Michigan Truck Accident Lawyers - Guide to Truck Accident Litigation and Legal Discovery

When a commercial truck causes a serious truck accident in Michigan there will be State and federal laws and regulations that apply that do not apply to ordinary car accidents.   A lawyer investigating these cases must be familiar with these regulations and laws.  Today as many as one in four trucks have serious safety violations that would put these trucks out of service.   Far too many of these defective trucks cause serious and preventable personal injury accidents.  In some larger cities in Michigan that use trucks for factory distribution and product shipment, such as Detroit, Grand Rapids, Flint, Ann Arbor, Monroe, and Sterling Heights, time schedules and factory inventory needs cause the numbers of out of service trucks in these Michigan cities to be higher than in surrounding rural areas of Michigan. 

Legal investigation into a truck accident personal injury or wrongful death case by a Michigan lawyer requires that attorney have specialized knowledge and experience to handle a truck accident case properly. Timing is also of the essence when it comes to hiring a lawyer after a serious truck accident has occurred.  The trucking industry has created rapid response teams of lawyers, truck accident experts and private investigators to respond immediately to the scene of a truck fatality or serious personal injury accident.  An experienced Michigan truck accident injury lawyer can prevent a trucking company and its lawyers from tampering with the scene or witnesses or disposing of important evidence like safety violations if they are contacted soon after the accident. 

Important areas for Michigan personal injury lawyers to obtain discovery in truck accident cases include:

Truck driver logbooks: these are compilations that contain the date, total miles driven on a day, the truck or truck tractor trailer name, the name of the truck carrier, and most importantly, the 24 hour period before the truck accident that has the truck drivers starting time, remarks, names of any additional drivers, shipping document numbers, and the truck driver’s duty status (whether he was off duty, sleeping, driving, or on duty but not driving).  These truck logbooks can often be used to prove hours of service violations, speeding, or other violations critical to establishing liability in a car/truck injury accident.  Inexperienced truck accident lawyers will usually fail to request these logbooks.  Log books are often tampered with or altered, or contain obviously misleading entries.   Our lawyers always suggest a personal injury lawyer work with truck experts in serious truck accident fatality and serious injury cases to inspect these truck log books closely. 

Truck electronic on-board recorders: these may be used instead, or in addition

to, the truck driver logbooks.  When a truck is involved in a serious injury accident, or when the truck driver or his lawyers refuse to admit he is at fault in causing a truck accident, the recorders can confirm such facts as whether a truck driver was speeding immediately before the truck accident occurred.  There is no duty to maintain these recorders, and they will be erased or lost if a personal injury attorney does not take immediate efforts to secure them after a truck accident.

Truck black boxes, also known as electronic log systems: Usually equipped with global positioning systems, truck black boxes show where was before the truck accident.  They contain email exchanges between the truck driver and the trucking company, which has led to astounding discoveries in many of our truck accident injury and wrongful death cases of mechanical problems, driver fatigue, and admissions made by the truck driver immediately after he was involved in causing the truck injury accident but before the truck accident lawyers became involved.

Truck accident reports: commercial truck companies must keep these for one year.  Often Michigan attorneys not familiar with truck accident cases let these important reports get lost or destroyed, and lose the ability to document admissions of fault, negligent entrustment, and negligent supervision of truck drivers who cause preventable truck accidents.

Commercial truck bills of lading: these show when and where a load was dropped off or picked up.  They can be valuable evidence of impeachment, speeding, and violations of Michigan and federal law.  These can also be destroyed if efforts are not made by a Michigan personal injury lawyer to secure them soon after a truck accident.

Truck driver gas and meal receipts are always useful.  When truck drivers are committing hours of service violations that lead to serious truck accidents, these receipts can be used to uncover the truth.  They will be destroyed if not secured by a Michigan attorney soon after any truck accident that causes a serious injury or preventable wrongful death.

Cell phone records of the truck driver, or any driver who causes a serious car accident or truck accident: cell phone records are always important for any personal injury lawyer to have as evidence that the driver was not paying attention.  Although Michigan is not a state that makes it illegal to drive using a cell phone, the scientific evidence is clear that cell phones do lead to distraction and cause more truck accidents.  In truck accident injury cases, these records can also be used to show the time of a call and our truck accident injury lawyers at Michigan Auto Law have used these records to show speed limit violations and other unsafe behavior of truck drivers in injury accident cases

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