Our client was riding his motorcycle home from work on Highway 83 in Georgia. A tractor-trailer crossed into his lane and hit him, causing a leg injury that required amputation and a permanent cervical spinal cord injury. Eyewitnesses disagreed about how the crash happened, and law enforcement investigation was inadequate, at best. We investigated and uncovered defective tractor-trailer brakes, failed automatic slack adjusters, improper following distance, inadequate inspections, and falsified maintenance records. Before trial, we secured a confidential eight-figure settlement for our client.
Case Summary
Location
Georgia Highway 83 between Monticello and Shady Dale
Accident Type
Motorcycle vs. tractor-trailer collision
Injuries
Through-knee amputation and permanent cervical spinal cord injury
Medical Expenses
More than $1 million
Future Medical Care
Approximately $4 million to $7 million
Key Liability Evidence
Unsafe following distance, defective brakes and automatic slack adjusters, inadequate inspections, and falsified maintenance records
Result
Confidential eight-figure settlement before trial
How the Motorcycle and Tractor-Trailer Crash Happened
Our client was driving his motorcycle north on Highway 83 between Monticello and Shady Dale. He was following a car, thought it was safe to pass it, and began to do so. After he’d begun his pass, a car and a tractor-trailer driving south, the opposite direction, drove around a curve a distance ahead of him. The driver of the car that was in front of the tractor-trailer saw the motorcycle in her lane, making its pass, and overreacted. She braked and pulled her car partially off to the side of the road. The tractor-trailer was following that car too closely and couldn’t stop in time to avoid crashing into it. The tractor-trailer drove around the car and crossed into our client’s lane, striking his motorcycle, and came to a stop in front of the car it had been following.
The Motorcycle Rider’s Catastrophic Injuries
The impact threw our client off the motorcycle and into the woods. He suffered an incomplete spinal cord injury to his cervical spine and an injury to his left leg that required a “through knee” amputation. While he’s been fitted for a prosthetic leg, his spinal cord injury makes it challenging for him to use it, and he’s likely to be dependent on a wheelchair the rest of his life. His spinal cord injury has affected his ability to use his hands and makes even basic tasks such as eating, getting dressed, or using a cell phone challenging. Due to his injuries, he’s likely to never work again. His medical bills were over $1,000,000, and the cost of his future care ranged from $3.8 million to $7 million.
How We Proved the Trucking Company Was Responsible
Problems with the Initial Crash Investigation
A Georgia State Patrol trooper investigated the wreck. He was a rookie trooper and this was the first serious wreck he ever investigated. Unfortunately, it showed.
He didn’t take any photos of the scene, didn’t document where the vehicles involved came to a stop and didn’t document the location of physical evidence such as skid marks, fluid spills and debris from the vehicles that would have helped our accident reconstruction expert determine what happened in the wreck. He admitted he should have called in the Specialized Collision Reconstruction Team, which is a division of the State Patrol that specializes in investigating accidents, and the Motor Carrier Compliance Division, which oversees and inspects tractor-trailers.
However, he did interview the witnesses to the wreck and wrote the following in his police report:
While the trooper didn’t issue any tickets for the wreck, he did find that contributing factors to the wreck were the motorcycle making an improper pass and the tractor-trailer following too closely.
Conflicting Eyewitness Accounts
Shortly after we were retained, we interviewed and took statements from the witnesses to the wreck. While several of the witnesses were helpful to our case, one was not.
One of the witnesses was the driver of the car our client was passing when the wreck happened. She testified that he was passing one car, made a safe pass, was back in his lane and the tractor-trailer came into his lane and hit him.
A second witness was behind the car our client was passing when the wreck happened. She also testified that he was passing one car, made a safe pass, was back in his lane and the tractor-trailer came into his lane and hit him.
A third witness was driving in front of our client when the wreck happened. He didn’t see the wreck but testified the tractor-trailer came so far into his lane he had to drive off the road to avoid it hitting him.
The tractor-trailer driver testified that the motorcycle was passing multiple cars at once and that the car in front of him suddenly stopped to avoid crashing into the motorcycle. He said he did his best to stop in time but had to drive around the car in front of him to avoid crashing into it.
The driver of the car in front of the tractor-trailer also testified the motorcycle was passing multiple cars at once and was driving like a “bat out of hell.” She said she had to brake and pull to the side of the road to avoid a head-on collision. She testified that the tractor-trailer driver did everything he could to avoid hitting her.
