The driver is liable, and in most cases so is the company the driver works for, because an employer is responsible for what an employee does in the course of the job. That second part is the whole difference between a truck case and a car case.
It matters for two reasons. The company carries far more insurance than any individual driver, and the company holds records that can show why the crash happened rather than just that it did.
This article is by Accident Lawyer of California, P.C., the personal injury practice of Aryan Aliakbarzadeh, Esq. in Northridge, California, admitted to the State Bar of California in October 2012. It describes how these cases work in California; it is not advice about yours.
Why the company is usually on the claim and not only the driver Link to this section
When an employee causes harm while doing the job they were hired to do, the employer answers for it alongside them. A delivery driver on a route, a long haul driver moving freight, a dump truck driver on a job are all doing exactly what they were employed to do.
This is worth comparing with rideshare, where the answer runs the other way. A driver for Uber or Lyft is an independent contractor in California, which generally closes off the employer route and leaves you working inside a statutory insurance policy instead. If you want the detail on that, it is in who pays if you are hurt in an Uber or Lyft.
With a commercial trucking company you usually have both the driver and the company, and you may also have others who never touched the wheel. Whoever loaded the trailer, whoever was responsible for maintaining the brakes, and whoever owns the trailer when it is not the same business as the one that owns the tractor can each carry a share.
Working out who those parties are is not something you can do from the scene. It comes out of paperwork, and the paperwork has a shelf life.
The records that decide these cases, and how long they last Link to this section
Federal regulations require a motor carrier to keep records of duty status and the documents supporting them for six months from the date they are received. That is set out in 49 CFR section 395.8 subsection (k) paragraph (1).
Six months is the floor, not a promise. After it passes, a carrier that destroys those records has done nothing wrong, and the record of how long your driver had been at the wheel is simply gone.
That is why truck cases move differently from the first week. A lawyer acting on one of these will usually write to the carrier early asking it to preserve the duty status records, the vehicle’s maintenance file, the driver’s qualification file, the dispatch records and any onboard data, because a request made inside the retention window is a very different thing from one made after it.
The same urgency applies to everything outside the company’s filing cabinet. Roadside and business camera footage, the position of the vehicles, the load and the condition of the road all stop existing on their own schedule, and the early steps matter more here than in an ordinary collision because there is more to lose.
The hours of service rules, and why they come up in almost every case Link to this section
Federal law caps how long a commercial driver can work, and the limits are specific. They are in 49 CFR Part 395.
A driver may drive a maximum of 11 hours after 10 consecutive hours off duty. Separately, the driver may not drive at all beyond the fourteenth consecutive hour after coming on duty, and time spent off duty during that window does not push the deadline back. A 30 minute break is required after 8 cumulative hours of driving without at least a 30 minute interruption. Across a week, a driver may not drive after 60 hours on duty in 7 consecutive days, or 70 hours in 8, and may restart that period only after 34 or more consecutive hours off duty.
Those numbers are the reason the duty status records matter so much. A driver who was in the fifteenth hour of a shift was breaking a federal rule, and that is a fact about the crash rather than an opinion about it.
It is also why the pressure in these cases often sits above the driver. A schedule that cannot be run inside the limits is not the driver’s invention.
Fault still gets split in truck cases Link to this section
A commercial vehicle being involved does not decide fault on its own, and you should expect the other side to argue your share.
California uses pure comparative fault, which reduces what you recover by your percentage of responsibility rather than eliminating the claim. Even a substantial share still leaves a claim standing, and the way that gets argued is covered in what happens if the accident was partly your fault.
What tends to be argued against you in a truck case has a pattern. That you were in a blind spot, that you cut in front of a vehicle that cannot stop the way a car does, that you were in the lane the truck was turning across. Some of that will be fair. Some of it is an assumption dressed up as a finding, and it is answered with the physical evidence rather than with argument.
The size difference also cuts the other way in a way people do not expect. A loaded tractor trailer needs far more distance to stop than a car does, which is precisely why the rules on following distance, speed and hours exist, and why a driver who ran out of room has a harder time explaining it.
What to do in the first week Link to this section
See a doctor, even if nothing seems broken. Impacts involving a vehicle of that weight produce injuries that do not announce themselves on the day, and a gap between the crash and the first medical record is the most common thing used later to suggest an injury was not real.
Get the carrier’s details off the vehicle, not off the driver. The company name, the US DOT number and the trailer number are usually painted on, and photographs of them are better than anything written on a scrap of paper.
Photograph the scene wider than you would for a car crash. The whole vehicle, both sides, the load, any spilled cargo, the skid marks, the lane markings and the road surface.
Get the names of witnesses. In collisions involving commercial vehicles there are often other professional drivers who saw it, and they are the hardest witnesses to find later and the most credible when you do.
Do not give a recorded statement to the carrier’s insurer or to a claims investigator who turns up quickly. These companies have people whose job is to be at the scene or on the phone the same day, which is not a courtesy.
Keep every bill, receipt and record of time off work.
The deadline for an injury lawsuit in California is generally two years from the date you were hurt, under Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1. If a public entity owned the vehicle, a city refuse truck or a transit agency bus for instance, a written claim is usually due within six months under Government Code section 911.2, and that period runs while you are still being treated.
If you were hit by a commercial vehicle in Los Angeles or the San Fernando Valley, the first thing worth doing is making sure the records still exist. Aryan Aliakbarzadeh, Esq. handles collision claims across the Valley. Call or text 818-718-2522, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, or use the contact page.