Articles Posted in Truck Accidents

A Washington jury awarded $15.5M last week in a 2004 truck accident case. The injuries, as the verdict suggests, were catastrophic. The auto accident caused the Plaintiff’s blindness. She continues to undergo surgical procedures to reconstruct her facial structure and is still in therapy to aid in her recovery from the brain injuries she suffered.

Given the catastrophic nature of these injuries, the amount of the award is no surprise; however, the party held primarily responsible for her injuries is U-Haul International, Inc. The jurors, apportioning liability as they do in a comparative negligence jurisdiction, found that U-Haul was 67% at-fault for Plaintiff’s injuries while they found the operator of the U-Haul trailer at 33%. The jurors also found U-Haul Company of Washington and the owner of the Texaco station where Mr. Hefley rented the trailer to be negligent.

The jury found that the operator had failed to secure materials in the U-Haul trailer he rented and as a result, an enormous piece of wooden furniture flew out of the trailer and smashed through the plaintiff’s windshield on the driver’s side. The jury found that the lack of instruction and clear warning to customers on how to properly secure materials they were transporting made U-Haul more at fault for the accident then Mr. Hefley’s failure to ensure the stability of the furniture he was transporting.

I read a study this weekend (my wife was at a jewelry party and my kids were asleep on Friday night) published last year by the Cornell University Industrial & Labor Relations Review, that looked at the correlation between truck driver compensation and safety outcomes.

I am sure the Teamsters embraced the results of the study: increases in truck driver compensation led to fewer crashes. It is unclear whether the improvement in the drivers’ safety records resulted from more careful driving or other related behavioral adjustments, but the strength of the data was remarkable.

Why is there a correlation between compensation and a decrease in these dangerous wrecks? I’m not sure that we can devise a study to prove driver motivations, but it makes sense that the more you are paid, the more likely you are to want to do the things you have to do to keep your job. It seems logical that paying truck drivers well serves as a counterbalance to the lure of engaging in risky behaviors – such as speeding and driving without proper rest – to drive further to make a decent wage. Better paid drivers may cause fewer truck accidents because more pay means better retention, which leads to more experienced operators on our nation’s highways.

The New York Times reports on recent rules set up by chief administrator Nicole R. Nason at National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, prohibiting officials at the agency from going on the record with reporters. Without special permission, the NHTSA only allows agency officials to only speak with reporters to provide background information.

I am sure keeping everyone on the same page is the politically astute play. But is that Ms. Nason’s purpose? Or is it to protect the safety of our citizens on public highways? Obviously, the free flow of safety information will keep reporters investigating whether manufacturers are making safe vehicles.

The Times notes that this is a 35-year-old lawyer in charge of keeping our nation’s highways safe. While I am all for lawyers being qualified to do anything and everything, I have to question whether she was the best candidate for this job. Ms. Nason served a few years as the Assistant Secretary of Transportation for governmental affairs. Why the leap to this position so quickly with such a minimal transportation background? I assume her quick rise was in part because of her connection to former CIA Director Porter J. Goss, for whom she worked as communications director when he was a congressman.  (Looking back over this post in 2019, I have to say we did not have it so bad compared to now.)

A recent Jury Verdict Research study revealed some interesting settlement and verdict data regarding truck accident cases. The most frequently cited injury in truck accident cases, which is probably true for auto accident cases, is the back strain. Back strains, according to the study, drew a median verdict of $15,000.00.

Brain injury cases, which accounted for only six percent of truck accident verdicts, had a median verdict of $1.3 million. Knee injuries accounted for four percent of the cases and had a median verdict of approximately $85,000.00.

The study also broke the verdict down into the truck accident collision which occurred and the median verdicts by type. The head-on collision had the highest median verdict of $275,000 and the “backing” collision (where a truck backs up into another vehicle) had the lowest of $33,000. The overall verdicts studied had a median verdict of $100,000.

According to The Federal Motor Carry Safety Administration’s 2006 report, there are approximately 141,000 truck crashes every year. In 77,000 of these truck accidents – more than half – the fault was attributed to the truck driver. This is interesting because we have been getting data from the American Trucking Associations. and the Truckload Carriers Association for years telling us that the truck drivers are rarely at fault in truck accidents. Yet this ostensibly objective study says just the opposite.

According to the FMCA 2006 report, the top 10 causes of truck accidents where the truck driver is a fault:

1. Prescription drug use (26%)

I have encountered yet another spoliation issue in a truck accident case where the defendant cannot produce their trucking log that was requested within six months of the incident. Federal regulations require commercial truck drivers to maintain their log for at least six months.

Unlike New Jersey and California, Maryland has no independent tort for negligent or intentional spoliation of evidence. But you can get in Maryland a spoliation instruction stating that the destruction of evidence creates a presumption unfavorable to the spoliator.

Obviously, in fairness to everyone, the best practice regarding evidence in a case is to preserve all potential evidence until they have concluded all legal proceedings. The intentional or negligent destruction or spoliation of evidence threatens the integrity of our judicial system. As I have discussed previously on this blog, many truck drivers do not take these logs seriously. The practice of falsifying truck driver hours is an open secret in the trucking industry; truckers routinely refer to their driving logs as “comic books.” Fines are small and infrequent. The oversight from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is virtually nonexistent. The FMCSA does not have the staff to closely monitor 700,000 businesses and almost eight million trucks.