Individuals injured in trucking accidents may easily feel overwhelmed afterward. Any motor vehicle collision is stressful and frustrating, but trucking accidents tend to be associated with severe vehicle damage and, unfortunately, often with severe bodily injuries as well. The challenges truck accident victims often face in the immediate aftermath of an accident can make it difficult for them to identify and collect the evidence that they may need later to support their claim for compensation to cover the costs of vehicle repairs and medical bills resulting from the crash. However, timely collection of evidence can be crucially important in developing a strong truck accident case. An experienced truck accident lawyer with Lott Law may be able to help you assess the types of evidence needed and even conduct an independent investigation into the trucking accident while you focus on your recovery. Call (228) 215-2787 to reach a member of our team at a Mississippi office near you.
Use of Evidence in Trucking Accident Investigations
A thorough investigation can be a normal part of the follow-up to almost any motor vehicle accident. Insurance companies will typically perform their own investigations as part of their process for determining the eligibility of claims for vehicle repairs and medical bills related to an accident, and car accident lawyers who are retained by individuals injured in these accidents often perform similar investigations on behalf of their clients.
Uses of Evidence After Motor Vehicle Accidents
All of these investigations will involve collecting and reviewing evidence – for instance, an insurance adjuster’s investigation may seek to collect photographs of a vehicle taken before as well as after an accident, along with paint scrapings or other forms of physical evidence, in order to whether any of the auto body damage a vehicle shows upon being submitted for repairs may have been present prior to the accident. Because the insurance company will be able to exclude any dings and dents that were not directly caused by the accident from the repair costs covered under the claim, this type of evidence can result in significant savings for the insurance company. On the other hand, a car accident attorney reviewing the same evidence may be able to recover recent photos of the vehicle that show there was no visible damage, not long before the accident occurred – thereby casting doubt on the claim exclusion.
Uses of Evidence After Trucking Accidents
Trucking accident investigations will often involve the same types of evidence collection and evaluation as those conducted after collisions between passenger vehicles. Insurance adjusters will likely look for many of the same types of evidence, and if an accident victim chooses to work with a car accident attorney as they pursue compensation, the attorney will also likely look for, and examine, the same kinds of evidence that he or she might take into consideration in a car accident case. However, after a trucking accident, in many cases there is an additional layer of complexity compared to car accidents. This complexity is primarily due to the much more complicated process of determining liability in a trucking accident. The scope of potentially liable parties makes comprehensive evidence collection especially important, as some types of evidence can help to shed light on the factors leading up to a crash and therefore assist in determining which party or parties may have contributed to the total outcome.
Determining Liability in Trucking Accidents
“Liability” is the legal term for a party’s responsibility – especially financial responsibility – for some type of damage. While it is certainly possible for some of the liability for car accident injuries to fall on parties other than any of the drivers involved – for instance, if a car’s brakes fail during vehicle operation due to faulty installation or a manufacturing defect – this scenario is comparatively unusual. In most cases, in a car accident, the primary legal responsibility for restoring accident victims to the status they enjoyed prior to the crash falls on the driver determined (through investigation, typically beginning with a law enforcement report from the scene of the crash) to be “at fault” in causing the accident, and usually through his or her negligence (cases in which a driver is alleged to have deliberately caused a crash are relatively uncommon).
Parties Held Liable in Trucking Accidents
In trucking accidents, by contrast, it is not at all unusual for multiple parties to share liability for an accident. Parties who may be partially or fully responsible for a truck accident, depending on the circumstances, include:
- Truck driver
- Freight company
- Truck manufacturer
- Truck maintenance crew
Even within these categories, the assignment of legal responsibility can vary widely from one truck accident case to another.
Examples of Shared Liability in Trucking Accidents
For instance, a truck driver may be operating on his or her own, as a self-employed independent contractor, and in that case the driver is likely to hold a degree of responsibility if the accident was caused partially or completely by driver error. On the other hand, in some instances the driver may be an employee of the freight company; in that scenario, the freight company, rather than the driver, may sometimes be held responsible for the actions of their employee. Similarly, the individual semi-truck involved in the accident may belong to a self-employed driver, who is responsible for ensuring its proper maintenance, or it may belong to a freight company, which may either host maintenance operations internally or contract them to a third party. Each of these scenarios can involve a different set of potentially liable parties, and a major function of evidence collection in trucking accidents is to clearly establish all factors that contributed to an accident in order to clarify which parties were responsible for each of those factors.
