Strategy is essential in litigation. Among the most important strategic considerations is determining in which court a case may be litigated and tried. Most trucking crash cases involve an analysis of jurisdiction and venue questions.

In Georgia state courts, cases must be filed in a county where a defendant is a resident. Federal courts are options if there is complete diversity of citizenship, meaning that all plaintiffs reside in a state different from all defendants, or if there is “federal question” jurisdiction. In tractor trailer crash cases, we usually but not always file in state courts in Georgia because of the relatively more user-friendly procedures in the state court system. Occasionally, we choose to file in a federal court when available rather than a small, rural county where the trucking company and its driver are located. Most often, plaintiff attorneys file cases in state courts against out of state trucking companies and drivers based on the Nonresident Motorist jurisdiction provisions which provide for venue where the crash happened or where the injured Georgia resident resides, Then the defense usually files a notice of removal to federal court under “diversity of citizenship” jurisdiction.

Rarely does a defendant in a trucking case claim “federal question” jurisdiction in federal court. However, that happened in a case recently in which we are co-counsel in five of six cases arising from a tragic crash at the intersection of I-16 and I-96 in Pooler just outside Savannah, and preparing the briefs in all six companion cases. As the plaintiffs and two defendants are Georgians, there was no diversity jurisdiction. The last defendant served filed notices to remove all six cases from the State Court of Chatham County to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia, claiming that the Shipping Act of 1984 created federal question jurisdiction. We immediately filed motions to remand all the cases back to the State Court of Chatham County.

One of the six cases was assigned to the Hon. Lisa Godby Wood in Brunswick and five were assigned to the Hon. William Moore in Savannah. Within two weeks after completion of briefing on the motions to remand, Judge Wood on January 9, 2017, granted the motion to remand in an order that has been published online in the Westlaw database. Moody, et al v. Great West, et al, 2017 WL 77417 (Wood., J.)(S.D. Ga. Jan. 9, 2017).

Under federal case law cited by Judge Wood, removal statutes are construed narrowly and uncertainties are resolved in favor of remand. This is due to respect for state sovereignty and the independence of state courts, as state courts are generally presumed competent to interpret and apply federal law. Removal is also construed narrowly because the plaintiff is the master of the claim and may avoid federal jurisdiction by exclusive reliance on state law.

Shortly thereafter, Judge Moore announced he was taking his well-earned senior status as he approached his 77th birthday.  U.S. Magistrate Judge Stan Baker of Brunswick has been nominated as his successor. A U.S. Senate confirmation hearing for Judge Baker may come around the end of the year, though apparently no one really knows. We have no idea whether there will be an order on the motions for remand in the other five cases before Judge Baker takes office.

The defendants removed these case to the Southern District Court of Georgia claiming that there were federal questions a under the Shipping Act and Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations. Defense attorneys often attempt to remove their client’s case to a federal court in an effort to afford a higher level of protection for their out of state client who may fear a plaintiff’s “home court” advantage, or simply to bog down a case in federal court procedures that some lawyers believe are more likely to favor the defense.

However, the statutes concerning removal are construed narrowly out of respect for a state’s sovereignty and the state courts independence. To that end the Court looked to see if we had raised a federal claim or if perhaps there may have been a substantial federal question embedded somewhere in our claim.

Judge Wood’s order in January thoroughly eviscerated the claim of “federal question” jurisdiction in an intermodal trucking cases based on the Shipping Act of 1984. Judge Wood ruled that we had not raised a federal claim as our sole cause of action, wrongful death, was a state claim. While the legal theory makes reference to the Shipping Act and Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations, which are both federal law, the Court agreed that “the mere presence of a federal issue in a state cause of action” does not make it into a federal one.

