Forklift on Tractor Trailer Takes Chunk Out of Texas Overpass

I’ve been working on trucking accidents in the Atlanta, Georgia, area for a long time. Today’s news includes a report of an accident in Arlington, Texas, that reminds me of my first tractor trailer wreck case.

According to a report by Lita Beck of the NBC affiliate station in Dallas – Fort Worth, an 18-wheeler hauling a forklift hit the State Highway 360 overpass Wednesday night, taking a chunk of the overpass near Six Flags Over Texas.

Back in the mid-1980’s when I was an associate at an insurance defense law firm in Atlanta, I was assigned to defend a trucking company that was hauling a construction crane up I-75 in Cobb County when the crane boom came loose and started extending upward. The boom crashed into the Windy Hill Road bridge, wreaking havoc and allegedly moving the bridge over an inch or two.

No one was injured, but someone at the Georgia Department of Transportation saw an opportunity to get the trucking company’s insurer to help pay for a new bridge that was planned. When GDOT sued for the cost of a new bridge, I served a notice to take the deposition of the then-commissioner of GDOT to examine him about the bridge plans, budget projections, etc. Before the date of the deposition, GDOT settled for the reasonable cost of repair — not replacement — of the old bridge.

Ken Shigley is a trial attorney in Atlanta, Georgia who has been listed among the “Legal Elite” (Georgia Trend Magazine), as a “Super Lawyer” (Atlanta Magazine), and in the Bar Register of Preeminent Lawyers (Martindale). He is on the National Advisory Board for the Association of Interstate Trucking Lawyers of America, served as chair of the Southeastern Motor Carrier Litigation Institute,and is a frequent national seminar speaker for the Interstate Trucking Litigation Group of the American Association for Justice. A Certified Civil Trial Advocate of the National Board of Trial Advocacy, he was a faculty member for ten years at the Emory University Law School Trial Techniques Program. Currently he is Secretary of the 40,000 member State Bar of Georgia.

He may be contacted online or toll free at (877) 778-7944.