Las Vegas Truck Accident Lawyer for Big Rigs, Vans and Buses

Why does a truck crash feel so different from a regular wreck?

Because you are not up against a driver. You are up against a company with a safety department, a dispatcher, an insurer and a lawyer, and all of them have done this before.

It happens in a few seconds on the 215, US-95, I-15 or the long run toward Boulder City on I-11. A tractor-trailer can generally weigh up to 80,000 pounds on the interstate, and a family sedan weighs around 4,000. Physics decides the rest. An impact that would leave a sore neck in a car crash can mean a broken back, a crushed leg or a brain injury when the other vehicle is a truck.

Then the second shock arrives. Many carriers and their insurers have a plan for crashes, and some send their own people to the scene quickly. By the time you are out of the ER, the company may already have photographs, a driver statement and a claim number, and you have a hospital wristband. We exist to close that gap. This page explains how, and the main thing to know is that the next few weeks matter more than you would think.

What should I do in the first days after a truck crash?

Get medical care, photograph the truck, and say as little as possible to anyone connected to it. The evidence for your case is partly on the road and mostly in the company's files, and we can go get the second part.

Call 911 and ask for an ambulance even if you feel steady. If you can, use your phone to photograph the cab door, which carries the company name and a USDOT number, along with the license plate, the trailer number, the cargo placards, the damage, the road and the sky. Get the driver's name and insurance information, and the names of anyone who stopped. Ask the officer for the report number.

The driver, a safety manager or an insurance adjuster may call you in the next few days. Give them your name and nothing else. Do not give a recorded statement, do not guess at what happened, and do not sign anything. If the driver told the police you drifted into the truck's blind spot, do not argue with it on the phone. We deal with that.

Tell your doctor about every symptom, even small ones. Do not repair your car, and do not let it be sold for salvage until we have had it looked at, because it may hold data and damage patterns we need. Write down what you remember tonight, and call us.

What evidence disappears after a truck crash, and how fast?

Quite a lot of it, and sooner than anyone expects. Trucking companies keep a great deal of paper and data, but they are generally not required to keep it forever.

Federal rules require motor carriers to keep hours-of-service records and supporting documents for at least six months (49 CFR Part 395). Other records have different retention periods. A driver's qualification file, for example, must be kept for as long as the driver works there and three years after. Once a claim is coming, a company is expected to hold onto what matters, and that is what the preservation letter is for. The list of things that matter is long.

• The truck's engine computer, which can record speed and braking, and its electronic logging device, which records hours driven and location.
• Dash cam and driver-facing camera video, which many fleets overwrite on a loop.
• Dispatch messages, GPS and telematics, and the driver's phone records.
• The driver's qualification file, drug and alcohol test records, and training records.
• Maintenance and inspection records for the tractor and trailer, and the parts that were replaced.
• The truck itself, which can be repaired, sold or driven across three states within a week.

We send a preservation letter. It is a formal demand to the carrier, its insurer and sometimes the shipper to keep all of that, and it puts them on notice that a claim is coming. If a company destroys evidence after getting one, courts can punish it, and in some cases tell a jury it may infer the missing records would have hurt the company. Few things help a truck case more than a letter that went out in the first days instead of the first year.

Who can be held responsible besides the truck driver?

Often several can, and a lot of lawyers stop at the driver and the driver's insurance. We do not.

The trucking company is the obvious one. A carrier is generally responsible for what its employees do on the job, and it can be responsible for its own failures, such as hiring a driver with a bad record, pushing hours, or skipping maintenance. If the driver is an owner-operator leased to the carrier, federal leasing rules generally put the carrier in control of that truck, so calling the driver a contractor often does not make the company disappear (49 CFR 376.12).

The company that loaded the trailer may be responsible if the cargo shifted, spilled or was never secured. A freight broker that chose a carrier with a poor safety record can be in the picture too, depending on the facts. A shop that did the brakes badly, or a manufacturer whose tire, brake or steering part failed, can share the blame. So can a road owner or contractor, such as a government agency that left a hazard. If a public agency may be involved, tell us right away, because special claim procedures apply and we will handle them.

Dean tells a story about one of the biggest cases he has handled. The whole thing came down to one hatch that was on the blueprint and never got built into the ceiling. Trucking cases work the same way. The answer sits in one log entry, one work order or one bill of lading, and you only find it if somebody spends the time and money to look. We wrote about this approach in Beyond the Other Driver's Insurance.

How do you prove a trucking company was careless?

We compare what the company says to what its own records show. The paper trail is usually long, and most of it was created before the crash.

A driver's logs can be checked against fuel receipts, toll records, delivery times and GPS pings. If the driver says he was rested and the phone records show messages at 3 in the morning, that matters. The hiring file shows whether the company knew about prior crashes, tickets or a failed drug test. Maintenance records show whether brakes and tires were looked at, or only signed off. Dispatch records show whether the schedule made safe driving close to impossible. Desert heat is hard on tires and brakes, which is one reason maintenance records matter so much on a Las Vegas run.

Then we bring in people who read all of that for a living. Accident reconstructionists work out speed, braking and angles from the scene and the truck's data. Trucking safety experts explain what the rules required. Medical specialists connect the crash to your injuries. We hire those experts early, and from anywhere in the country when the case needs it, because the company will hire the other side's experts first.

What kind of vehicle hit me?

The vehicle changes the rules, the insurance and the people we go after.

What rules do trucking companies have to follow?

Quite a few, and they matter because they give us a yardstick. Breaking a rule does not win a case by itself. It tells a jury what a careful company would have done.

