About this practice area
A truck crash can involve a claim against a company as well as the driver. Federal safety rules govern many of the trucks on Connecticut highways, and a carrier may hold records that help show what happened, including the driver's hours-of-service records. Early questions in a truck case are which companies were involved and what records they hold.
The firm has been in New Haven since 1956 and on Crown Street since 1989. We represent people hurt in truck crashes in New Haven and the towns around it, including but not limited to Branford, East Haven, and Milford. The first consultation is free.
How we work a truck case
A trucking company's insurer often has an adjuster, and sometimes a lawyer, working on a crash within days, while you are still in treatment. The first letter we send in a truck case is a preservation letter to the carrier, covering the truck, the trailer, the driver's file and the electronic records of the trip.
We gather the records the carrier holds along with your own medical records and bills, find out from your doctors what treatment is still ahead, put a number on the pay you have lost, and identify each policy that may pay, including the carrier's and your own underinsured coverage. When the case needs it, we retain accident reconstruction engineers and people who know the trucking industry.
We prepare a truck case to be tried, and we will try it when a case calls for it. In our experience, a carrier's offer depends in part on whether it expects to face a jury, and an offer made before your losses are known is one we will generally not recommend accepting. If an offer omits a loss the records show, we go back to the insurer with the records. Whether to settle is your decision, and we will give you our plain opinion of each offer.
A result in a tractor-trailer case
Past results do not guarantee future outcomes. The results below were obtained for specific clients in specific cases under specific facts. Every case is different, and any future case will be decided on its own facts and law.
$23,000,000
Verdict · Tractor-Trailer Accident · With co-counsel
Verdict achieved with co-counsel for injuries and damages arising from a tractor-trailer collision.
More about this result
What to do after a truck crash
The general steps after any crash, from medical care to reporting it to your own insurer, are on our car accident page. These steps are specific to trucks.
- Write down the names and numbers on the truck. Federal rules require a covered truck to be marked with the name and USDOT number of the carrier operating it, and the trailer carries its own plate and sometimes a different company's name. If you can do so safely, photograph those markings and the trailer plate.
- Photograph the trailer, the load and any placards. Placards show that the truck was carrying hazardous materials, and that can change the rules and insurance minimums that apply. How the load was secured can matter too.
- Keep the police report number and ask the police whether a separate truck inspection report was prepared. Either report can help identify the carrier and its insurer.
- Do not give a statement to the carrier's insurer before you talk with a lawyer. An adjuster or investigator who calls about the truck usually works for the carrier or its insurer, and the same caution applies to signing anything or accepting a check. Your own policy has notice and cooperation requirements of its own, so check them and ask a lawyer how they apply.
- Ask a lawyer about a preservation letter. It asks the carrier in writing to keep the truck and trailer, the electronic logging data, any video, the driver's file and any post-crash test results.
More than one company can be responsible
The name on the cab door, the name on the trailer and the name on the driver's paycheck can belong to three different companies. In a lawsuit against the truck's owner for negligent or reckless operation, if someone else was driving, Connecticut law presumes the driver was working for the owner at the time, and it is up to the owner to rebut that presumption. So who owned the truck, and who leased it, is among the first facts to establish.
The company that employs the driver may be responsible for what the driver did on the job, which is one reason the dispatch and delivery records matter. Records may also show whether another company maintained or repaired the truck or trailer. Which companies belong in a lawsuit depends on what the evidence and the law support, and each one often has its own insurer.
The carrier's insurer may argue that you changed lanes in front of the truck or stopped short, because a loaded truck needs more room to stop than a car. That does not automatically end the claim. You can still recover if your share of the fault is not greater than the combined share of everyone you are claiming against, including anyone you have already settled with, and your award is reduced by your percentage.
Asking the carrier to keep the truck and its records
Which rules apply depends on the truck's weight and the trip. Federal motor carrier safety rules generally apply to a vehicle used in interstate commerce that weighs or is rated at 10,001 pounds or more, alone or with its trailer. That weight line is why a heavier delivery van or box truck can fall under many of the same rules as a tractor-trailer.
In interstate commerce, those rules can also reach a lighter vehicle transporting hazardous materials in a quantity that requires placards. For a truck that stays inside Connecticut, state law lets the DMV apply the same standards to qualifying trucks.
Those rules cover a driver's hours of service and the truck's inspection, repair and maintenance, among other things.
When post-crash alcohol and drug tests are required
After certain serious crashes involving a commercial motor vehicle on a public road in commerce, federal rules can require the driver's employer to test a surviving driver who needs a commercial driver's license for alcohol and controlled substances.
The employer has to test that driver when someone died, if the driver was performing safety-sensitive functions with respect to the truck. It is also required when the driver is cited within eight hours of the crash (32 hours for drug testing) for a moving violation arising from it, and someone was hurt and immediately treated away from the scene or a vehicle was disabled and towed. If a required alcohol test is not given within two hours, the employer has to record why. Any test result, or the record of why there was none, is among the items a preservation letter asks the carrier to keep.
A carrier covered by those rules may hold records that help show what happened:
- electronic logging device data and the driver's hours-of-service records
- the driver's qualification file
- dispatch and delivery records
- inspection, repair and maintenance records for the tractor and the trailer
- dashcam video and telematics data
- the truck and the trailer themselves
Six months is the minimum the rule sets for hours-of-service records and the documents that back them up, and nothing on this page says how long the rest of this list is kept. That is why a preservation letter should go to the carrier early.
Which insurance may pay after a truck crash
A for-hire carrier hauling ordinary freight across state lines in a truck rated at 10,001 pounds or more has to carry at least $750,000 in liability coverage under federal rules, and the minimum is higher for hazardous materials. That is the least coverage the rule requires of those carriers, and it says nothing about what a particular claim is worth. Carriers' actual limits vary, and truck cases often involve more than one insurer.
Uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage
Your own policy comes into it less often than after a car crash. Every Connecticut auto liability policy must include uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage, and you make that claim under the policy that covers you, usually your own. Under standard coverage, the truck counts as underinsured only when the total liability limits covering it are lower than the uninsured and underinsured motorist limits of the policy you are claiming under. Measured against the federal minimum for those carriers, that is uncommon.
If the truck was uninsured or its driver was never identified, review the policy that covers you; whether it pays depends on its terms. Your policy sets the time limit to sue or demand arbitration on that coverage, and Connecticut generally does not let it be shorter than three years from the crash. For an underinsured claim, that deadline can be extended by written notice to your insurer before it runs, followed by suit or arbitration within 180 days after the limits of all applicable auto bodily-injury liability bonds or policies have been exhausted by settlement or final judgment, after any appeals. Our car accident page explains the notice step and conversion coverage.
What happens when you call
Tell us where the crash happened and what you know about the truck, and have the report number if you have it. Keep anything an insurance company has already sent you.
Call us at 203-865-3123, or use our contact form.
