Serving Scranton and Lackawanna County
Serving Scranton and Lackawanna County
The Interstate 81 corridor carries freight through Lackawanna County all day, and a loaded tractor-trailer does damage a car cannot. A claim against a commercial carrier is a different exercise from a claim against a driver: federal safety rules apply, several insurers are usually involved, and the evidence that decides the case is held by the carrier.
A few lines is enough to start. Nothing you send here creates a lawyer–client relationship.
If your deadline is close, call the office rather than sending a form.
A collision with a commercial vehicle rarely involves one defendant. The driver, the motor carrier, the company that loaded the trailer and the owner of the tractor may each carry part of the responsibility, and each is likely to be insured separately. Establishing who is answerable for what is the first substantive piece of work.
Carriers are subject to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations, which govern hours of service, maintenance, inspection and driver qualification. Those rules generate records: electronic logging device data, driver qualification files, maintenance history, dispatch and load documents. Much of it is kept only for a set period, so a preservation letter goes out early.
The carrier’s own investigators are often at the scene the same day, and we work to the same timetable: the vehicles examined before they are repaired or released, the road and sightlines recorded, camera footage secured. Where the carrier will not meet a reasonable figure, the case is filed in the Lackawanna County Court of Common Pleas.
Duty and breach. That the driver, or the carrier behind them, fell short of the care the road required — hours driven beyond the limit, a load secured badly, brakes left in a condition an inspection would have caught.
Causation. That the collision caused the injury. Carriers dispute this as readily as any insurer, and in heavy-vehicle cases the argument is often about which of several impacts did the damage.
Loss. Medical costs, wages lost while you could not work, and the effect of the injury on ordinary life. Each has to be evidenced separately.
Beyond the driver, responsibility can rest with the motor carrier that employed them, a separate owner of the tractor or trailer, a broker that arranged the load, the shipper that packed it, or a maintenance contractor. Where a carrier runs through owner-operators, the contracts between them settle little: federal law makes the carrier answerable for the operation of a vehicle running under its authority.
This matters because it decides how much cover is available. Interstate carriers must hold minimum liability cover well above a private auto policy, and where several parties are involved there may be more than one policy to reach. Identifying every insurer early is part of the same exercise as establishing fault.
Pennsylvania law sets a deadline of two years from the date of injury for most personal injury actions (42 Pa.C.S. § 5524). The deadline is strict: a claim filed a day late is generally barred regardless of its merits. Claims involving a municipality or the Commonwealth carry shorter notice requirements.
If yours is not here, the answer is usually a short phone call rather than a long page.
Injury work here is done on a contingency basis: the fee is a percentage of what is recovered, and there is no fee if nothing is recovered. The percentage, and how case expenses are handled, are set out in writing before any work begins.
In the first instance your own medical benefits coverage under your auto policy, then your health insurer. The carrier’s insurer pays nothing until the claim is resolved. Part of our work is making sure bills are directed to the right place so they do not go to collection while the claim runs.
Usually the motor carrier and its insurer rather than the driver personally. Where the tractor, the trailer and the load were the responsibility of different companies, there may be several defendants and several policies to reach.
Because it shows how the operation was run: the hours the driver had already worked, when the brakes were last inspected, what dispatch was asking for. Some of those records are destroyed on a routine schedule, which is why a preservation letter is one of the first things we send.
It depends chiefly on treatment: a claim cannot be valued sensibly until the injury has settled. Carrier claims usually take longer than a private auto claim, because the records have to be obtained and more than one insurer is involved. We will tell you early which yours looks like.
Most clients never do. Where a case is filed, most are still resolved before trial. If yours is going to be the exception, you will know well in advance.
A single attorney takes responsibility for each case and remains the point of contact throughout. A short conversation is usually enough to tell you whether there is a claim worth pursuing and what the next step is.
Office address to be supplied — Scranton, Pennsylvania. Nothing sent through this site creates a lawyer–client relationship.