Federal rules cap how many hours a driver can work without rest. Generally that means no more than 11 hours of driving after 10 hours off duty, inside a 14-hour window, with weekly limits as well (49 CFR Part 395). Other rules cover who a carrier can hire and how it must check their records (Part 391), drug and alcohol testing (Part 382), and inspection, repair and maintenance (Part 396). A driver who is exhausted at 4 in the morning on a long haul out of Southern California, or a trailer whose brakes were never properly adjusted, can show up in these records long before anyone says a word about it.

The trucking company's people got there first. What are they doing?

They are building the case that this was not their fault, and they are very good at it.

Expect a friendly call that sounds like concern. They may ask for a recorded statement, offer to cover your car, or put a check in front of you. They may suggest you were in the truck's blind spot, what the industry calls a no-zone, or that you cut in front of it. The company is working to cap the claim early, before you know how hurt you are and before a lawyer has asked for the records.

A quick offer in the first weeks usually is not calculated around your future. Tim says the fear he hears most on the phone is being treated like a number, and an early offer treats you exactly that way. Our job is to take the calls off you, ask for the records the company would rather keep, and not let anybody sign off on a number until we know what this injury will cost.

What will this injury cost me five years from now?

More than the first bill, and often more than anyone says out loud in the ER.

Truck injuries are often severe. Spinal injuries, brain injuries, burns and amputations all change a life for good. The cost is not the ambulance and the first surgery. It is a decade of therapy, medication, home changes, lost work and the help you will need getting through the day. We bring in life care planners and medical specialists to put a number on that, and we pay for them up front. Our pages on catastrophic injuries go into how those claims are built.

Bills arrive long before the claim ends. Your health insurance or the medical payments coverage on your own auto policy may pay in the meantime, and the hospital, your health plan, Medicare or Medicaid may later have a right to be repaid from your recovery. Some doctors treat on a lien and wait for the settlement. We review those bills and try to reduce them before the money is divided, because what you keep is the number that counts.

If someone you love died, the family has its own claim and its own deadline. We handle those too, and we explain them on our page about fatal truck accidents.

What is a truck accident claim really worth?

More than the first offer, and the honest answer depends on facts we do not have yet. We do not hand out averages, and neither should anyone else.

The value comes from your injuries, your treatment now and in the future, your lost income, the pain and the way your life has changed, and how clearly the fault points at the truck. Nevada generally does not cap the pain and suffering part in a trucking case like this. The size of the carrier's insurance matters, and so does whether we found additional responsible companies with their own policies. Truck policies are usually bigger than car policies, which sounds like good news. The adjusters still work to pay as little of that as they can. If the carrier's policy is not enough, or the truck belongs to a small outfit with thin coverage, your own underinsured motorist coverage may help.

Dean asks a hard question. If you take a number and are happy with it, how do you know it was not worth four times that? Our results page lists several semi-truck cases that started with a zero offer or a flat denial. Every case is different, and past results do not guarantee a future outcome. We do not guess at a figure on a web page. We read your records and tell you what we think.

What Nevada rules can hurt my truck accident claim?

Four rules do most of the damage when people miss them.

You generally have two years to file a lawsuit for most injuries, and for a wrongful death (NRS 11.190). If a government vehicle or road is involved, there is also a written claim to file with the agency, and what the government can be made to pay is limited (NRS 41.036 and NRS 41.035). Under Nevada's comparative negligence law, you can recover if your share of fault is no greater than the defendants', and your recovery shrinks by your percentage. At 51 percent you are barred (NRS 41.141). That is why the blind-spot argument matters so much. And punitive damages, which can apply when a company shows conscious disregard for safety, are limited by statute (NRS 42.005).

I live out of state, or I am just visiting. Does that change anything?

Not as much as you would fear. A crash in Nevada generally means a claim under Nevada law, with Nevada's deadlines, even if you are from Phoenix or Portland. The same goes for trucks. Many of the trucks on our roads are registered in other states, and their carriers can usually be reached in a Nevada court. Federal safety rules for interstate carriers follow the truck wherever it goes. See a doctor in your home city, keep every record, and call before you speak to an insurance company. Most of the work happens by phone and video.

Why does it matter that your lawyer is a trial lawyer?

Because from the first letter, the carrier and its insurer are sizing up your lawyer as well as your injuries.

Dean has tried cases in Las Vegas for more than three decades, and he says the insurers' view of your claim changes when they know a firm will file, take depositions and put a case in front of a jury. Two of our lawyers used to defend insurance companies, so they have sat on the other side of these claims. We pay for the investigators and experts a trucking case needs, and we pay for them before anyone knows whether the case will work out. Some cases take longer because of it. We would rather take longer than leave money on the table.

What is the first call like?

It starts with you, not a form. Tim, our office manager, takes many of the calls himself. He asks how you are doing, how the crash has affected your home and your work, and then the details of what happened. If a call comes in at 1 in the morning, he can judge whether Dean needs to hear about it right now or whether it can wait until the morning.

It helps if you have the company name and USDOT number from the cab, any photos, the police report number, and your own insurance information, but none of it is required. Call with what you have. If we take the case, we send preservation letters right away. If we do not see a case, we tell you plainly and point you to the next step. There is no fee to ask, and you pay no fee until we win. Read more about what happens when you call.

If you do one thing today

Call (702) 500-7070 for a free case review before you talk to the carrier. The sooner the preservation letter goes out, the more of the truck's story still exists.