The Court then looked at whether our claim contained a substantial federal question somewhere within it. When determining if there is the possibility of an embedded federal question in a claim there are a few factors a court will look at. First it’s important to understand what might be considered substantial. Substantiality depends on how important or impactful the issue at hand is going to be when weighed against the federal system as a whole. There are no “bright line” rules on this. In fact, the Supreme Court went so far as to compare a relevant precedent to that of a Jackson Pollock painting. What the Court will do is ask questions such as “Will this case control many other cases?”, or, “Does the federal government have an interest in litigating this case in a federal forum?”

Our team was successful in showing the Court that our claim was not going to have a substantial impact on the federal justice system or far reaching implications into federal law that may change the outcomes of future cases, but rather that our claim would have meaningful and substantial impact to the family members who were affected by the wrongful death of their loved one and the Court remanded to Georgia state court where this case belonged.

Despite the delay surrounding nomination of a new judge, we are optimistic that ultimately there will be a ruling in the other five cases consistent with Judge Wood’s order, and that all six cases will find their way back to the State Court of Chatham County for trial.

 Ken Shigley is a past president of the State Bar of Georgia, former chair of the board of the Institute for Continuing Legal Education in Georgia, lead author of Georgia Law of Torts: Trial Preparation and Practice now in its eighth annual edition, a Certified Civil Trial Attorney of the National Board of Trial Advocacy, past chair of the Motor Vehicle Collision, Highway & Premises Liability Section of the American Association for Justice, past chair of the Georgia Insurance Law Institute, and a Diplomate of the National College of Advocacy. He has handled many catastrophic truck crash cases involving wrongful death, serious personal injury, neck and back injury, brain injury, spinal cord injury and burns. 

Truck crash on I-16 at I-95 on 5/19/2015 killed 5. Truck driver admitted falling asleep, is charged with 5 counts of vehicular homicide.

In the spring of 2015, there were two separate five-fatality truck crashes on I-16 in Georgia. The first one got most of the publicity because the victims were all beautiful young nursing students, but both were equally lethal and egregious. In both cases, there were at least indications that a truck driver fell asleep before running over a line of stopped traffic.

On April 22, 2015, in Bryan County, John Wayne Johnson, a truck driver from Louisiana driving for Total Trucking, a subsidiary of US Express, ran over vehicles stopped traffic. He killed five Georgia Southern University nursing students and injured two others. It appears he went to sleep as there was clear visibility on a long, straight stretch of road before he ran over the stopped vehicles. Johnson admitted he had been texting and exchanging sexually provocative message with a woman while driving but denied he was on the phone at the time of the crash.

Less than a month later, on May 19, 2015, on I-16  at its intersection with I-95, a line of traffic was stopped due to road work. David Gibbons of Pooler, driving from Georgia Freightways Corporation, while towing an intermodal container chassis trailer that carried a shipping container for CMA CMG (America), LLC, the US subsidiary of a French shipping line. The tractor-trailer was seen weaving for some distance prior to crashing into the line of stopped traffic, killing five people and injuring one. While the driver’s cell phone was allegedly destroyed in the resulting fire, phone bills indicated he was connected to the internet all day. He admitted to police on video at the scene, “I must have went to sleep.” The GBI crime lab found that he had a sleeping medication in his system, the most common trade name for which is Ambien. In deposition, he asserted his 5th Amendment right to remain silent on every question other than his name. (Disclosure: Our firm is involved as co-counsel in several of those cases.)

This spring, the Chatham County District Attorney charged Gibbons for five counts of vehicular homicide for the May 2015 crash.. This week, a Bryan County grand jury indicted Johnson for on nine counts based on the April 2015 crash, including five counts of first-degree vehicular homicide, serious injury by vehicle, reckless driving, following too closely, and failure to exercise due care. In an unusual move, the company that employed him was also indicted.

Several weeks ago, the civil cases arising from the Bryan County case were settled for substantial amounts. That was relatively simple as such things go since the trucking company and its parent company reportedly had $100 million in liability insurance coverage.

The Chatham County civil cases remain pending. It is more complex because a small trucking company with few assets had only had $1 million liability insurance coverage, so it is necessary to involve companies that are responsible for the flow of intermodal freight traffic into and through Georgia. Those cases remain actively in litigation with trial dates scheduled in 2017.

