North Chicago & St. Louis Injury Updates
If you have experienced an accident with a commercial tractor-trailer, you are probably lucky to have survived. Commercial big rigs are extremely heavy even when they are not carrying freight. Even a minor collision between a semi-truck and a car or SUV can result in catastrophic injuries such as brain damage or spinal cord trauma. Often the injuries caused by truck accidents force victims to endure years of expensive medical treatments and rehabilitative therapies.
The sad reality is that some truck accidents might have been prevented through proper hiring practices. Under Illinois state law, a trucking company can be held liable if they either knew or reasonably should have known that one of their truck drivers was unfit for the job so as to create a danger of harm to others.
Frequent readers of our online blog may recall a story we covered about a potentially negligent hiring situation. In that case, prosecutors charged a truck driver for falsifying a logbook, willful violation of a logbook and a failure to reduce speed for his role in an accident that killed four people and left four others injured. A review of the driver’s traffic history showed at least three prior citations for speeding as well as other traffic offenses.
This is important to know because the family members of the deceased and those injured in that accident may point to driver’s employer as someone who may have prevented the accident by simply not hiring that employee. A review of that truck driver’s prior driving history perhaps should have prevented his hire.
Based in Chicago, our law firm represents trucking accident victims throughout the greater Chicago area and adjacent communities in Kane, Will, DuPage and Lake Counties. Prospective clients should know that our Chicago truck accident lawyers offer initial consultations regarding truck accident cases free of charge.