Baltimore Injury Lawyer BlogThis page is for truck accident lawyers seeking additional insurance by bringing in the broker or shipper. Too many attorneys ignore the broker-shipper liability path to higher settlement amounts. This page explains the path to bringing in these defendants and gives 2024 updated case law. Continue reading
Articles Posted in Truck Accidents
Trucking Accidents: You’re Already Behind
Experienced truck accident lawyers know that when beginning to investigate a new matter, it is extremely important to hit the ground running. Why? Because the moment the client signs the retainer, you are already behind. Most likely, you are significantly behind.
Why? Because the trucking company and its’ defense team had a head start. The lawyers who defend trucking companies with regularity have a 24-hour crash line (ok, an associate with a cell phone) for the company to call immediately after the crash. As soon as dispatch knows there has been an accident, they call the number. Once the lawyer gets the call, they hustle to get somebody out to the scene. They call a reconstructionist who will be able to get there while the evidence is fresh and undisturbed. They get the vehicles and the scene photographed, and they get an investigator moving to obtain statements from the witnesses. This has all most likely happened before the injured person even thinks to call a lawyer.
On the other side, let’s assume the accident victim is badly injured. He’s in the hospital for two weeks. After he stabilizes, he begins the search for a personal injury lawyer. After talking with a few lawyers, he takes another week to decide which one he likes best and to sign a retainer. At that point, the lawyer has only had a client to represent for 5 minutes, and he’s already 3 weeks behind the defense in his investigation.
A Truck Accident Injury Case is More Than a Car Accident Case on Steroids
Lawyers who do not regularly handle injury cases from truck accidents often think it is simply another car accident case, only with bigger vehicles. This could not be more wrong. Trucking accident injury cases have different factual and legal issues than car accident cases.
Although the factual differences are many, they will be addressed in a later post. This post is about some of the legal issues that are important in a truck accident case.
When they become involved in a lawsuit over a car crash, most people think it would be very helpful to their case if the other driver had a bad driving history, such as traffic violations or prior at-fault accidents. Of course, that would only be helpful if the jury ever found out about it. Usually they won’t. That is because generally, the only issues at play in a car accident case are 1) was the drviver negligent; and 2) damages. Prior driving history is usually not relevant to either of these issues, and therefore isn’t admissible in evidence. For laymen, the jury isn’t told about prior driving history because it doesn’t have anything to do with whether the bad guy was negligent that day, or with the proper amount of damages.
How “Black Box” Data Is Relevant to a Truck Crash
If you are a truck accident attorney for victims, you have to know how you will deal with the truck’s black box after a crash. It can make a difference between winning and losing the case.
What Is a Black Box?
Trucking companies often equip their vehicles with a “black box” that records vehicle data, such as speed, location, and movement.
In 2020, a black box is really not a black box. It is "electronic control modules" (ECMs) or "event data recorders" (EDRs) that tracks all of this information with a computer.
Trucking companies do this to promote efficiency in terms of scheduling, cargo tracking, route determinations, and other efficiencies. Companies monitor their drivers, too, to make sure they are where they are supposed to be, doing what they are supposed to be doing, while they are out on the road.
Preservation of electronic data from any of these sources is vital to the defense of litigation arising from an accident, as it may be the most reliable and objective source of information about the events that occurred just prior to a crash.
Why Does an Experienced Truck Accident Lawyer Matter?
Many lawyers think a trucking accident case is just a car accident case on steroids. As I have written about on this blog, it is not. The intricacies of dealing with a black box is just one example of many. Experienced Maryland truck accident lawyers know to ask for things like vehicle data recorder information in discovery requests.
Miller & Zois Million Dollar Verdict In Baltimore City Trucking Injury Case
Our firm obtained a verdict of $1,063,807.37 for our client this week. Great win for a wonderful 22-year-old mother of a one-year-old at the time of the accident.
Facts of This Truck Accident Case
This was a hotly contested liability case. Our client contended she was injured when the Defendant, driving a full gasoline tanker, ran a red light. The defendant claimed he had a green light, and that our client must have had the red light. The accident happened at the intersection of Pennington Avenue and Church Street in Baltimore City. Our client’s car was totaled, and the gas tanker was damaged, which caused a gasoline spill. Our client had her one-year-old son in the car when the crash happened and had to watch him scream for his mom in a stranger’s arms while our client was trapped in her car due to her badly broken leg.