The conditions that led to both of these lethal crashes remain essentially unchanged. Truck traffic, largely to and from the Port of Savannah, may have had some cyclical waning but remains heavy. Tired and impaired truck drivers are still on the road. The Georgia Department of Transportation continues to repair sections of roadway, leading to lane closures and occasional traffic backups.

Moreover, trucking companies still resist use of forward collision avoidance technology and in-cab devices to monitor and alert drowsy drivers.  As Congress is concerned more about protecting trucking companies from implementation of more safety measures than with safety of the public on the roads, these tragedies will continue until being unsafe becomes more expensive than being safe.

Ken Shigley is a  double board certified trial lawyer in Atlanta, Georgia. He has served as president of the State Bar of Georgia, chair of the largest practice area section of the American Association for Justice (Motor Vehicle Collision, Highway & Premises Liability Section), and chair of the Institute for Continuing Legal Education in Georgia board of trustees. He is a member of the Board of Governors of the Academy of Truck Accident Attorneys,lead author of Georgia Law of Torts: Trial Preparation & Practice (2010-2016) and a chapter author of the 2016 edition of Handling Motor Vehicle Accident Cases, both published by Thomson Reuters.  He can be reached at ken.shigley@johnsonward.com.

Most people who see a tractor trailer crash have no idea of the significance when the trailer is a skeleton chassis with a freight container bolted to it. State troopers don’t know. Motor carrier enforcement officers don’t know. Accident reconstruction experts don’t know. About 99.99% of lawyers who handle tractor trailer crash cases don’t understand it. They have never been trained on it and have not had occasion to research and study it in depth.

We have had good success with these cases, but I’m not going to publish a how-to manual for lawyers on the internet. If I did, one of my brethren would take the germ of an idea without deep study and mess it up.

But here are a few key points:

1. What is intermodal freight?

If you stand on the riverfront at Savannah, Jacksonville or Charleston, or at other ports around the world, you seemassive ocean freighters stacked high with colorful boxes.  Those boxes are steel containers filled with all manner of freight, going to and from ports around the planet. Before and after their ocean voyages, these containers are mounted on train cars and truck trailers. It is called “intermodal” because the same freight container can transfer between ship, rail and truck without handling of the freight itself when it switches between modes. Intermodal shipping saves tremendously on expense, improves security, reduces damage and loss, and allows freight to be transported faster.

1. What is the story of the evolution of container freight?

The idea of containerized freight handling began in the 1700s with tubs of coal on canal barges in England. The concept evolved with railroads and trucking but didn’t really get off the ground until the 20^th century. In 1933, the International Chamber of Commerce established The International Container Bureau (Bureau International des Conteneurs, BIC), which set the first standards for freight containers used in international traffic. By the 1950s, standards developed by the US Department of Defense began to revolutionize container shipping.  Between 1968 and 1970, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) issued standards based upon American military practices. Since 1980, the use of 20 foot and 40 foot freight containers has come to dominate worldwide shipping.

Every time I drive down I-75 from Atlanta to Macon and then I-16 to Savannah, I see at least a hundred intermodal container freight tractor-trailer units sharing the highway with me. On I-95 between the Florida and South Carolina lines, it is pretty much the same.  When I look down from my office window in Atlanta, I often see freight containers double-stacked on rail cars on the track that runs parallel to the MARTA line across the street. With the expansion of the Port of Savannah, we will see more and more container freight in Georgia.

1. What are the top container freight ports?

 Of the top 20 container freight ports in the world, 8 are in China. The  others are  at Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, Dubai, Netherlands (Rotterdam),  Malaysia, Taiwan, Germany (Hamburg),  Belgium (Antwerp), and the US (Los  Angeles and Long Beach). Savannah ranks #46 in the world. It is about to get a lot  busier with enlargement of the Panama Canal and port expansion on which  dredging work has begun. Savannah has a favored location because of a  sophisticated analysis of efficient road and railway access to the South and    Midwest. It contributed to the role of Georgia and Atlanta as a commercial hub.  For that reason, expansion of the Port of Savannah has been a huge public policy  priority for the Governor of Georgia, Mayor of Atlanta, and a broad range of other  political and business leaders in Georgia.

