Trucking Accident Attorney Blog

The driver of a semi tractor-trailer died this past Monday. Dale Eugene Thompson of Hazelton, Idaho, lost control of his truck and crashed through a guard rail in Davis County, Utah. The truck fell 50 feet from a freeway overpass onto the railroad tracks below, killing Mr. Thompson instantly. He was 62 years old.

Thompson was hauling a load of hay when he lost control of the vehicle around 12:05 pm according to the Utah Highway Patrol. He had been traveling southbound on I-15, and lost control on the connecting ramp between I-15 and I-215 southbound, sending the truck out of control over the guard rail.

The Utah Highway Patrol said the trucking accident is still under investigation, and have not commented as to whether tiredness or alcohol intoxication may have been involved in the accident. No one else was hurt in the crash, although the crash would clearly have hampered railway traffic until the vehicle and debris were removed from the accident site.

This kind of accident is tragic and illustrates the difficulty that semi truck drivers can have in keeping their vehicles under proper control. Sharp turns, unexpected winds or poor road conditions can all contribute to hampering any driver's control over his or her vehicle, and the effects are much more extreme for semi drivers due to the huge vehicles they must operate.

The investigation has not yet reported how much the damage done to the guard rail or the railroad tracks will cost, or how long it will take to repair. Drivers using this ramp from I-15 to 215 are urged to use caution when making their way around the area for several days.

This accident points out how drivers must exercise caution around semi trucks. These large vehicles can unexpectedly go off course for any number of reasons, potentially endangering the lives of all other drivers and passengers around them.

As a southern Illinois tractor-trailer accident lawyer, I was interested to see a recent appeals court decision stemming from a catastrophic trucking accident that took place in the region. In Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc. and ACE American Insurance Co. v. ATS Enterprises et al., the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided that Coca-Cola, the owner of a truck involved in a fatal crash, and its insurance company should be held legally liable to the victims. The question arose because the truck was being driven at the time by Daniel Zacha, an employee of contractor S&S Service Co., which maintained and repaired trucks at the Coca-Cola bottling plant in Mattoon, Ill. The victim’s estate ultimately settled an Illinois wrongful death lawsuit for $1.9 million, but the companies and their insurers fought over who was liable for the payment.

S&S usually serviced the trucks at the site of the Coca-Cola plant, but sometimes had an employee drive them to its shop. Zacha was doing that when he failed to yield during a left turn, causing a fatal head-on collision with a minivan. The victim was not identified, but his or her estate sent an initial demand letter to Universal Underwriters Insurance Co., the insurer for S&S. This set off a debate between Universal and the insurer for Coca-Cola, ACE American Insurance Co., but Universal ultimately agreed to take the lead in negotiations with the estate. While it settled for $1.9 million, ACE and Coca-Cola filed suit in Illinois for a declaratory judgment that they were not liable for the amount of the judgment. The Illinois federal district court found that state law makes Coca-Cola’s policy with ACE the primary insurance, and in fact that Universal’s policy did not apply. It granted summary judgment for the Universal defendants, and the ACE defendants appealed.

The Seventh Circuit ultimately upheld the determination that ACE’s policy was primary, although it disagreed that Universal’s policy did not apply. The material facts are not disputed, it noted; it need only settle the question of which policies apply and which insurer has primacy under Illinois law. It’s undisputed that the ACE policy applies, it said. Though the policy says it excludes someone using a truck while servicing or repairing that truck, this is not permissible under Illinois law, the court said; thus, Zacha was a permissive user. The Universal policy is harder to apply because it covers only an “owned auto,” the court said, but an “owned auto” includes an auto “not owned by you... when used in your business.” This surely must apply to the circumstances of the crash, the Seventh reasoned. Thus, both policies apply. Furthermore, the court noted, Illinois law prioritizes the owner of the vehicle over its operator. ACE argued that S&S should have primacy because it is a tow-truck operator required by statute to cover accidents involving others’ vehicles, but the court rejected this as an overly broad reading of the tow-truck statute. Thus, it upheld the district court’s determination that ACE and Coca-Cola should pay.