Reconstructing the Crash Despite Conflicting Evidence
The wreck was a complicated sequence of events with multiple witnesses who had different accounts of what happened. But one thing was clear: the tractor-trailer was driving behind the car in front of it, couldn’t stop in time, and had to drive around the car to avoid crashing into it, hitting our client in the process. We created this trial graphic to explain what happened in three steps:
Addressing the Motorcycle Rider Stereotype
Our client was an experienced and safe motorcycle rider who had never had a ticket or been in an accident before. His motorcycle rider friends described him as the safest and most cautious rider of them all. He was wearing safety gear and equipment that likely helped save his life. However, we were concerned that some people might stereotype him as an unsafe motorcycle rider so we created this trial graphic to help show the jury all the safety gear he was wearing at the time of the wreck:
Defective Tractor-Trailer Brakes and Automatic Slack Adjusters
We retained an accident reconstruction expert witness who was one of the founding members of the Georgia State Patrol’s Specialized Collision Reconstruction Team to help us investigate the wreck. He inspected the tractor-trailer and found that two of the brakes on the tractor-trailer were way out of adjustment. Tractor-trailer brakes are equipped with “automatic slack adjusters,” which keep the brakes in adjustment by tightening the adjustment when the brakes are applied. The expert also found that the automatic slack adjusters were not working, which is why the brakes were out of adjustment.
Federal Trucking Safety Regulations and the 20% Out-of-Service Rule
Brakes are obviously one of the most important safety features on a tractor-trailer. A tractor-trailer with out of adjustment brakes takes longer to stop, raises the risk of brake failure and can lead to uneven braking, which can make the tractor-trailer hard to control.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations considers the brakes on a tractor-trailer so important that if just 20% of the brakes on a tractor-trailer are out of adjustment, the safety regulations place the tractor-trailer “out of service,” meaning it cannot be driven until it’s inspected and repaired by a brake mechanic. This is called the “20% Rule.”
This tractor-trailer had a total of 10 brakes. Because two of the brakes were out of adjustment, the brakes violated the 20% Rule, meaning that the tractor-trailer should never have been driven that day.
We questioned the trucking company’s safety director about that and here’s what he had to say:
Q: Did the pushrod stroke on the R2 and R3 brakes comply with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations?
A: At the time of your inspection, no.
Q: So two out of ten defective brakes places the tractor-trailer out of service, correct?
A: That’s correct.
Q: And meaning it cannot be driven, correct?
A: Until repaired.
Q: Correct. Then it has to be repaired by a qualified brake mechanic correct?
A: That’s correct.
The automatic slack adjusters are another important safety feature of tractor-trailers because they automatically keep the brakes in adjustment. Basically, each time the tractor-trailer brakes the automatic slack adjusters tighten up the brake adjustment. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations have required all tractor-trailers manufactured since 1994 to have automatic slack adjusters. Because the automatic slack adjusters were not working, they violated the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations.
Missing Black Box Data
The tractor-trailer was equipped with a “black box” that recorded “hard brakes.” When the truck hits a certain deceleration threshold, the black box considers it a “hard brake” and records 60 seconds of speed and braking data. The tractor-trailer was also equipped with an electronic logging system, which automatically records when a driver is driving to make sure that he doesn’t drive more than allowed by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations. The electronic logging system also included a feature called “Critical Event Reporting,” which was similar to the black box and recorded speed data when there was a “hard brake.”
Our accident reconstruction expert attempted to download data from both the black box and the electronic logging system. However, neither the black box nor the electronic logging system recorded any speed or braking data from this wreck. We were very suspicious of this and thoroughly investigated whether the trucking company had destroyed this evidence, but ultimately concluded they had not. This meant that the tractor-trailer driver had not braked hard enough to trigger a “hard brake” or that the out-of-adjustment brakes had prevented the truck from braking hard enough to trigger a “hard brake.”
Dashcam Video Showed Missing Crash-Scene Evidence
We sent an open records request for the 911 calls and dispatch records. From those records, we learned that a deputy with the local sheriff’s department had responded to wreck before the trooper with the Georgia State Patrol arrived. We then sent an open records request to the Sheriff’s Department and obtained a dashcam video from the deputy’s car. The deputy drove to the wreck the same way as our client and the dashcam video showed the locations of the vehicles as well as a tire mark, fluid spill and debris from the vehicles.
