Understanding Nuclear Verdicts: Navigating Truck Accident Litigation and the Impact of Inexperienced Drivers
If you are a lawyer representing injured people or estates of people killed in truck related crashes, you are familiar with the term “nuclear verdict.” A nuclear verdict is typically defined as a verdict, after a trial, that is more than $10,000,000.00. That’s a lot of money.
The thing is that these verdicts, while really scary to trucking companies and their insurers, are not really all that common. Even when they happen, the truism exists: One cannot get blood from a turnip.
Most trucking crashes that result from a trucker’s negligence are caused by people with little experience in trucking. And, most of these crashes caused by these folks are one-truck companies. This means that there is a driver who owns and operates his/her own trucking company, its authority to operate in the U.S., and usually only has just one truck operating in the company.
Generally, here’s how it works.
A person immigrating to the United States wants to chase the American Dream by buying a truck. Since they usually have no credit history, and probably little to no money, they buy a truck with no money down from a company that is set up to provide this service, and other services, to these prospective business owners. There are vendors who exists solely for the purpose of encouraging these people to buy a truck and to get into the trucking business, even though they may have zero experience in trucking.
To get authority, one must file documents with the Federal Motor Carrier Administration and the U.S. Department of Transportation. Don’t know how to do that? No problem. These companies will do that for you; for a charge. To get one’s authority, one must have insurance, approximately $10,000 to $20,000 per year, per truck. Need to finance that? No problem. These vendors will make that happen for you; again, for a charge.
Now, this new business owner needs to make some money. In other words, they need to get loads to haul. How does one do that? No problem. These vendors can hook you up to get these loads. Sometimes, this involves getting the new business owner a dispatching service whose job it is to keep the business owner loaded with freight. For a charge, this can and does happen.
Now, the load has been hauled. How does one collect the freight bill? No problem. These vendors will “factor” (think, payday loan) the load and send you some money keeping a portion of the bill once it is collected from the customer.
Got to have fuel to make the truck run. No problem here, either. The vendors can promise you discounts on fuel; even advance the money to the business owner to buy fuel. For a charge.
When it is all said and done, the new business owner has paid all of these vendors a portion of the freight bill, and the owner gets to keep what’s left over. Generally, this means that what’s left over is less than what the owner could have made by working for somebody else as an employee, but most employers require more than a year of driving experience before they will hire these new drivers. That is why many of these new drivers/owners have so little experience, and thus, are responsible for most of the crashes.
The minimum level of insurance is $750,000.00. Yet most policies are a flat $1,000,000. So, when a crash happens and a death occurs, or the victim of that new, inexperienced driver’s negligence is horribly injured, it is not uncommon for the insurance company to simply pony up the policy limit of $750,000 or $1M in order to settle the case. If the injured or dead victim’s estate wants more, it must sue. But usually, this new owner has no assets whatsoever from which to collect a judgment in excess of the policy limits.
There have been attempts to get around this limit by suing other parties who hired this new owner/driver. In essence, this involves broker liability or shipper liability. Those attempts have been not been overwhelmingly successful because of technical, legal reasons, usually involving something called preemption. (Beyond the scope of this informational discussion.)
An Experienced Trucking Accident Lawyer
If you have been involved in a truck related crash, you simply need someone who knows where the bodies are buried. Someone who has experience in trucking and in litigation. Truck related litigation is a specialized niche of the law. If one asks why?, that person is not likely the lawyer for you in a truck accident case.
I’ve been involved in trucking all my adult life, and I’ve been involved in truck related litigation and lawsuits for 30 years. When retained in a trucking case, I start immediately by going to the crash site, looking at the wrecked vehicles personally, getting expert witnesses involved immediately, making demands concerning the preservation of evidence, and working with my clients to put the evidence together to present our claim. Time is of the essence in trucking cases. Victims simply do not have the luxury of waiting to see if things work out. That almost always will have a bad ending.
My cell is 402-730-9333. Call me anytime. If you feel more comfortable calling my 800 number, here it is: 800-420-3303.