Trucking Litigation

The American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) has released a study titled “Trucking Litigation: A Forensic Analysis.” The sixty-page report discusses litigation trends and developing areas of concern. The content of this article is taken from the report. The full report is available on the ATRI website: https://truckingresearch.org/

Much has been written about the increase in the number of post-accident lawsuits and the spiraling settlement amounts. The term “nuclear verdicts” is used to describe the largest of the awards. In this report, ATRI describes nuclear verdicts as those of $10 million or more. According to the report, “The median nuclear verdict in 2022, $36 million, was approximately 50 percent higher than the median nuclear verdict in 2013. The trucking industry is especially prone to large jury awards. Motor vehicle accidents in general were the second most common type of case to result in a nuclear verdict from 2010 to 2019. The social factors that contribute to litigation in excess of general inflation include an increasingly litigious society, third-party litigation funding, anti-corporate attitudes, and manipulative plaintiff strategies such as “reptile theory” tactics used to tap into jurors’ primal instincts for justice and retribution, aiming for maximum punishment.

State-level reform actions include:

• Increasing the transparency of Third-Party Litigation Funding (TPLF) in Colorado, Kansas, Montana, Arizona, Indiana, Louisiana, and Georgia.
• Legislation in Georgia, Arkansas, and Montana seeks to curtail seeking medical damages based on the initial medical bill rather than the amount actually paid for medical care.
• Two states, Oklahoma and Iowa, have enacted legislation instituting noneconomic damage caps aimed at curtailing excessive damages in categories like pain and suffering, which in some cases dwarf economic medical and financial damages.
• Many states have a “seat belt gag rule” that prohibits the defendant from disclosing during litigation whether or not the plaintiff used a seatbelt. By failing to use a seatbelt – required by law in all states but New Hampshire – plaintiffs can significantly worsen their injuries in the event of a crash. Omitting this information can thus make the defendant appear more at fault than was the case. In 2025, Georgia enacted legislation permitting the admissibility of whether or not the plaintiff used a seatbelt.

 

Proposed Federal Tort Reform Under Consideration:

• Forum Accountability and Integrity in Roadway (FAIR) Trucking Act. This legislation would require certain cases involving tractor-trailer crashes – namely, when the amount requested is more than $5 million – to be tried in federal courts based on their involvement in interstate commerce.
• Lawsuit Abuse Reduction Act of 2025. Targeting lawsuit abuse more broadly, this legislation would discourage “frivolous lawsuits” through sanctions. Moreover, it would include restitution of legal fees for the defendant and penalties for the plaintiff in frivolous lawsuits.
• The Litigation Transparency Act of 2025. If enacted, this legislation would require the disclosure of all parties financially invested in the outcome of a civil case.

“Anti-Reform” at the State Level

Advocates of “anti-reform” legislation – legislation that counteracts tort reforms in order to favor plaintiffs in litigation – have also been active.   Recently passed anti-reform bills include expanding the applicability of punitive damages (Illinois), increasing noneconomic damage caps (Colorado), and raising punitive and compensatory damage caps (Maine). These anti-reform successes underscore the fluid and contentious nature of public policy in the field of litigation.

State Courts

ATRI used information from the Bureau of Justice Statistics Civil Justice Survey of State Courts to determine that 12,817 tort cases were filed in state courts involving tractor-trailers in 2022. Of those, 487 (3.8%) went to trial. In those cases that went to trial there were 313 (64%) plaintiff victories.

Federal Courts

While plaintiffs file most civil torts in state courts, they can originate in or be removed to federal court if they pertain to federal law, or involve disputes over amounts greater than $75,000, and all defendants are residents of different states than the plaintiff

In 2022, 76 motor vehicle tort cases – of all vehicle types, not just tractor-trailers – in federal courts were disposed of by trial (1.6% of federal cases disposed that year). The tractor-trailer litigation dataset contains 12 federal trial plaintiff victories in 2022. It should be noted that the trial rate for federal courts is less than half of that for state courts (1.6% versus 3.8% in 2022), indicating that cases are more likely to settle when removed to federal court.

In federal courts, the median trial verdict award for cases at or exceeding $1 million was $2,517,500. In state courts, the median trial verdict award for cases at or exceeding $1 million was $3,600,000 – $1,082,500 higher than the federal court median. There are many reasons why federal courts often yield more equitable verdicts than state courts, including:

• Federal courts draw from a larger juror pool and are thus less susceptible to potential geographic biases among constituents at the county level; and
• Federal judges are appointed rather than elected (as many state judges are), providing additional protection against any possible conflicts of interest.

Type of Negligence Impact on Awards

This table demonstrates the effect different types of negligence have on financial awards.

 

Substance abuse or driving while under the influence had the greatest expected increase in total award (340.7%).

Improper hiring or onboarding had the second-highest expected increase in total award, at 272.3%. In many cases with improper hiring or onboarding, the defendant employer had some level of prior knowledge and still proceeded negligently. In these instances, employers were typically accused of one of the following negligent hiring or onboarding procedures: hiring the driver despite an extensive history of unsafe driving, failing to thoroughly vet or verify prior employment, knowingly hiring the driver from an illegitimate CDL school, not conducting a road test because technically not required for CDL holders, or failing to properly train the driver.

