Can You Sue For A Truck Accident Caused By Poor Truck Maintenance?
Because trucks are so heavy, even small maintenance problems can lead to serious accidents. If you were injured in a truck accident, proving that a truck had poor maintenance could help you win your case.
Does Poor Maintenance Mean Accident Liability?
Poor maintenance can often establish liability in a truck accident case. In order to establish liability, the maintenance problems have to be related to the accident.
For example, a truck driver not following the oil change schedule usually won't lead to liability for the accident because late oil changes don't really affect how the truck drives in terms of the risk of an accident. On the other hand, failing to properly maintain brakes can directly increase the risk of an accident since poorly maintained brakes can make it harder to stop the truck.
If the maintenance issue does potentially impact safety, it's also important to look at how the accident happened. Even if a truck had bad brakes, if the other driver pulled out right in front of the truck, the brakes might not matter since the truck wouldn't have been able to stop in time.
Multiple Factors in a Truck Crash
In many truck accidents, there are actually several factors involved. Some of them can help your case, some of them can hurt it, and some of them don't matter.
For example, if a truck driver was texting and rear ends you, bad brake maintenance might not matter at all if the truck driver was never looking up and never braked. On the other hand, if the truck driver tries to lie and say you pulled out in front of them, showing the truck had bad brakes might help people believe your side of the story.
In some cases, bad maintenance will split the fault. If you did pull out in front of the truck but it should have been able to stop in time with good brakes, you can still recover compensation but might get less since you contributed to the crash.
Proving a Lack of Maintenace
When you file your truck accident case, you're entitled to get maintenance records and other information from the truck company. Your injury lawyer can use this information to help figure out what happened in the accident. Your injury attorney will then be able to present the truck's maintenance history in court and possibly get an expert witness to explain to the jury how the bad maintenance caused the truck accident.
Contact a law firm like Labine Law Firm to learn more.
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