This is a good position for a St. Louis semi truck accident attorney like me to be in, because no matter who wins, the injured family is likely to get the financial recovery it’s legally entitled to. S&S was well insured enough to pay the judgment; and while Coca-Cola had a $5 million deductible with ACE, it has deep enough pockets to make even a $5 million award affordable. Not every accident victim is lucky enough to be in this position, unfortunately. A defendant trucking company may try to cut expenses by self-insuring, then go out of business after it becomes responsible for a very serious accident. It’s also possible that defendants with the best ability to pay may be excluded, leaving no insurance or insufficient insurance left to cover catastrophic damages. That’s why, as a Missouri big rig accident lawyer, I work hard to ensure that every applicable defendant is included in my cases.

Continue reading "Seventh Circuit Finds Truck Owner’s Insurance Liable in Fatal Crash Involving Mechanic – Coca-Cola Enterprises et al. v. ATS Enterprises et al." »

Most trucking accidents discussed tend to involve semi trucks on highways, but one type of truck often overlooked in such accidents is the dump truck. Comparable in size and mass to a tractor-trailer, dump trucks are just as dangerous on the roads as other such vehicles, as a crash on Thursday, February 16 tragically demonstrated.

According to reports, the dump truck collided with the side of a school bus full of elementary school children at a four way intersection around 8 am. It is unclear whether the bus was attempting to turn or to cross the intersection, but the impact of the truck sent the school bus sideways into a traffic light post. The most tragic part of the accident is that one girl -- a triplet daughter of New Jersey state trooper Sgt. Anthony Tezsla -- was killed in the crash, and both of her triplet sisters were critically injured. In addition to the one death, 17 children were injured, three critically: the two triplets and Jonathan Zdybel.

Apparently the children in the bus were wearing seat belts at the time of the accident, but several were reportedly thrown into the aisle by the impact.

Police say that no charges have been filed in the crash, as the investigation is not yet complete.

Members of the state, including Governor Christie himself, expressed their sympathies to the families who suffered injuries and loss in the accident.

What the accident most clearly demonstrates is that trucking accidents -- whatever the type of truck -- are not limited to causing pileups or spectacular crashes on the interstate and highway systems. This accident took place in a small town of about 8,000 residents, on town roads. Accidents can happen anywhere and at any time.

As a southern Illinois tractor-trailer accident lawyer, I was interested to see an appeals court decision on the unusual topic of when defendants can be held liable for setting the stage for a serious crash. In Blood v. VH-1 Music First, the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declined to overturn a ruling that trucker Dennis Hernandez cannot be sued for causing the traffic jam in which another trucker, Milinko Cukovic, rear-ended a vehicle occupied by David and Paul Blood, two brothers. David Blood sued Cukovic and his trucking company, which in turn filed third-party complaints against Hernandez and several entertainment-industry entities for which he was working. Blood subsequently added them to his case. The federal district court for southern Illinois ultimately granted summary judgment to the Hernandez defendants, and Blood appealed.

It is undisputed that Hernandez caused the initial accident on Interstate 57 in 2008, causing the West Frankfort fire department to close the northbound lanes and back up traffic for several miles. Four hours after the crash, David and Paul Blood slowed and stopped for this traffic, but truck driver Cukovic failed to stop behind them and slammed into their car. Paul Blood died and David Blood was seriously injured. David Blood and the estate of Paul Blood filed separate but similar claims against Cukovic and T.E.A.M. Logistics, his trucking company. The defendants removed the cases to federal court and then added the Hernandez defendants, alleging that their negligence in the first accident proximately caused the second accident. Blood then added the Hernandez defendants as direct defendants and settled with the Cukovic defendants. The district court then granted summary judgment to the Hernandez defendants, and Blood appealed.

