Overcoming These Four Challenges in a Trucking Case Led to a $12 Million Verdict

My partner, Edward J. Rebenack. Esq., and I recently tried a trucking accident injury case to verdict in a North Jersey county. Our client sustained severe injuries after a tractor-trailer rear-ended his vehicle on I-78. The jury awarded our client $12 million: $4 million in compensatory damages and $8 million in punitive damages. Our main theory of liability was that the defendant trucking company’s conduct preceding the crash showed a wanton and willful disregard for the safety of other drivers.

Like all trucking accident cases, this was a hard-fought one, with counsel for the trucking company challenging liability and damages. Beyond facing smart, tough opposing counsel, we encountered four notable challenges that could have easily led to a defense verdict had we not overcome them.

First, we lost a key source of evidence. The truck’s event data recorder log was lost soon after the crash, so we moved quickly—sending a spoliation notice and securing the truck for inspection. That inspection uncovered a dash camera system whose video and telematics data showed the driver was speeding and had been on the clock for more than 18 hours.

Second, we had almost too many theories of liability to work with—and a client who stopped treatment. Faced with about half a dozen theories of liability to present to a jury, we ran roughly a dozen mock-jury focus groups to identify the most persuasive theories and to learn how to frame both the safety violations and our client’s decision to stop treatment.

Third, we had to distill volumes of technical information for the jury. We translated dense federal regulations into two plain-English “Trucking Industry Safety Standards” on poster boards, paired with a PowerPoint timeline of the company’s three critical choices, to anchor jurors to our theory.

Finally, we received last minute notice that the truck driver would testify by video. That forced us to scout the courtroom and choreograph the exhibit presentation and examination the night before to keep the remote examination clear and engaging.

I share these challenges and how we overcame them in the hope that our experience will help attorneys representing clients injured in trucking accidents successfully navigate similar challenges when they arise.

Challenge #1: Losing a key source of evidence soon after the accident

The first days and weeks of an investigation into a truck accident case are critical, as documentary evidence of/from the crash can be lost or deleted, potentially eliminating one or more “smoking guns.” A delay of merely a few hours can be the difference between obtaining evidence that proves your client’s case and losing it forever, as when a tractor-trailer’s data recorders overwrite critical-event data at regular intervals.

(Because tractor-trailers’ data recorders store and erase data differently—some overwriting after as few as one or three hard-braking events—the window to capture that data can close without warning. I keep an app on my phone that, with nothing more than the police report in hand, allows me to look up the specific engine in any truck and determine exactly what events will trigger a data reset.)

We faced that challenge in this case; in fact, we began with one arm tied behind our backs. We learned early on that the truck’s event data recorder log was lost soon after the accident. Without detailed information about what was happening in the truck in the moments before, during, and after the accident, we surely lost out on obtaining valuable, favorable evidence.

In the face of this early setback, we moved at a breakneck speed to secure other key pieces of evidence upon our client retaining us. We hired an expert and contacted the trucking company’s insurer to send a spoliation notice, demanding that the company remove the truck involved in the accident from service and preserve it for inspection. Unfortunately, we had to wait two months for the insurer to hire legal counsel, who advised us that the truck had been stored in Chicago. That prompted us to hire a Chicago-based expert to inspect the vehicle.

The urgency of that effort was driven in part by a reality familiar to anyone who has handled trucking cases: our client’s vehicle, a small Acura, was effectively totaled, but the truck itself sustained almost no visible damage aside from a broken headlight. Trucks like that are often back on the road within a day or two, because for these companies, time is money. That reality made locking down the vehicle—and every document associated with it—more pressing.

Notably, the inspection uncovered the truck’s dash camera system. We subpoenaed the trucking company for video and telematics data from the system. The records we received gave us information about the truck’s speed on the date of the crash, uncovered prior safety violations in the weeks prior to the crash, and made it clear that the driver was fatigued at the time of the crash, as he had been on the clock for over 18 hours straight.

Had we not secured the truck so that our expert could inspect it, discover its dash camera system, and obtain that video and telematics data, our path to a favorable verdict would have been far more difficult.

Challenge #2: Presenting multiple theories of liability and a client who stopped treatment

When crafting a complaint in a truck accident lawsuit, choosing which claims to assert and evaluating damages are important strategic considerations. Here, we faced the two-headed challenge of an abundance of riches in terms of potential theories of liability, but a client who stopped treatment two years before the trial.

Through discovery, we obtained a mountain of data on the defendant trucking company’s safety violations, which gave us about half a dozen theories of liability. We had concerns about presenting all of them to the jury, which could have confused jurors, and about using technical language to describe the violations. As for our client’s decision to stop treatment, we were concerned that it could push a jury to limit his damages.

Our solution was to convene roughly a dozen mock jury panels through focus groups to test our theories of liability and hear mock jurors’ views on our client’s decision to stop treatment.