Charleston ranks #82 in the world. Jacksonville, which handles freight traffic to Puerto Rico and the Caribbean, is not in the top 100 but it still contributes a lot of container truck traffic to I-95 in Georgia. Other busy container ports in the US include NY/NJ (#26), Oakland (#62), Newport News (#64), Houston  (#74), Tacoma(#78) and Seattle (#83).

1. Who are the truckers towing intermodal container freight trailers?

When intermodal freight containers are put on trucks for the land portion of the shipment, the trucking company used is likely to be a small one with few assets, 20 to 50 leased tractors and a single-limit $1 million liability insurance policy. The drivers for those companies are typically pushed hard with inadequate pay and inadequate rest.

There may be a convoluted transaction involving a logistics company, a freight forwarder, non-vessel operating common carrier, ocean transportation intermediary or a freight broker, seeking  to provide layers of insulation between the most responsible entities and the little trucking company and driver. That is intended to insource the profits and outsource the risk, creating a barrier to financial accountability on the part of the larger companies that pull the strings.

When there is a catastrophic crash involving an intermodal tractor-trailer unit, the insurer for the tiny trucking company often goes to the survivors of however many people were killed and offers to split that one million dollar policy. If, for example, five people were killed, they will offer to give each of the families $200,000 each if they all sign full releases. If there were three deaths and a bunch of serious injuries, they might invite everyone to go to a mediation to decide how to split that million dollars. They swear that is all the insurance there is or will ever be.

Perhaps the lawyers and claims adjusters at that level really believe what they are saying. Perhaps they have been given the “mushroom treatment” – kept in the dark and fed manure.

Most people who don’t know better take that “low hanging fruit.”

But there is a lot more if you know how to get it.

1. How can I recognize that a tractor-trailer was carrying an intermodal shipping container?

On first glance, most intermodal tractor-trailer units look a lot like any other tractor-trailer. But if you know what to look for, you can tell the difference.

First, what are the name markings on the body of the trailer? If the trailer body is a freight container bolted to a trailer chassis, it probably bears the name of an intermodal shipping company. Those we see on the interstate highways in Georgia operating from the Port of Savannah include: Moller-Maersk (also Maersk Sealand), CMA CGM, COSCO, Hapag-Lloyd, Evergreen, APL, CSCL, Hanjin Shipping, NYK Line, Hamburg Sud, “K” Line, Yang Ming, Hyundai, ZIM, United Arab Shipping Co. (UASC), CSAV. There are also other intermodal shipping companies operating in the Caribbean trade out of the Port of Jacksonville that send a steady flow of containers mounted on trucks up I-95 through Georgia.

Second, what are the markings on the rear doors of the trailer? Intermodal freight containers include a 3-letter owner code, a one-letter product group code, 6 digit registration number, 1 digit “check digit”, 4 digit size and type code. Below that are the maximum weight, container or “tare” weight, payload weight (all expressed in both kilograms and pounds), and the cubic capacity expressed in both cubic meters and cubic feet.

Third, what are the numbers on the trailer frame below the doors and above the tag, and on the side of the center frame rail of the trailer? If it is an intermodal tractor-trailer unit, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration requires display of a USDOT registration number on the trailer chassis above the rear tag. It includes a four-letter code to indicate the registered owner, a six-digit registration number and one-digit “check digit.” With that we can figure out what company initially registered that trailer chassis.

None of this information appears on standard police crash report forms. Most law enforcement agencies simply don’t know to look for it. They will record information about the trucking company but none of the information about the trailer.

