Atlanta Injury Law Blog

As a trucking safety attorney in Georgia, I sometimes find trucking companies trying to disown their driver’s safety violations. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations, which are designed to protect safety of members of the public, clearly require trucking companies to require their employees to obey the driver regulations. 49 C.F.R. § 390.11 requires: “Whenever .…

You may have heard that “ignorance of the law is no excuse.”  That is clearly true in the interstate commercial trucking context. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations say that in three different ways. 49 C.F.R. § 390.3(e) requires that “Every employer shall be knowledgeable of and comply with all regulations contained in this subchapter…

In order to use Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulation violations to support liability or punitive damages, it is essential to establish that the violation was a proximate cause of the crash. Some judges don’t easily grasp the obvious connection between extreme driver fatigue and driver error. For example, in one Georgia case the court failed…

A basic understanding of the history of federal motor carrier regulation is helpful for comprehension of the current regulatory structure. Motor Carrier Act of 1935. Arising from the combination of increasing motor transport of freight and the trauma of the Great Depression, the Motor Carrier Act of 1935 focused primarily on financial stability of motor…

The framers of the U. S. Constitution recognized in 1787 that no individual state could adequate deal with regulation of interstate commerce, so that was made one of the core functions of the federal government along with national defense and a few others. The Supremacy Clause of the Constitution provides that any state law that…

As a trucking and auto safety attorney in Atlanta, and as a former prosecutor, I have developed a strong appreciation for the competence and professionalism of the Georgia State Patrol. Now the state’s budget crisis is impacting the GSP’s capacity to cover the rural areas of our state. According to a report by Rhonda Cook in…

Safersys.org is a web site maintained by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. Through this site, one may obtain extensive basic information about motor carriers within moments after learning of the potential case. A “Carrier Snapshot” search includes the company’s legal name, address, phone number, USDOT number, numbers of power units and drivers, inspection and…

When a significant motor carrier collision happens, the pattern response is for the truck driver to immediately call the dispatcher, who calls the risk manager even at home in the middle of the night, who in turn calls in a “rapid response team” – a defense lawyer in the state where the crash occurred in…

Any lawyer who assumes that a large commercial truck crash is just a bigger car wreck is dangerously naive. Investigation, discovery, technology and law involved in the crashes of large commercial trucks are substantially different from other motor vehicle accident cases. Counsel must be familiar with a national body of trucking law based primarily on…

As a trucking safety attorney in Atlanta, Georgia, I have found it is extremely important to network with other attorneys doing the same kind of work throughout the United States. At the American Association for Justice convention in San Francisco last Saturday, I spoke at the Interstate Trucking Litigation Group seminar on Saturday and had dinner…