The feedback we received shaped how we made our liability arguments at trial and how we approached discussing our client’s decision to stop treatment. Importantly, we gained a sense of how the mock jurors interpreted and perceived the technical language of the defendant’s alleged safety violations, so we could use that framing and language at trial. Had we not tested our arguments and messaging, we might have thrown too many reasons at the jury for finding the company liable and not been able to persuade them that our client’s decision to stop treatment should not limit the damages they award.

Challenge #3: Having to persuasively distill and present volumes of technical information to the jury

In trucking cases, plaintiffs’ attorneys must distill copious amounts of evidence, regulations, and statutes down to an amount that jurors can digest and retain; jurors won’t be persuaded by facts and evidence that they don’t remember. At the same time, plaintiffs’ attorneys must present this distilled information in a way that’s more memorable than whatever the defense serves up in its arguments.

Here, in a case with substantial evidence of technical violations of federal trucking rules and regulations, we worked overtime to present our client’s case clearly and persuasively. Whereas our second challenge was a question of which liability arguments to make, this third challenge was a question of how to present those arguments, which involved violations of highly technical rules and regulations.

Once again, we overcame this challenge by acting on what we learned from our mock jury panels during our focus groups. As I mentioned above, members of the focus groups gave us critical feedback in the form of the non-technical, non-jargony language they used to describe how they perceived the important rules and regulations at issue. The focus group also showed us that our third theory of liability was not as independently compelling as the other two. That insight led us to use that theory at trial to paint a broader picture of the trucking company’s pattern of misconduct.

From there, we crafted two one-sentence rules, which we posted on poster boards and called “Trucking Industry Safety Standards.” Those rules did not contain actual language from the rules we alleged the defendant trucking company violated. Instead, we translated the rules into the language the focus group gave us. We wrote them in a way that the defense could not reasonably rebut—they were fair, plain-English summaries of actual regulations. The boards stayed up for most of the trial and anchored the jury to those rules. The boards also served as guideposts for us, as we did not present any evidence that didn’t relate to those rules.

To drive home the point that the alleged violations all had a common theme—the trucking company made three different choices at critical periods that led to the accident—we crafted a PowerPoint presentation that was a timeline focused on those three choices and the opportunities the company had to realize their mistakes and make things right, but never did. Together, the poster boards and the timeline crystallized for the jury our arguments of the trucking company’s liability. I doubt addressing the jury verbally without the poster boards or PowerPoint would have been as effective.

Challenge #4: Last-minute notice that a key witness would testify remotely

The increased use of remote witness appearances since the COVID-19 pandemic has been a welcome change for the legal industry. But one area where remote witness appearances are not always ideal is during trial. The video quality, sound quality, and stilted nature of a conversation using video-conference software can throw an examination or cross-examination off rhythm and distract jurors.

Unfortunately, we had to contend with that issue at the last minute. We received approximately one week’s notice that the truck driver would testify remotely. To overcome this challenge, we focused on preparing an examination that was as minimally distracting to jurors as possible.

First, we scouted the courtroom prior to trial. Because the courtroom television screens were oriented oddly relative to the jury, we had to decide how to present exhibits to the driver in a way that allowed jurors to comfortably view both the exhibits and the screens on which the driver would appear.

Second, the night before I examined the witness, my team and I choreographed and practiced the examination and presentation of exhibits. We made sure the technology was connected and operating properly, that the boards were set up just right, that I understood how to orient the webcam so the witness could see the exhibits as I admitted them, and that as little as possible was left to chance.

Finally, when examining the driver, I had to proceed slowly and methodically because the remote setup exaggerated his Uzbek accent. If I wanted the jury to hear and understand what he said, I had to keep the conversation moving slowly. Also, rather than remaining at the podium, I deliberately positioned myself next to the jury box, physically drawing the jurors into the remote examination.

As a result, our examination of the driver went as smoothly as we could have hoped for, considering that I was simultaneously managing the court’s Zoom meeting the driver joined, presenting boards for the jury, and orienting the webcam so the driver could view the exhibits. The examination would probably not have gone as smoothly if we had not spent as much time planning and choreographing our examination.

A wonderful outcome for a client in a case filled with challenges

Litigating tractor-trailer accident cases is a long, complex process of investigation, preparation, and trial. As with any high-stakes legal matter, there will surely be challenges on the way to a favorable result for your client. That was certainly the case here. However, the challenges we encounter in our clients’ matters are rarely insurmountable. We plaintiffs’ attorneys owe it to our clients to address these challenges and overcome them to ensure justice is served. 

Tyler J. Hall, an attorney at RAM Law in New Brunswick, represents injury victims and their families in truck and bus crash litigation. He has been certified by the Supreme Court of New Jersey as a Civil Trial Attorney. He can be reached at thall@ram.law.