The Seventh Circuit started by noting that Illinois law controls this case, and thus its job was to determine what the Illinois Supreme Court would do. Ultimately, it found no proximate causation by the Hernandez defendants as a matter of law. Citing several cases involving multiple car accidents in succession, the Seventh found that to hold defendants like Hernandez liable, there must be a clear chain of causation between the wrongful act of the first tortfeasor (in this case the Hernandez defendants) and the accident. In addition, the actions of the second tortfeasor (in this case the Cukovic defendants) must be a reasonable response to the conditions created by the first. Neither is true in the case, the Seventh found. Four hours had passed between the Hernandez accident and the Blood-Cukovic accident, breaking the causal chain. But even more important, the court said, was the fact that Cukovic’s actions could not be considered reasonable: He drove into a stopped car at 55 mph. Thus, it affirmed the summary judgment order for the defendants.

One thing that interests me about this case, as a St. Louis big rig accident attorney, is the fact that Blood adopted the Cukovic defendants’ position that the Hernandez defendants were liable. While Blood may have stood to gain financially from suing potentially deep-pocketed entertainment companies, the Cukovic defendants also stood to gain from having Blood’s claim diverted to or split with a third party. It’s possible that adding the Hernandez defendants to his claim may have even been a condition of Blood’s settlement with the Cukovic defendants. If that’s true, I hope Blood did not settle for less than the value of his claim, with the expectation of more to come. I believe it’s part of my job as a Missouri semi truck accident lawyer to prevent clients from accepting this kind of settlement.

Continue reading "Court Rules Defendant Cannot Be Liable for Causing Traffic That Caused Trucking Crash – Blood v. VH-1 Music First" »

Earlier, we shared a post about a train engineer who only had seconds to declare an emergency and throw on the brakes before plowing into a semi truck stuck across the train tracks. In that accident, ten people were injured and sent to the hospital because of injuries resulting from the crash. To show that we weren't simply talking about a random, once in a lifetime kind of event, consider this new story from Hereford, Texas.

A train in Hereford crashed through a semi truck that was stuck partway across the tracks. The driver of the truck survived because he got out of the cab and ran as soon as he saw the train. Seconds later, the train cut the truck in half, throwing the cab to one side of the tracks and the cargo to the other. Once again, the train's engineers had very little time to react to the situation, though they managed to bring the speed of the train down to about sixty mph just before the impact. Amazingly, no one was injured this time.

According to the police, it isn't clear why the truck was stuck across the tracks, and an investigation is still ongoing into the matter.

Semi trucks can become stuck on train tracks for any number of reasons. There can be the mechanical breakdown of the truck or the warning lights or gates. And there are driver errors such as ignoring warnings, trying to race across the tracks, or incorrectly figuring there is room to make it all the way across the tracks behind other traffic.

The thing to remember is that semi trucks do become stuck on tracks, and accidents do occur as a result. As we reported last time, up to fifteen accidents per train conductor's career -- most of which involve fatalities -- is not an uncommon figure.

Southern Illinois semi truck accident attorneys like me know that brain injuries are a common and very serious result of accidents with large commercial trucks. Because of trucks’ greater height and weight, they’re more likely than other cars to cause this kind of injury — and when they do, the victims are left with an irreparable change to some aspect of their lives. That was the claim in Bennett v. Richmond by John Richmond, whose van was rear-ended in 2004 by a container truck driven by Henry Bennett for Schuman & Sons, Inc. Richmond and his wife sued the defendants, and supported their claim at trial with testimony from a psychologist. After the jury found for the Richmonds, the defendants appealed, arguing that the psychiatrist was not qualified to give this testimony and the testimony was insufficient. The Indiana Supreme Court upheld.

The 2005 lawsuit alleged the accident was responsible for Richmond’s neck and back injuries. Richmond had been stopped in a one-ton van when Bennett’s 42,000-pound truck rear-ended it, pushing the van 300 feet and causing a type of whiplash. Richmond had also had headaches and memory loss since the crash, but had not been formally diagnosed with a brain injury. His attorney referred him for a psychiatric evaluation with Dr. Sheridan McCabe, a psychologist who diagnosed him with a traumatic brain injury after interviews, tests and a review of the records. Defendants objected before, during and after trial to McCabe’s testimony, unsuccessfully. At each step, they argued that the testimony was not admissible. On appeal, the Court of Appeals reversed and remanded the case for a new trial, agreeing that McCabe was not qualified to offer an opinion on the cause of Richmond’s injury. The defendants appealed to the Indiana Supreme Court. Unfortunately, John Richmond died in February of 2011; his estate continued the case.