Accident Reconstruction
The dashcam video, combined with the witness testimony, helped our accident reconstruction expert determine what happened in the wreck. He created these graphics to help demonstrate what happened.
This shows the road when Mr. D began his pass:
This shows the road when Mr. D ended his pass:
Proper following distance
The Georgia Commercial Driver’s License Manual and other manuals that teach how to drive tractor-trailers have a special rule that helps tractor-trailer drivers keep a safe following distance. Keeping a safe following distance is especially important for tractor-trailer drivers because if they follow too closely and cause a wreck, the consequences are likely to be catastrophic.
Tractor-trailer drivers are supposed to keep one second of following distance for each ten feet of their tractor-trailer. And when the tractor-trailer is going faster than 40 miles per hour, they should add another second. 
This gives the driver enough time to perceive, react and safely stop the tractor-trailer even if a car in front of it suddenly comes to a stop, which is exactly what happened here.
Because this tractor-trailer was over 60 feet long and was going faster than 40 miles per hour, the driver should have been keeping a seven second following distance. If the driver had been doing so, he would have been able to safely stop his tractor-trailer well behind the car in front of him and would not have had to drive around the car he was following.
We made this exhibit to help explain how the tractor-trailer driver would have had more than enough room to stop if he had been keeping a proper following distance:
The Driver’s Testimony Did Not Explain Why He Could Not Stop
When we deposed the tractor-trailer driver, he testified that he was driving the 45 mph speed limit and was keeping a following distance behind the car in front of him of at least seven seconds. He testified that the motorcycle began passing multiple cars at once and that he braked to avoid rear-ending the car in front of him. However, he couldn’t explain why, if he was keeping a proper following distance, he had to drive around the car in front of him to avoid crashing into it.
Improper Pre-Trip and Post-Trip Inspections Failed to Identify the Brake Problems
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations require tractor-trailer drivers to inspect their trucks at the beginning and end of each working day. These are called pre and post-trip inspections. The regulations require drivers to inspect parts of the truck, including the brakes, to make sure the truck is in safe working order. There is no rule or regulation on how long the inspections should take, but it generally takes 10-20 minutes to perform a proper inspection.
Tractor-trailer drivers are required to record how long their pre and post-trip inspections take on their driving logs. This is a chart we made of how long the tractor-trailer driver was spending on his pre and post-trip inspections:
| Date | Pre-trip Inspection of tractor | Pre-trip inspection of trailer | Post-trip inspection of tractor | Post-trip inspection of trailer |
| June 7, 2018 | Not done | 1 minute | 1 minute | |
| June 8, 2018 | 1 minute | 2 minutes | 1 minute | 1 minute |
| June 9, 2018 | 2 minutes | 1 minute | 1 minute | 1 minute |
| June 11, 2018 | 4 minutes | 1 minute | 1 minute | 1 minute |
| June 12, 2018 | 1 minute | 1 minute | 1 minute | 1 minute |
| June 13, 2018 | 3 minutes | 2 minutes | 1 minute | |
| June 14, 2018 | 0 minutes |
When we questioned the trucking company’s safety director about this, he admitted they were improper:
Q: The logs indicate Mr. Pittman was conducting pre-trip inspections in one minute, two minutes, three minutes, and four minutes. Can a driver conduct a proper pre-trip inspection in that amount of time?
A: Generally, no.
Q: If Mr. Pittman conducted a pre-trip inspection that was one minute long, does Customized Trucking agree he violated the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations?
A: Generally, yes.
Q: Okay. And if he conducted a pre-trip inspection that was three minutes long, does Customized Trucking agree that he violated the Federal Motor Carrier Safety regulations?
A: Generally, yes.
Missing Tractor-Trailer Maintenance Records
Given that the tractor-trailer’s brakes were out of adjustment and the automatic slack adjuster were not working, we focused on the inspection, maintenance and repair records of the tractor. We learned that the company used forms called “monthly maintenance record” to track the inspection, maintenance and repair of the tractor and that these were supposed to be turned into the safety department on a monthly basis.
We then learned that the company used spreadsheets to track whether these forms were being filled out and began requesting the spreadsheets. When we received them, we found that the company was missing the monthly maintenance record form for this tractor – and many others – for months at a time. An example of one of the spreadsheets is below. The green boxes indicate months where the company had received the monthly maintenance record form.