Gross negligence refers to cases in which the defendant was explicitly accused of knowingly and recklessly disregarding the safety or rights of others. Gross negligence is expected to result in a 193.4% increase in total award when controlling for all other forms of negligence.

Speeding resulted in a 56.1% increase in expected award size. While speeding is infrequently the sole type of negligence in a plaintiff victory, it significantly increases awards when combined with another type of negligence.

Defense Victories

Additional analyses were conducted to identify overall characteristics of defense victories, though data from defense victories is sparser than that from plaintiff verdicts. As such, the 32 defense verdicts obtained in the data collection effort were combined with the 37 cases in which defendants were able to make a successful case for less than 75 percent fault, for a total of 69 cases. Though not all these cases are outright defense victories, this expansion of the “victories” dataset allowed for instructive, statistically significant findings. Three types of truck negligence had statistically significant correlations with defense victories.

• Improper turn
• Improper merge
• Failure to yield

Notably, the three types of negligence correlated with defense victories involve the potential for ambiguity, subjective judgment, and greater potential for shared fault (whereas running a red light, for example, is a clear-cut infraction). This may be because frivolous plaintiff cases are more likely to allege one of these three types of negligence, or it may be because trucking defendants are less likely to be negligent (or more than 50% at fault) in these crashes.

Whatever the reason, defendants were more successful when bringing cases alleging these “he-said, she-said” types of negligence to trial, and accordingly, defendants may want to be less inclined to settle such cases.

Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations (FMCSRs)

A common argument from the plaintiff’s position is that FMCSRs set forth minimum standards and mere compliance is inadequate because a motor carrier and/or driver that prioritized safety would go above and beyond the minimum requirements. Conversely, the defense’s position is that FMCSRs set forth the standard. In order for a plaintiff to make the argument that the motor carrier should have gone further, there must be expert testimony creating that obligation.

The following synopsis of a federal case involving a truck accident serves as an example of this friction. In Monroe v. Freight All Kinds, Inc., the plaintiff’s truck safety and compliance expert opined that the motor carrier did not have an adequate safety program and the driver was not properly qualified by the motor carrier. The expert testified that FMCSRs set forth minimum standards for motor carriers and that “safe and prudent carriers go above and beyond that.”

The defendants contended that FMCSRs set forth the duties owed to the general public and that the expert could not identify any violations of FMCSRs by the motor carrier. Defendants further asserted that the expert essentially opined that the motor carrier should have gone above and beyond FMCSRs. The plaintiff countered that its expert could opine on industry customs and practices, regardless of FMCSRs. Another case, Jones v. Wiseman, granted a defendant truck driver’s motion in limine prohibiting the plaintiff from cross-examining him regarding his obligations under FMCSRs, which could influence the jury to impose a higher standard of care merely for being a “professional driver.”

Incident/Accident Investigation and Documentation

There are many data points to be documented and key questions to be evaluated following an incident. It is in these early efforts that the danger of mixing relevant information with irrelevant information is greatest. Guesswork and/or “editorializing” by motor carrier personnel when documenting investigation work is likely to be misinterpreted as conclusive. Intermingling facts with speculation limits open exploration of available information, and relevant evidence can be missed due to opinion blindness. For all these reasons, a brief consult with industry-specific legal counsel – before finalizing reports and under the protective umbrella of confidentiality/privilege – can prevent these missteps. Training key safety and operations personnel in the nuanced art of documentation is a worthwhile investment.

For example, a truck and a passenger car collide between lanes of travel. The Safety Director documents: “Our truck was changing lanes and didn’t allow enough room to safely complete the lane change.” After the case is filed, defense counsel locates and interviews witnesses, evaluates control module data, and hires an expert to complete post-accident reconstruction. The facts are clear: the truck began the lane change, with signal, at legal speed, and the car sped up to pass, entering the truck’s path of travel.  Unfortunately, the motor carrier’s early incident report is interpreted as admitting fault, when in reality the collision was 100 percent the fault of the passenger car driver. A better entry would have been: “Contact occurred between the vehicles after the CMV driver began a lane change. Investigation ongoing.”

Emerging Issues

Conditions in trucking litigation are continuously evolving. As such, this report also contains perspectives on four emergent issues facing the trucking industry and its legal partners:

• Plaintiffs misleadingly present compliance with FMCSR standards as inadequate, while using any above-and-beyond safety technologies or protocols against motor carriers in court and as proof that FMCSRs should be exceeded.
• Plaintiffs’ use of extraneous “evidence” unrelated to the facts of a case delays the litigation process with superfluous discoveries and dispositions to manipulate or distract juries.
• Third-party litigation funding, which fuels frivolous suits on the hope of a lottery-ticket award, interferes with defense-plaintiff negotiations and hand-ties plaintiff attorneys, thus preventing otherwise acceptable settlements.
• Lawsuits based on product liability claims pose a new threat to industry equipment manufacturers and suppliers. Wabash National was named as a defendant in a 2024 suit after a rear-end underride crash in St. Louis. The final settlement was $12 million in compensatory damages and $108 million in punitive damages, down from $450 million.

Type of Negligence sorted by percent of cases with awards of $10M or more.