Today I received the February issue of Trial magazine, which includes my article, When the Trucking Company Goes Under." It's based on a seminar paper I presented in San Francisco last summer. I've copied it below.
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In the Georgia legislature, two proposed bills would crack down on texting while driving. Both have been sent to a study committee.
HB 938 would prohibit the use of wireless telecommunications devices for sending or reading text messages while operating a motor vehicle. A conviction would be punishable by a fine of not less than $50.00 nor more than $100.00. In addition, two points would be assessed to violators of this provision. The bill provides exceptions for engaging in a wireless communication using a wireless telecommunications device in emergency situations.
This bill would amend Code Section 40-5-57.4 by requiring the driver's license of any operator of a motor vehicle, who is determined to be at fault for causing an automobile accident while texting, be suspended. A first suspension shall be for a period of 90 days. A second or subsequent suspension shall be for a period of six months. The suspension will terminate after the suspension period and when the person pays a restoration fee of $60.00 or, $50.00 when processed by mail.
HB 944 would prohibit a person from writing, sending, or reading a text-based communication on a wireless telecommunications device while operating a motor vehicle. It provides for exceptions in emergency situations. Any conviction for a violation would be a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of not more than $300.00.
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Today the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration banned text messaging by interstate truck drivers during operation of a commercial motor vehicle.
Virginia Tech's Transportation Institute released a study last July that found that when truckers text, they are 23 times more likely to be involved in a crash or near miss.
Both houses of Congress are considering bills to restrict texting. Nineteen states have banned the practice. The new federal regulation provides that drivers of commercial vehicles caught texting may be fined up to $2,750.
Texting and cellphone use have been banned in many major commercial fleets, including FedEx's 43,000 vehicles and the 100,000 used by United Parcel Service.
This will be more material for my presentation to the Interstate Trucking Litigation Group at Vancouver, British Columbia, in July.
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Saturday morning at the State Bar of Georgia midyear meeting, nobody else was nominated for president-elect to serve as president from June 2011 to June 2012. The other offices are hotly contested, but I don't have to campaign again. This morning, I feel a little like my pet beagle who liked to chase trucks until, when I was seven, he caught one.
In this era of enormous budget pressures on state government, the job of shoring up support for adequate funding of the judicial branch of state government could be all consuming.
However, I will also seek to promote virtue in the legal profession (broad topic!) and pursue concrete improvements in the judicial system in Georgia.
Between an active law practice and the demands of this new role, I will have to manage my time carefully for the next two and a half years. But the insights and exposure inherent in such a position only enhance the capacity to represent our clients.
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As a trucking safety trial attorney in Georgia, I spend a lot of time with truck drivers, either representing them when they get badly hurt, suing them when they badly hurt someone else, or interviewing them as witnesses. Based on personal experience, I've thought about posting a review of truck stop food. I know that usually when they break the safety rules, it is because the company pressured them to do so.
This morning I received a comment on this blog from a truck driver who tells it like it is. Rather than leaving it buried in "comments," I'm posting it on its own. For obvious reasons, I must protect this truck driver's identity.
Where I work essentially...if you don't make the logs appear legal and continue running past your 70 hour limit and are caught by the DOT,shut down for 10 hrs and written up for a 'Violation'(as opposed to falsifying your logs to 'look legal' and keep rolling) you will be suspended for 2 weeks by the 'safety dept' and your truck will most likely be given to a new driver while your suspended,on the other hand,if you are late delivering,you will be written up and possibly terminated. How many hours you have to operate is irrelevant. Freight comes first. Technically isn't "coercion" like this against the law ?
That has the ring of truth as the voice from an honest truck driver.
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Since I represent victims of catastrophic trucking accidents in Georgia, I tend to deal with some pretty bad stuff. A friend from high school days who occasionally glances at this blog asked me a few days ago, "are there ever any positive outcomes for any of the cases you represent?" My response was that people don't call me because nothing bad happened.
But recently I met members of a Georgia family who are incredibly blessed to be alive. A tractor trailer crossed the median of an interstate highway and struck them head-on. Another truck struck them from behind, knocking them back into the first truck. Miraculously, none of them were catastrophically injured. Of course they had some injuries, but it is amazing that anyone came out alive.
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As a Georgia trucking accident attorney, I expect accidents involving truck drivers who are extremely fatigued, cheating on their driving hours, distracted, or impaired by medications or by amphetamines used to stay awake. I expect mechanical and maintenance issues. I just don't expect interstate truck drivers to be drunk behind the wheel. I know and respect a lot of truckers, and expect better than that.
But there are exceptions. On New Year's Eve, a trucker from Texas was charged with DUI and vehicular homicide after he struck a Michigan couple's car and killed the wife, as he got off the I-75 exit at Sam Nunn Parkway in Perry, Georgia.
Janice Hanes, 65, of Fenwick, Michigan, was declared dead at the hospital in Perry. Murray Hanes, 66, her husband, was transported by ambulance to The Medical Center of Georgia in Macon with head injuries.
Luis Lopez Guzman Jr., 50, of San Antonio, also was charged with DUI and leaving the scene of an accident. He was driving a 2000 Kenworth tractor-trailer when he struck the Hanes' pickup truck. According a news report by Becky Purser on Macon.com, he fled the scene and was apprehended on I-75 headed south toward Florida. The news reports do not identify the company for which he was driving.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations are quite strict about use of alcohol by truck drivers. 49 C.F.R. § 392.5 bans use or possession of alcohol in operation of a commercial motor vehicle. "No driver shall . . . [u]se alcohol, . . . or be under the influence of alcohol, within 4 hours before going on duty or operating, or having physical control of, a commercial motor vehicle; or . . . [u]se alcohol, be under the influence of alcohol, or have any measured alcohol concentration or detected presence of alcohol, while on duty, or operating, or in physical control of a commercial motor vehicle." Any driver is violation of this is placed in "out of service status" for 24 hours. "No motor carrier shall require or permit a driver to . . . [v]iolate any provision [of this section or] [b]e on duty or operate a commercial motor vehicle if, by the driver's general appearance or conduct or by other substantiating evidence, the driver appears to have used alcohol within the preceding 4 hours."
