Who Can Be Held Liable in a Missouri Truck Accident?

The driver whose name is scrawled on the police report is almost never the only person responsible for a Missouri truck accident.

Behind that driver sits a trucking company that set the schedule, a shop that signed off on the brakes, a warehouse crew that loaded the trailer and, sometimes, a manufacturer that built a part that failed. Most people hurt in a crash with a semi never learn that, because the first call they get is from an insurance company that would very much like to keep the conversation simple. It shouldn’t. The number of parties who share the blame decides how much insurance is in play and how a truck accident claim gets built.

Here’s how Missouri sorts out liability, what the driver answers for, when the company and its contractors answer too, and what evidence proves it.

In Missouri, Fault Is a Pie, and Everybody Gets a Slice

Missouri uses pure comparative fault. A jury assigns every party a percentage of the blame, including you, and a defendant with less than 51 percent of the fault pays only its share. Your own share comes off the top. If you were 20 percent at fault for a crash that cost you $500,000, you can still recover $400,000, and no percentage cuts you off.

Commercial vehicle crashes killed 136 people in Missouri last year, according to the state transportation department. In serious crashes, the list of potentially liable parties is important. A driver’s personal assets are usually thin, and the policy behind him is the one that pays. Federal rules mandate that most interstate carriers hauling ordinary freight carry at least $750,000 in liability coverage, against a $25,000 minimum for a Missouri car. Every additional defendant with a share of fault is one more policy on the table. Miss one, and that slice of compensation can go uncollected.

The Driver Answers for the Driving

Start with what the driver controlled: speed, following distance, lane changes, the smartphone, and, above all, the hours behind the wheel.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration caps a property-carrying driver at 11 hours of driving inside a 14-hour window, requires a 30-minute break after eight hours behind the wheel, and limits the week to 60 or 70 hours. The electronic logging device in the cab records whether that driver stayed within limits.

A driver who blew past the limits has handed you evidence of negligence. So did a driver who was texting, drunk, or speeding through the work zone on Interstate 44. A driver who ran 13 hours because dispatch told him the load was late is negligent, and the company that pressured him is negligent too. In a Missouri truck accident case, the driver is usually where the trail starts, not where it finishes.

The Company Answers for the Driver, and for Itself

Like every state, Missouri holds an employer responsible for what an employee does on the job. A trucking company answers for its driver’s negligence the moment that driver was working a route for the company, whether or not anyone in the front office did anything wrong. Lawyers call this respondent superior. You can call it the boss paying for the crash.

The company also answers for its own choices. For example:

• Hiring a driver with a record it never checked
• Putting a driver on the road with training that was just a video and a signature
• Skipping the maintenance required by federal inspection rules
• Letting a truck roll out with brakes out of adjustment
• Building a pay structure that rewards running past the hours limit

Each of those is a clear example of trucking company negligence in its own right.

Next, look outside the company. Carriers hire out a lot of the work, and the contractor who did it badly can carry his own share of fault. For example:

• A broker’s warehouse that loaded the trailer top-heavy and unsecured
• An outside shop that signed off on an unfinished brake job
• The manufacturer of a tire or steering component that failed

Sorting out which of those parties bears the loss is most of the work in a commercial vehicle case.

Proving It Before the Evidence Disappears

Fault in a truck crash is proved from the records more than the testimony. However, the records don’t last forever. Federal rules require a carrier to keep a driver’s duty logs and supporting documents for only six months from the date it receives them. The truck’s engine control module holds a snapshot of the exact speed, braking, and throttle around a hard event (like a crash), and no rule requires the carrier to keep it.

That’s why the first thing a lawyer does in a semi-truck accident case is send out a preservation letter. That puts the carrier and every contractor on notice that the logs, the electronic data, the driver’s qualification file, the maintenance records, the dispatch messages, and the loading paperwork must be kept.

From there, the case is built with an accident reconstruction, the physical evidence at the scene, and the paper trail every company on that list left behind. If you wait even a few months to make that call, some of the evidence will already be gone, legally.

Casey & Devoti Finds Every Party That Owes You

A truck crash leaves you with one police report, one insurance adjuster, and a long list of people who had a hand in what happened. Our firm has handled serious trucking cases from our St. Louis office since 1983, in the courts of eastern Missouri and southern Illinois. We find that often the defendant nobody considered is the difference between a fair recovery and a fast settlement.

We investigate the carrier, the contractors, and the equipment, and we send the preservation letters before the six-month clock runs out. If you or someone you love was hurt in a crash with a commercial truck, reach out to our firm for a free consultation. The driver might have caused the crash, but he’s rarely the only one who owes you for it.