Articles Posted in Truck Accidents

On this page, we will look at the settlement payout value of truck accident personal injury cases.

Truck Accident Settlement Statistics

A recent Jury Verdict Research study of trucking accidents found that truck accident victims recover damages in 60% of personal injury trials and receive a median compensatory award of $90,000.  I find the 60% number a surprise.  With all the weapons plaintiffs’ lawyers have now to prove a case — and figure out if we have one in the first place — it is hard to fathom how we can lose 40% of these cases.

A recent Jury Verdict Research nationwide study looked at truck accidents from 1996 to 2005 found that the truck accident victim prevailed and received damages in 60 percent of truck accident lawsuits.

Tractor-trailers are typically the heaviest vehicles on the road. This makes big rig trucks very dangerous. Serious injuries and fatalities are more likely in truck-related collisions than in accidents involving standard passenger vehicles only. This is why large commercial trucks are required to carry “high-limit” liability insurance coverage.  But the limits are not high enough to give truck accident victims in many cases.

Common Causes for Big Rig Truck Accidents

Accidents with big trucks can happen for all the same reasons as any other auto accident. But the unique nature of big trucks and the commercial trucking industry make certain types of accidents more common. Common accident causes that are unique to the trucking industry include:

Big rig trucks are dangerous.  They cause serious injuries and they kill people.  Our law firm is currently handling 5 wrongful death truck accident cases. It is beyond awful.

I think we have established this fact on this blog. What we have not talked about specifically is the risk to truck drivers. Driving a truck was the single most hazardous occupation in the United States last year, taking 852 lives.  Logging that many hours on the road with vehicles that are tough to control… I’m surprised the number is not higher.

Large Truck Does Not Equal Large Uninsured Motorist Policy

Compounding this tragedy is the lack of uninsured motorist benefits for truck drivers.  Commercial trucks have liability insurance requirements. Most trucks must be insured at a minimum of $750,000.  (It is a crime that this cap has not been raised in the last zillion years but that is a whole different issue.)

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A new appellate opinion offers some interesting insight into the parameters under which a plaintiff may inquire about a truck driver’s driving record and the extent to which plaintiffs’ truck accident attorneys can use cross-examination fodder like the commercial driver license manual and other safety manuals.

Fact of the Case

Briefly, a man on a bicycle was killed when he was hit by a truck.  The bicyclist was making a right turn against a red light on a white pedestrian signal.  The truck hit him, and he was dragged for several hundred feet.

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In Young v. Swiney, the U.S. District Court of Maryland was presented with an interesting, albeit depressing question: Can a suicide, two years after a truck crash, be causally related to the accident?

The Facts

There was no dispute as to liability.  The defendant trucking company sought summary judgment on plaintiffs’ wrongful death claim, alleging that there was no evidence that a reasonable jury could rely upon to establish this suicide, two years after the accident, could be causally related to the crash.   Defendant also sought summary judgment for economic losses after the suicide, claiming that his death was, “a superseding and/or intervening cause” of his death that acts as a bar to future economic losses.   As creepy as that argument is, it does logically follow that that if the crash did not cause the suicide than the economic losses should, as a matter of law, be terminated as well. Continue reading

On Monday, a man calls our office. He only has a few minutes to talk. He tells our intake specialist that his brother has been at Shock Trauma in Baltimore since the beginning of the month and that he was hit by a commercial vehicle. The man briefly describes his brother’s injuries as head, eye, shoulder, and ankle.

She didn’t get more details. But he has me, obviously, at “Almost a month and counting in Shock Trauma” and “commercial truck.” Most of our large serious injury cases are truck accident cases. We set up a meeting with the brother for the next day in my office.

An hour before the meeting, the brother calls and says that the injury victim wants to be a part of the meeting, asking our intake specialist if we can move the meeting to the hospital.

I swallow hard. I’m simultaneously happy and miserable. Sure, I can now sign up for the client directly. But I really hate hospital visits. Why? Because it makes me feel like an ambulance chaser, that’s why. Many people pride themselves on not caring what anyone else thinks. I don’t. I really care – especially what health care providers think because I really have a lot of respect for them.

I’ve probably lost a lot of cases over the years of eschewing hospital visits. But last month, our firm went on a weekend retreat to the Hyatt in Cambridge, Maryland. Great place.  The purpose of our meetings there was to become a better law firm. I’m convinced that we can never stop getting better. We are blessed to have a group of people who have been together for a long time. I think experience individually and collectively gives us a chance to continue to improve. The focus of the meeting was what I call Kaiser Sose: doing the little things other people can’t or won’t do to (1) make our clients happy, and (2) increase the values of their cases. In the spirit of that meeting, which included the theme of EVERYONE having to be accountable, I have to make hospital visits when current or potential clients ask me to come.

So I drive down to Baltimore to visit the hospital. I’m planning to meet the brother in the hospital lobby. This makes me feel better because it gives me some cover other than the guy who looks like a lawyer going up alone. While I’m fidgeting in the lobby, the brother calls the office and just asks, inexplicably, if I can just come up to the room.

Shoot. Now I’m uncomfortable. But I sneak by the front desk without getting a visitor’s badge pulling off that “I am regular here, I know where I’m going” look, simultaneously feeling James Bond clever and a complete loser. Because I’m so clutch, I add difficulty by screwing up the “600-630 this way” arrow, having to suspiciously double back again. Thankfully, no one is paying attention because, you know, they are tending to badly hurt people and I’m in Baltimore City and I’m not carrying a weapon. Continue reading

A defense lawyer who regularly defends truck accident cases was telling me recently how many plaintiffs’ lawyers rarely ask the questions that really scare him in deposition or in discovery. Car accident lawyers figure, “Hey, it is a truck accident. A truck accident is just a big car, right? It is really not. There are too many nuances to truck accident cases.

Heavy trucks can be simply lethal

One typical miss: inquiry on how much the truck weighed. Some estimate that 30 percent of tractor-trailers and dump trucks are overweight. I’m guessing that is high.  Sometimes, advocates for plaintiffs get a little carried away, and the result is hyperbole.

But truck accident cases disproportionately involve overweight trucks not only because heavy trucks cause more accidents because they are less safe, but also because truck drivers and companies willing to go overweight are similarly willing to take other chances with fatigued drivers and improperly maintained trucks.

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