The Indiana Court of Appeals ruled in this case that psychologists are not per se unqualified to testify as to the causes of brain injuries, though they must meet Indiana rules for giving testimony; the high court agreed. Thus, it analyzed whether McCabe in particular was not qualified to testify as to Richmond’s injuries. The Court of Appeal found that he was not because he was not a medical doctor and had no demonstrated medical expertise in the etiology of brain injuries. However, the Indiana high court found that McCabe was uniquely qualified to testify, particularly in light of the fact that closed brain injuries like Richmond’s can go undiagnosed by medical doctors. In any case, the court said, education is just one way to qualify as an expert; McCabe clearly demonstrated the relevant knowledge. Nor does the record show that McCabe’s testimony was inadmissible because it was not based on reliable scientific principles, the court found. Thus, it upheld the trial court.

As a Missouri tractor-trailer accident lawyer, I’m pleased to see another avenue open for plaintiffs who suffered severe injuries in accidents with 18-wheelers. I’d particularly like to pull out a fact that the Indiana court touched on only briefly: Richmond had an undiagnosed brain injury. This is more common than you might think, if you don’t happen to have studied the issue. Brain injuries can be subtle; any blow to the head that causes you to pass out is a mild concussion. After a crash, victims may be too shaken up to evaluate themselves; it may be a week or more before they start noticing telltale signs like unexplained headaches or memory loss. They may also be impaired by the injury itself. That’s why it’s important for victims of trucking accidents to go to the doctor to be checked out after a crash, even if they don’t think there’s anything wrong. The sooner it’s documented, the sooner a St. Louis big rig accident attorney like me can begin to get help.

Continue reading "Psychologists May Testify About Brain Injuries From Trucking Accident, Indiana High Court Rules – Bennett v. Richmond" »

A recent train derailment in Leoni Township, Michigan saw ten people hospitalized but no one killed in a collision between the train and a semi truck that was stopped across the railway tracks. That makes at least ten people that are counting their lucky stars.

The Amtrak train was bound from Michigan to Chicago, and according to reports was rounding a curve at speeds between 50 and 60 miles per hour when the engineer spotted the truck stopped across the tracks. Sam Crowl, a retired train engineer commented that at those speeds the operator of the train would not have had much time to react.

According to Crowl, the proper procedure would be to call "emergency" three times over the train intercom, put the train on full brakes, and then "hit the deck" of the engineering compartment. However, regarding the particular curve and distances involved in this crash, Crowl speculated that the engineer might not even have had time to do that much.

The collision happened just after 8 am on Wednesday, February 1st. The impact derailed the locomotive and food cars of the train, and nearly obliterated the semi truck. The engineer of the train, the driver of the semi, and eight other passengers were all taken to local hospitals. Again, quite astonishingly, they were all released over the next few days.

Statistical trends indicate that the average train engineer can be involved in 10 to 15 crashes, most of them fatal, over the course of a career operating a railway engine. Crowl only experienced two crashes in a 40 year career with the railways, but both of them were fatal.

These statistics indicate just how dangerous any collision with a train can be, but particularly a semi truck on the rails, or worse, if the truck fails to stop and strikes the side of a train. A train is of course much larger than a semi, but is balanced relatively precariously given their high center of gravity.

As a Missouri semi truck accident attorney, I’ve talked here before about the potential negative consequences of allowing large commercial trucks to get even larger. Currently, the tractor-trailers that routinely share our highways can be up to 80,000 pounds and have five axles; the trucking industry and its allies in Congress would like to raise that limit to six axles and 97,000 pounds. According to The Hill, such a provision was inserted into a surface transportation bill being considered by the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. However, opponents on both sides of the aisle successfully argued for an amendment that would require a safety study before such a rule could be adopted. The committee adopted the study amendment on a vote of 33 to 20.

