The Case of the Overloaded Tractor Trailer
Successful Recoveries from the Cohen, Placitella & Roth Case Files
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This case was on behalf of a young husband and father of three young children and resulted in a multimillion-dollar recovery. Our client suffered a severe skull fracture and TBI that led to his death. He was struck by a tire that separated from an 18-wheel tractor trailer being driven in the opposite direction. Lug nuts securing the wheel to the trailer broke off, and the entire wheel and tire detached from the wheel hub, bounced up and over the median strip, landed on and crushed the roof of our client’s car.
Our investigation established that the wheel separated because the truck driver failed to secure the lug nuts to the wheel hub. It is the legal duty of the driver of a tractor trailer to regularly inspect the vehicle, including the wheels, and secure the lug nuts on each wheel. The driver had not done this; otherwise, the wheel would not have detached. The driver and his employer were responsible for the crash, our client’s TBI, his death, and the damages to his family. However, the driver’s employer only had a commercial liability insurance policy with $750,000 in coverage. While no amount of money could ever fully compensate this family for its losses, $750,000 was inadequate to provide for this young family. When the client’s family hired our law firm, we began an exhaustive investigation.
The Investigative Process
In following the leads and the facts, we learned that the trailer was loaded with ash from a “trash to ash” incineration plant in New York City. The plant provided steam power to New York City and, at the time of the incident, the driver was en route to deliver the ash at an approved landfill in Ohio. The plant used private hauling firms to dispose of the ash. In fact, the plant generated so much ash that it simply could not dispose of the ash fast enough, and as a result, the plant routinely overloaded trailers to get rid of it. The evidence showed that this incident trailer, like all the trailers that left this plant, was transporting a load of ash that exceeded the maximum weight limit allowed by law. Furthermore, the plant was paying drivers based on the weight of each load. Accordingly, the trucking firms were receiving extra income each time they transported an illegal, overloaded trailer. We proved, through trucking industry experts, that the facility was negligent for overloading this trailer and in violation of transportation safety laws and regulations.
The plant had millions of dollars in liability insurance, far exceeding the $750,000 of insurance coverage available through the driver and his employer. But we needed to prove that the weight of the overloaded trailer and the unsecured lug nut were the causes of our client’s injury and death. We hired a team of experts, including metallurgists and mechanical and civil engineers. These engineers and scientists carefully studied all the evidence (the lug nuts, the weight of the trailer, the forces on the wheels, speed, distance and dynamics) and provided evidence in the form of expert opinions that the combined negligence, the weight of the overloaded trailer plus the unsecured lug nuts caused the wheel to detach at that time and place and cause the injuries.
Case Outcome
In the end, we successfully proved that the joint negligence caused the injuries. This is another example of how a thorough investigation can make all the difference.
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