working up the case itself, these tractor trailer cases are nuanced. Typically, you’re going to have more experts involved, more specialized experts. For instance, your crash reconstructionists or accident reconstructionists are going to be typically more specialized on a tractor trailer case. In other words, there may be reconstructionists who do car wrecks but who don’t have the training, qualifications, and experience to do wrecks involving these larger vehicles. Also, the type of experts involved is different. We frequently get into biomechanical experts because you have a lot of different forces that are happening in a different way in a tractor trailer wreck versus a car wreck. You get into trucking safety experts that need to be involved to make sure that the trucking company followed the rules that they need to follow, in terms of hiring and training and supervising their drivers.

There’s a lot to it, and the bottom line answer is that, for a seasoned attorney and trial lawyer who does these types of cases, there’s no comparison. They’re two different things. A car wreck and a truck wreck are just two different types of cases that you work up in a different way. If you have one of those cases, you really need an attorney and a law firm that knows that difference and that has experience in it. The Brad Morris Law Firm is here. We offer free consultations. If you’ve been involved in a wreck that has hurt or killed a family member, or hurt yourself, we’re here for a consultation. We’re available to try to answer any questions that you have about it. I hope this information has been helpful to you.