$4.2MCommercial truck driver fatigue caused multi-vehicle collision

Our client was stopped in backed-up traffic on an interstate when a tractor-trailer struck the rear of the queue without braking, driving four vehicles into one another. She suffered a burst fracture at L1, a fractured sternum, and injuries that required two surgeries and eleven months away from work.

The carrier’s position from the first letter was that the stopped traffic was a sudden emergency and that its driver had reacted as any reasonable driver would have.

We sent a preservation demand within four days and obtained the engine control module download before the tractor was released, along with the driver’s electronic logs, dispatch messages, and fuel receipts.

The logs showed a compliant fourteen-hour day. The fuel purchases and toll records did not — they placed the tractor several hundred miles from where the logs said it had been parked, establishing that the driver had been on duty for more than nineteen hours. The download showed no brake application at all in the seconds before impact.

The carrier maintained through trial that the log discrepancy was a paperwork error. The jury was shown the reconstruction alongside the driver’s own dispatch messages and returned a verdict of $4.2 million after two days of deliberation.

The award covered past and future medical care, the wage loss from her time out of work, and her diminished earning capacity in a role she can no longer perform on her feet.