The Importance of State Laws in Determining Truck Accident Liability
In American jurisprudence, there are two main paradigms for allocating liability in a civil lawsuit based on alleged negligence. Because a civil lawsuit is the primary type of recourse available to individuals injured in trucking accidents if they are unable to reach a satisfactory resolution of their claims out of court, generally speaking a commercial auto insurance company, as well as any truck accident lawyer a party injured in the accident may have retained, will approach both their assessments of truck accident evidence and the settlement negotiations that typically follow the conclusion of both parties’ investigations with one eye on the construction of negligence that applies in the state that would have jurisdiction over the truck accident case in the event of a lawsuit.
Lawsuits tend to be expensive and time-consuming, so both insurance companies and truck accident victims often have considerable incentive to work toward a settlement that provides fair compensation. An experienced truck accident lawyer with Lott Law may be able to help you understand how Mississippi’s interpretation of negligence may affect your potential settlement in a truck accident case.
Contributory Negligence
Contributory negligence is a doctrine under which parties injured as the result of an accident or other incident are prohibited from recovering damages in court if their own actions or inactions contributed to the occurrence of the incident or the severity of its outcomes. As Cornell Law School’s Legal Information Institute (LII) points out, contributory negligence is convenient in its simplicity, but is often perceived – by juries as well as plaintiffs – to deliver a somewhat lopsided application of justice. Contributory negligence boasts a respectable history and is still used in some jurisdictions, but the frustrations that can arise from its inflexibility have led many states to adopt its cousin, comparative negligence, instead.
Comparative Negligence
Comparative negligence, also as explained by LII, still typically limits a plaintiff’s right to recovery of total damages in a civil torts case – however, under the doctrine of comparative negligence, those limitations are calibrated not by whether the plaintiff’s own negligence did or did not contribute to the damages sustained, but rather by the degree to which the plaintiff’s negligence contributed to the total damages incurred. States that apply the principle of comparative negligence are further subdivided into those which use a model of “pure” comparative negligence vs. those which apply “modified” comparative negligence in their civil cases. Broadly speaking, the differences between “pure” and “modified” comparative negligence are as follows:
- Pure comparative negligence: In “pure comparative negligence” states, a plaintiff has the right to recover compensation for damages, reduced in proportion to the degree of responsibility for those damages attributable to the plaintiff’s own negligence. Even if the plaintiff is more than 90% responsible for their own damages, they may still be able to recover compensation for the remaining 10% through civil litigation.
- Modified comparative negligence: Legal professionals often group the states that employ the “modified” version of comparative negligence into 50% vs 51% states. Frequently state laws are written in verbal, rather than numeric, terms, but the percentages form a convenient shorthand for drawing a distinction between states that place the “breakpoint” for recovery of damages at equal responsibility vs. those that prohibit recovery of damages when the plaintiff’s share of responsibility exceeds that of the defendant.
Mississippi is one of relatively few states that apply the principle of “pure” comparative negligence.
Comparative vs. Contributory Negligence in Mississippi
Although Mississippi does follow the comparative negligence “rule,” many Mississippians may initially be confused when they use online search engines to look for information about the state’s negligence laws. The confusion arises because the statute typically applicable in Mississippi car accident cases is Miss. Code. Ann. § 11-7-15 (2024), which states that “contributory negligence shall not bar” a victim’s recovery of damages (emphasis added), although juries in the state are instructed to reduce plaintiffs’ compensation in proportion to their degree of culpability with respect to the incident. The fact that the wording of the statute includes “contributory negligence,” but not “comparative negligence,” can lead some search engines – particularly the most up-to-date versions, which often incorporate the use of artificial intelligence to synthesize information collected from across the internet – to return results that present contributory negligence as a relevant consideration for Mississippi civil trials, even though the statute explicitly rejects the application of contributory negligence to prevent injured parties from seeking compensation under Mississippi law.
An attorney familiar with Mississippi’s Code of Civil Practice and Procedure will often use the evidence collected in a trucking accident investigation to develop an informed estimate regarding the share of negligence that might be allocated to their client in a court case. While such assessments cannot rule out the possibility of surprises in the event of a jury trial, getting a professional case evaluation can often help a truck accident victim to develop a realistic perspective regarding the range of likely outcomes in their situation and the factors that might come into play.
Schedule a Consultation With a Mississippi Truck Accident Lawyer To Learn More
If you have been injured, or incurred expensive vehicle damage, in a truck accident, you likely have a number of questions about how to pursue your claim. The allocations of liability in trucking accidents can be dauntingly complex when compared to the personal vehicle accidents with which many drivers are more familiar, and early identification and preservation of potentially time-sensitive evidence after a crash can have an impact on the challenges that victims of trucking accidents may face in seeking fair compensation. Consider working with an experienced attorney. Schedule a consultation with a member of the team at Lott Law and discuss the truck accident evidence that may be needed in your case and gain a professional perspective on your legal situation. Call (228) 215-2787 today.