In addition to standard rectangular containers for general freight, we often see refrigerated (“reefer”) or insulated containers, open top bulk containers, flat racks used to transport machinery, and tank containers with cylindrical vessels mounted in a rectangular steel framework. They bear similar markings.

1. What difference does it make to injury victims if a tractor-trailer unit included an intermodal container chassis trailer?

There are no published court decisions on this. Perhaps there never will be as serious claims tend to be settled confidentially before any court decision. However, we have had success in combining federal motor carrier regulations, federal maritime regulations, ocean bills of lading and international maritime treaties to reach insurance coverage far greater than a single limit one million policy typically carried by a small trucking company. My friend and colleague, David Nissenberg in California, author of The Law of Commercial Trucking: Damages to Persons and Property, has been invaluable in figuring this out.

We have found that if we do it right, we can gain access to enough additional insurance to obtain a fair but confidential settlement of almost any cases that may arise with intermodal freight shipments on the highways of Georgia.  Due to settlement terms, I am not liberty to reveal anything about any of the intermodal cases we have handled.

I am not publishing the legal theories we use or posting copies of briefs and legal memoranda online. That is for the same reason that I did not publish an article or give seminar presentations years ago when I figured out that by classifying a forklift truck as an office supply I could bring a wrongful death suit against an equipment distributor under the Georgia Fair Business Practices Act, which provides for treble damages, punitive damages and award of attorney fees.  I knew then, and know now, that if I freely shared my work product, some lawyer who has not studied it in depth would try to use it without studying the foundations in depth, lose, and mess it up for everyone else.

1. What if an intermodal truck crash happened in a state other than Georgia?

Intermodal freight has worldwide scope. Our practice is primarily in Georgia. But that does not mean we are limited to handling cases arising from intermodal truck crashes in Georgia. Most major ocean carriers and intermodal equipment providers do business in Georgia through the booming Port of Savannah. If an incident has a Georgia nexus, we may be able to handle the case in Georgia. Every question of jurisdiction and venue require a fact-sensitive analysis of details. But, for example, any Georgia resident injured in a crash occurring anywhere in the country may file suit here so long as the rig is on an interstate trip and the trucking company has registered an agent for service of process covering Georgia.

1. Every case is different.

We cannot promise an outcome in any case. Each of these cases is different. While there are points of commonality, the facts of each case are different and the specific combination of legal theories may be different. One size does not fit all.

If a loved one was catastrophically injured or killed due to a collision with a tractor-trailer in which the trailer was an intermodal container chassis with freight container mounted on it, call us.

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Ken Shigley is an Atlanta trial attorney focused on serious personal injury and wrongful death cases. He is currently chair of the American Association for Justice Motor Vehicle Collision, Highway & Premises Liability Section. Previously he served as president of the State Bar of Georgia and chair of the board of trustees of theInstitute for Continuing Legal Education in Georgia. He is lead author of Georgia Law of Torts: Trial Preparation and Practice and a board certified civil trial attorney of the National Board of Trial Advocacy.

Now Gov. Nathan Deal is supporting a proposal to build a new 3.1 mile highway link between I-95 and the Port of Savannah. It would be used primarily by tractor-trailers hauling cargo to and from the Savannah port, the nation’s fourth largest container port.

While the economic development motivation is to invest in the seaport and international trade, a side benefit would be to separate all those container trucks from street traffic around Port Wentworth and Garden City. That will save lives.

Ken Shigley’s qualifications include:

– President-elect, State Bar of Georgia – Certified Civil Trial Advocate of the National Board of Trial Advocacy – “Super Lawyer” (Atlanta Magazine)
– “Legal Elite” (Georgia Trend Magazine)
– AV “Preeminent” – Listed in Bar Register of Preeminent Lawyers (Martindale)
– Author of Georgia Law of Torts: Trial Preparation & Practice (West 2010)
– Board member & faculty, Interstate Trucking Litigation Group – Former chair, Georgia Insurance Law Institute – Former chair, Southeastern Motor Carrier Liability Institute He is a trial attorney in Atlanta, Georgia whose practices focuses on representation of plaintiffs in high end personal injury and wrongful death cases. He has extensive experience representing parties in trucking and bus accidents, products liability, catastrophic personal injury, wrongful death, brain injury, spinal cord injury back injury, and burn injury cases.

