Truck Accidents

A commercial truck case is not a car case with a bigger vehicle. It is a records case.

The evidence that decides it is generated by federal regulation, held by the carrier, and legally destructible on a schedule measured in months.

The single most valuable thing anyone does in the first two weeks is send a preservation letter.

What exists, and how long it lasts

A motor carrier subject to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations generates records that a passenger-car defendant simply does not have:

• Hours-of-service records from the electronic logging device — the driver's duty status, minute by minute
• Engine control module data — speed, throttle, brake application, and hard-braking events in the seconds before impact
• The driver qualification file — licensing, medical certification, prior employers, road test
• Drug and alcohol testing records following a qualifying accident
• Maintenance and inspection records for the tractor and the trailer
• Dispatch records, bills of lading, and the load manifest — which show what the driver was under pressure to do
• Forward-facing and driver-facing camera footage, where the carrier runs a telematics system

Retention periods for several of these are measured in six months. Camera footage on a rolling loop can be gone in days. A carrier that overwrites data after receiving a preservation demand is in a different position than one that overwrote it in the ordinary course — which is exactly why the demand goes out early and in writing.

The defendants are usually more than one

The driver. And their employer, through respondeat superior — which is agency, and therefore outside the $15,000 imputed-liability cap of Vehicle Code § 17151.

The motor carrier itself, on its own negligence: hiring, training, supervision, retention, and how it dispatched this load.

The broker or shipper, where the load was arranged in a way that made the schedule unsafe.

The trailer owner, which is frequently a different company from the tractor owner.

The maintenance contractor, where a brake, tire, or coupling failed.

A parts manufacturer, on product liability — a theory unaffected by anyone's driving.

And where road design or signage contributed, a public entity — with the six-month claim deadline of Government Code § 911.2(a), not two years.

If you were working

Truck cases and workers' compensation overlap constantly, because so many of the people hurt by commercial vehicles are themselves at work: delivery drivers, warehouse and yard workers, tow operators, road crews, and other truck drivers.

Labor Code § 3852(a) keeps both claims alive at once — compensation against your employer, damages against everyone else. Labor Code § 3856(b) puts your attorney's fees and litigation costs ahead of the employer's lien on any judgment, in an amount § 3856(d) leaves to the court.

Two claims, one investigation. The ECM download and the preservation letter serve both. How the two fit together.

What to do this week

Send a preservation letter to the carrier, naming the ELD data, the ECM download, camera footage, the driver qualification file, and post-accident testing. This is the step that cannot be done later.

Photograph the tractor and trailer, including the DOT number on the door. That number identifies the carrier and its safety record.

Get the traffic collision report and identify every company on it. Tractor, trailer, and load are often three different companies.

Do not let the vehicles be released before someone has inspected them.

And open the comp claim if you were working, in any sense. The claim process.

Common questions