The amendment was authored and backed by Jerry Costello, D-Ill., and Lou Barletta, R-Pa. They argued that the increased truck size would pose a safety threat to other motorists by bringing even more potential weight — and thus, force — to bear in the event of an accident. The curb weight of a 2012 Honda Civic is about 2,700 pounds, which would make the proposed new weight limit nearly 36 times heavier. Opponents also took issue with the potential effects on U.S. highways from adding 17,000 pounds per truck, saying they would increase the cost of maintaining our transportation system. Missouri Representative Russ Carnahan, a Democrat, was on the other side, saying the opposition stemmed not from safety concerns but lobbying by the railroad industry, which competes with the trucking industry for contracts. Other proponents said there was no evidence that size makes trucks less safe.

As a southern Illinois big rig accident lawyer, I disagree. The weight issue creates what accident reconstructionists call “vehicle mismatch” — meaning a much larger vehicle can do substantial damage to a smaller one in a crash. Accidents between passenger vehicles and 18-wheelers often kill the occupants of the passenger vehicles while truckers can walk away — which is not true for car-car crashes. In addition, the higher weight limit would necessarily mean the new trucks would take longer to brake, which would require awareness and adjustment of driving habits by both truckers and passenger car drivers. And according to the American Society of Civil Engineers, the higher weight limit would violate 80,000-pound weight limits on interstate bridges. The group estimates that about 25 percent of those bridges would be unusable by the larger trucks, and increase wear and tear on the other 75 percent.

At Carey, Danis & Lowe, we focus our practice on accidents with large trucks because we understand how devastating they can be. Not only do trucking crashes tend to cause far more serious injuries, but they also tend to involve more insurers and more threats to your legal rights than a crash with another private car. That’s because trucking companies are businesses, for which crashes are just another cost — and they have systems in place to minimize those costs. If your family is contacted after an accident by a trucking company or insurance company that wants you to sign something, agree to be recorded or take a small cash payment, never say yes before you can talk to our St. Louis tractor-trailer accident attorneys, because your right to fair compensation could be at stake.

Continue reading "House Transportation Committee Delays Vote on Law Allowing Six-Axle Tractor-Trailers" »

A recent accident shows how dangerous under-rested truck drivers can be. Forty-year-old Robert Roger Small, a resident of Denton, Florida, was traveling westbound on I-70 near Hutchinson, Kansas at 8:23 am on Sunday, January 29 in his Freightliner semi. Small fell asleep at the wheel, sending his truck over the median where it jumped a crossover. Amazingly, the truck was airborne for 84 feet before landing and overturning onto its right side. From there, the truck slid across both lanes of traffic for some distance, and then came to rest in the south ditch.

Small was taken to the nearby Hays Medical Center for treatment of injuries. His passenger, 36-year-old Jeffery Duane Chelsey of Sanford, Florida, was apparently uninjured, and Kansas Highway Patrolmen have indicated that both men were wearing their seatbelts at the time of the crash. There is no doubt that their injuries would have been much more severe had they not been wearing seatbelts.

Despite Chelsey's coming through the trucking accident unharmed thanks to wearing his seat belt, the reality is that as a passenger, had the fall onto the right side of the truck been more devastating, he could easily have been maimed or killed in the skid across the highway. Thankfully, the early hour probably contributed to the relatively light traffic on the road and the absence of other casualties in the slide across two lanes of traffic.

Drivers falling asleep at the wheel is not a new phenomenon. There have been investigations into the record keeping of many trucking companies to ensure that drivers are getting the required amount of sleep time versus road time, but there have been repeated instances of discrepancies and outright falsifications in these records. It is unknown if such an event played a role in the crash on Sunday, but it is a phenomenon that people need to be aware of whenever they share the road with these large and dangerous vehicles.