When freight containers are shipped by sea, rail and truck, that is called intermodal shipping. Throughout the country you see large intermodal freight facilities that transfer freight containers between ships, trains and trucks. In Georgia, vast amounts of container freight are handled through the port of Savannah.

This week the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Adminstration began enforcing its Intermodal Chassis rule that requires intermodal equipment providers (IEPs), motor carriers and drivers to share responsibility for the safety of intermodal equipment used on U.S. highways.

Intermodal equipment or chassis are the trailers used in the transfer of goods from a ship or rail car to trucks for final delivery. There has been a problem with old, poorly maintained trailer chassis being spray painted and put back into service hauling freight containers, with inadequate regard for safety. Now there are new rules requiring providers of intermodal chassis to implement systematic inspection, repair and maintenance programs, and repair or replace defective equipment. The chassis must now display uniform identifying numbers.

For cases where the insurance coverage of a small motor carrier is inadequate to compensate a catastrophic injury, we also consider the potential to access the insurance coverage of the ocean carrier that is responsible to the shipper for delivery of freight all the way to the inland destination.

Ken Shigley is a trucking safety trial attorney representing seriously injured people in tractor trailer, big rig, intermodal container freight, cement truck, dump truck and bus accidents statewide in Georgia. He served as chair of the Southeastern Motor Carrier Litigation Institute in 2005, is a national board member of the Interstate Trucking Litigation Group of the American Association for Justice, and is on the National Advisory Board for the Association of Interstate Trucking Lawyers of America.

He has extensive experience representing parties in interstate trucking collision cases, and in the past two years has spoken at national interstate trucking litigation seminars in Chicago (trucking insurance), New Orleans (trial tactics and side underride issues), St. Louis (punitive damages), San Francisco (dealing with insolvent trucking companies), Atlanta (trucking insurance, closing argument), Nashville (use of Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations), and Amelia Island (overview of trucking litigation).

A Certified Civil Trial Advocate of the National Board of Trial Advocacy, he has been listed as a “Super Lawyer” (Atlanta Magazine), among the “Legal Elite” (Georgia Trend Magazine), and in the Bar Register of Preeminent Lawyers (Martindale). In addition to trucking litigation, he has broad experience in products liability, catastrophic personal injury, wrongful death, spinal cord injury, brain injury and burn injury cases. Currently he is Treasurer and a candidate for President-Elect of the 41,000 member State Bar of Georgia.This post is subject to our ethical disclaimer.

Under the definitions in the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations, the ocean freight carrier qualifies as a motor carrier, and is subject to liability when the container shipment operations injures an innocent motorist on the highways of Georgia.

It’s considerably more complicated than a regular road wreck, but the distinction can make a huge difference in the availability of adequate insurance coverage in a catastrophic case.

Ken Shigley is a trucking safety trial attorney representing seriously injured people in tractor trailer, big rig, intermodal container freight, cement truck, dump truck and bus accidents statewide in Georgia. He served as chair of the Southeastern Motor Carrier Litigation Institute in 2005, is a national board member of the Interstate Trucking Litigation Group of the American Association for Justice, and is on the National Advisory Board for the Association of Interstate Trucking Lawyers of America.

He has extensive experience representing parties in interstate trucking collision cases, and in the past two years has spoken at national interstate trucking litigation seminars in Chicago (trucking insurance), New Orleans (trial tactics and side underride issues), St. Louis (punitive damages), San Francisco (dealing with insolvent trucking companies), Atlanta (trucking insurance, closing argument), Nashville (use of Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations), and Amelia Island (overview of trucking litigation).

