When you are involved in an accident with a trucker, assigning blame is not that simple, even if you were not at-fault in the accident. You can go after the trucker themselves, or you can pursue damaged via the company that employees the truck and even the company that does maintenance on the truck. If you want to go after more than just the trucker for the accident, you are going to need to get the right evidence.
#1 Maintenance
If your attorney determines that faulty maintenance is one of the reasons that the truck got into an accident with you, you can choose to add the facilities that take care of the maintenance to your lawsuit.
For example, if the place that changes out the brakes did not put the brakes on properly, and that contributed to the accident, you could pursue damages in part against the auto body shop that worked on the truck that hit you.
In this case, you are going to need to request the maintenance logs from the owner of the truck. You are also going to need to request the receipts and work logs from the auto shop that worked on the truck. Both of these records can prove what maintenance was done on the vehicle and who did it. If there was negligence in the maintenance process, you can pursue damages against the cause of that negligence.
#2 Work Hours & Care
If it is determined that the accident was caused because the driver had spent too many hours out on the road, your attorney needs to dig deeper into the company that employees the driver. Your attorney needs to request the driving logs for your driver and for other drivers with the company
Is there a culture of pushing drivers to drive for more hours than they should within the company? Is there a culture of drivers routinely forging evidence of how long they have been on the road?
Oftentimes, an individual driver staying on the road for too long and failing to take the right amount of rest time is just one part of the story. Your attorney needs to get work records and see if this an isolated incident by the driver or if this type of behavior was encouraged and not punished within the company. If the driver felt pressure from the company to stay on the road longer than they should have, you could go after the company that employees the driver for damages.
Remember, with any truck accident, their could be multiple parties to blame for what happened. The key is to build up the evidence to show whom bears responsibility for what happened to you. For more information and help with your case, contact a law firm, such as D Chadwick Calvert Law Office, that has experience with truck accident cases.
Share