Falsified maintenance records
We discovered that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration had audited the trucking company after this wreck and, by random chance, had specifically requested all of the maintenance records for this truck as well as others. We then requested records relating to the audit and found emails proving that days before the audit, the trucking company was still missing all of the maintenance records for this tractor-trailer. One of the emails is below:
We then found emails showing that the morning of the audit, the manager sent all of the missing maintenance records to the safety department. The manager completed and signed forms for two months he didn’t even work at the company. We used this evidence to argue that the monthly maintenance records created right before the FMCSA audit were falsified.
The Motorcycle Rider’s Injuries and Future Medical Needs
Our client suffered multiple serious injuries in the wreck. We made this trial illustration to help the jury understand his injuries:
We also made this trial illustration to help the jury understand all of the treatment that Mr. D had to go through:
Proving Future Medical Care, Disability, and Lost Income
We retained multiple expert witnesses to help explain our client’s injuries to the jury.
We retained a physical therapist to conduct a functional capacity evaluation, which is a test that assesses a person’s physical abilities, whether they are able to return to work and, if so, what accommodations they would need.
We retained a certified hand therapist to evaluate how our client’s cervical spinal cord injury affected his ability to use his arms and hands.
We retained an expert witness in vocational rehabilitation, which is rehabilitation geared towards returning people with injuries to employment. He determined that due to the severity of our client’s injuries he was unfortunately not able to return to work.
We retained a life care planner expert witness who prepared a report analyzing the medical care that our client would likely need over the course of his lifetime. This ranged from evaluations by his primary care doctor to replacements of his prosthetic leg and wheelchair to the cost of a skilled nursing facility should he need one when he is older.
We retained an economist to analyze the cost of our client’s medical care over the course of his lifetime. Depending on the level of care required, the cost of his future medical care ranges between $4,000,000 and $7,000,000. The economist also analyzed how much income our client would have made had he been able to continue working. He estimated his future lost income ranged from $1,720,000 to $2,210,000.
How the Injuries Changed Our Client’s Life
While our client’s medical bills, lost income and cost of his future care were significant, the largest loss in the case was the impact of our client’s injuries on him and his wife. Below is an excerpt from the settlement demand we sent the defendants:
Our client spent weeks in the hospital and months at Shepherd Center recovering from his injuries and learning to live with his physical limitations. He has had multiple surgeries on his amputated leg, cervical spinal cord, hand and arm, surgery to install a catheter, surgery to remove a catheter, surgery to extract all of his teeth and surgery to install dental implants so that he can have dentures. He lives with daily pain and muscle spasms. His cervical spinal cord injury affects his ability to use his hands and makes simple activities such as getting dressed, going to the bathroom, eating, typing and texting are slow and challenging.. He can no longer do household chores or handiwork around the house. He can no longer work and financially contribute to him and his wife’s finances. His wife feels like she is no longer his wife but his caretaker. She is overwhelmed by the responsibility of caring for him, taking care of the household and financially supporting them. All of the activities that they loved to do before the wreck such as socializing with their friends, visiting family, playing with their dog, hiking, camping, playing golf and traveling are difficult or impossible. Simply put, their lives will never be the same
How We Maximized the Recovery
- Interviewed eyewitnesses early and preserved accounts that conflicted with the tractor-trailer driver’s version of the crash.
- Retained a former Georgia State Patrol Specialized Collision Reconstruction Team member to inspect the tractor-trailer and reconstruct the collision.
- Identified two out-of-adjustment brakes and failed automatic slack adjusters that placed the tractor-trailer out of service under federal safety rules.
- Recovered sheriff’s-department dashcam video through open-records requests, providing crash-scene evidence the original investigation had failed to document.
- Used commercial-driver following-distance rules and the physical evidence to show the driver should have had enough room to stop.
- Documented inadequate pre-trip and post-trip inspections and uncovered missing and falsified maintenance records.
- Used rehabilitation, life-care-planning, vocational, and economic evidence to document Mr. D’s permanent disability, future medical needs, and lost earning capacity.
Confidential Eight-Figure Motorcycle and Tractor-Trailer Accident Settlement
Before the case was scheduled for trial, we secured a confidential eight-figure settlement for Mr. D. The settlement accounted for his permanent spinal cord injury, amputation, future medical needs, lost earning capacity, and the profound effect the crash had on his daily life and his family. We’re proud to have helped him.