A Certified Civil Trial Advocate of the National Board of Trial Advocacy, he has been listed as a “Super Lawyer” (Atlanta Magazine), among the “Legal Elite” (Georgia Trend Magazine), and in the Bar Register of Preeminent Lawyers (Martindale). In addition to trucking litigation, he has broad experience in products liability, catastrophic personal injury, wrongful death, spinal cord injury, brain injury and burn injury cases. Currently he is Treasurer and a candidate for President-Elect of the 41,000 member State Bar of Georgia.This post is subject to our ethical disclaimer.

Thousands of those containers are unloaded from the ships onto truck trailers and trains at every major port to be transported across the country. Georgia highways are full of intermodal containers imported through the ports of Savannah, Jacksonville and Charleston.

Often the trailers used in these intermodal operations are old chassis repainted to look good but poorly maintained. Too often the trailers that were loaded in Shanghai or Rotterdam contained unbalanced loads that ride fine on a ship but are dangerous in highway curves.

Over the past several years there has been increasing concern about safety of intermodal freight operations.

Now the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has announced plans to add a fifth equipment marking option to its rules, allowing chassis to be identified through a system that uses technology to match equipment to the company responsible for its maintenance.

They hope this will clear the way for industry efforts to launch a global registry for intermodal equipment.

Of more immediate interest to families of people catastrophically injured in crashes of trucks hauling these freight containers is the difficulty of reaching the insurance coverage of the intermodal companies. Often the inland truck hauling is brokered to a small trucking company or owner-operator with only $750,000 to $1,000,000 liability coverage. That sounds like a lot, but when you’re looking at a $20,000,000 life care plan for a catastrophic injury, it’s a drop in the bucket.

Courts in Georgia have had a hard time coming to terms with the totality of intermodal shipping, tending to look at just the tip end of the spear and not at who is throwing the spear.

Last Friday, I spent a day in St. Louis at a seminar by David Nissenberg from San Diego, author of the book, Law of Commercial Trucking. He is a scholar of this area of law, and has painstakingly put together the legal theory to connect all the dots and reach the insurance policies of the ocean shipping companies that bring the containers into the US and load them on the trucks. In a tour de force, he combines international treaties, U. S. maritime laws and regulations, standard maritime bills of lading and other shipping documents, interlocking provisions of the Motor Carrier Act and Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations, Restatement of Torts, Restatement of Agency, etc.

David hasn’t published a paper on this. There are no cases on point yet anywhere in the U.S. To persuade a judge who is busy, understaffed, and knows little about this area of the law, will require some masterful explanation.

But when a catastrophic container freight trucking case comes along, we’re ready.

This is a great lesson for those naive lawyers who think an commercial trucking accident is just a bigger car wreck.

Ken Shigley is a trucking safety trial attorney representing seriously injured people in tractor trailer, big rig, intermodal container freight, cement truck, dump truck and bus accidents statewide in Georgia. He served as chair of the Southeastern Motor Carrier Litigation Institute in 2005, is a national board member of the Interstate Trucking Litigation Group of the American Association for Justice, and is on the National Advisory Board for the Association of Interstate Trucking Lawyers of America.

He has extensive experience representing parties in interstate trucking collision cases, and in the past two years has spoken at national interstate trucking litigation seminars in Chicago (trucking insurance), New Orleans (trial tactics and side underride issues), St. Louis (punitive damages), San Francisco (dealing with insolvent trucking companies), Atlanta (trucking insurance, closing argument), Nashville (use of Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations), and Amelia Island (overview of trucking litigation).

A Certified Civil Trial Advocate of the National Board of Trial Advocacy, he has been listed as a “Super Lawyer” (Atlanta Magazine), among the “Legal Elite” (Georgia Trend Magazine), and in the Bar Register of Preeminent Lawyers (Martindale). In addition to trucking litigation, he has broad experience in products liability, catastrophic personal injury, wrongful death, spinal cord injury, brain injury and burn injury cases. Currently he is Treasurer and a candidate for President-Elect of the 41,000 member State Bar of Georgia.This post is subject to our ethical disclaimer.