Intoxication of a truck driver is grounds for punitive damages in a personal injury case and in a survival action by the estate of a decedent in Georgia. While a wrongful death claim in Georgia does not include punitive damages, the measure of damage is the full value of the life of the decedent, including both economic and intangible aspects of life.
I first learned of a fatal log truck accident in the Savannah area last week when a Savannah newspaper reporter phoned me for background information on log truck regulations in Georgia.
Police investigators in Garden City, Georgia, found 24 safety violations on a log truck that lost its load of logs, which crushed and killed a pedestrian.
The log truck was driven by Daniel Morris of Uvalda, Ga. He reportedly swerved as he neared an intersection, dislodging the trailer of logs. Neal James Hamilton, 57, of Lansing, Mich., was crushed by the falling load of logs.
Violations on the log truck included faulty brakes, balding tires, improper lights, failure to secure the load of logs properly, and a defective fifth wheel that attached the trailer to the truck.
Log trucks in Georgia are regulated by the Georgia Forest Products Trucking Rules. Those rules are relatively lax when compared with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations, but it sound like even those weak rules were ignored in this case.
The victim was from Lansing, the capital of Michigan, where I recently took the deposition of an expert witness at Michigan State University.
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As a trucking safety trial lawyer, based in Atlanta, Georgia,representing people in personal injury and wrongful death cases, I am scheduled to speak on truck driver distraction issues to the Interstate Trucking Litigation Group at Vancouver, British Columbia, in July.
I was therefore quite interested in a recent report of a truck accident on the New York Thruway near Pembroke, New York, when a young mother of two sons was killed on Christmas Eve. She was a teacher of special needs children and had sons ages 3 and 1. According to a Buffalo News report, she had just dropped off her older son at a relative's house in Rochester (where my daughter attends RIT), and was on her way to finish her Christmas shopping.
New York State Police are investigating whether the truck driver was using his laptop computer when he crashed into the young mom's car, which was disabled after striking a deer. Other vehicles had swerved around her but the trucker did not.
Electronic distractions are a huge issue in traffic safety, particularly in trucking. Cell phones, text messaging, and the various electronic devices for communication with trucking dispatchers, are increasingly subjects of study.
As a trucking accident attorney in Atlanta, Georgia, I try to keep up with what 's going on in neighboring states. Yesterday morning in Charlotte, NC, a motorist was killed when he hit the rear of a parked tractor trailer in an emergency lane.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations, at 49 C.F.R. § 392.22, requires that when a tractor trailer stops on a highway or shoulder, the driver must activate hazard warning signal flashers, and within ten minutes must place either bidirectional reflective triangles or flares.
I don't know the details of this tragedy in Charlotte, but I do know some of the questions that should be asked.
Recently a Texas law firm has begun aggressively advertising for Georgia trucking accident cases through Google and Youtube, directly soliciting for Georgia cases even though that firm has no Georgia attorney and no Georgia office.
To a consumer looking at the Texas firm's web content, without reading the fine print, it looks like the firm is in Atlanta or Savannah. However, the Texas firm has no "boots on the ground" in Georgia. This presents a substantial danger for consumers responding to that firm's advertising.
While Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations are the same throughout the nation, the laws of torts, civil procedure and evidence vary from state to state. We don't market to target cases in other states. When we get cases in neighboring states, the first thing we do is associate local counsel with intimate familiarity with the specific court where the case would be tried.
Although an out of state firm has some latitude in handling matters up to the point of filing suit, ignorance of local rules and practice creates great danger for anyone hiring a Texas law firm for a Georgia case. Lack of familiarity with Georgia laws, court rules, legal culture and practices can be deadly.
If you have a serious case in Georgia, you need a seasoned Georgia trial attorney who knows the lay of the land in Georgia, and who is known in Georgia.
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A speeding tractor trailer crash on I-95 in Georgia rammed the rear of a Ross Township, Pennsylvania family's van Sunday afternoon, killing a 3-year-old child.
Sean Thornton, the youngest of three children of Daniel and Susan Thornton, was killed in his child car seat when a big rig slammed into the rear of the family minivan and pushed it off the road into the woods. It came to rest in cold marsh water. The family was en route to a post-Christmas Florida vacation.
The child's mother, Susan Thornton, 38, was driving. According to KDKA-TV in Pittsburgh, the impact badly mangled her foot and it may have to be amputated. The father, Daniel Thornton, 47, has a broken jaw. The five-year-old sister has a broken foot, leg and arm. An eight-year-old brother has a cracked skull.
According to Georgia State Patrol spokesman Thornell King, the Thornton family's 2007 Toyota Sienna van had slowed due to traffic congestion when it was struck in the rear at a high rate of speed by the 1999 Freightliner tractor-trailer truck hauling a load of paper products, driven by Willie Hill, 50, of Jacksonville.
Hill reportedly had picked up a load at Riceboro, en route to Gulfport, Mississippi. Riceboro is the site of a large Interstate Paper plant producing linerboard.
Media reports show a double trailer in the woods. News reports do not identify the trucking company involved.
I bet the family has been directly solicited by lawyers trolling the hospital or sending them promotional packages, in direct violation of bar rules that would subject them to disbarment if reported.
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