Wrongful Death Truck Accidentas
There are several reasons why a wrongful death truck accident case may be pursued.
Firstly, a wrongful death case can provide financial protection for the family involved. It also compels the trucking company to explain the actions taken by its employee before and during the accident. Furthermore, pursuing a wrongful death case allows the story of the accident to be told by someone other than the representatives of the trucking company’s insurance.
The trucking company begins investigating the incident immediately upon learning of the accident. Its investigators arrive at the accident site, and its attorneys take possession of the truck, the driver, and the records associated with the truck. Families deserve the same level of representation and support on their side.
Families should not have to contend with a large trucking company while they are dealing with grief. That is precisely what an attorney is hired to do.
America’s Truck Accident Network connects families affected by a loss in a commercial vehicle accident with wrongful death attorneys practicing in each state. These attorneys are familiar with the federal regulations governing the operation of commercial vehicles, the defenses employed by trucking companies in fatal accident cases, and how to develop and present a successful wrongful death claim on behalf of the family.
This article uses Texas law as an example. Similar general principles apply in every jurisdiction, but the applicable laws differ based on where the incident occurred, including who is eligible to pursue a claim, the statute of limitations, and the damages available. Check the applicable laws in your state.
Read further to learn what constitutes a wrongful death claim, who may pursue such a claim, what types of compensation your family may receive, and why the initial weeks after the accident impact your ability to seek justice for a fatal truck accident.
What Constitutes a Wrongful Death Claim?
A wrongful death claim allows statutory beneficiaries to recover their own losses resulting from a death caused by conduct that would have entitled the decedent to sue had they survived.
Texas law does not permit a defendant to avoid liability solely because the person they injured did not survive long enough to pursue a civil action. Instead, the wrongful death claim passes to the designated statutory beneficiaries. Specifically, Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code Section 71.002 establishes that a person or company is liable for a death caused by its wrongful act, neglect, carelessness, or default.
The liability and negligence analysis is performed the same way it would be if your loved one had survived the accident. Your attorney must demonstrate that the truck driver or trucking company was negligent. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations continue to apply. And the evidence still consists of the black box data, the driver logs, and the maintenance records.
What changes, unlike an injury case, is who pursues the claim and for whom compensation is sought.
Who Can Pursue a Wrongful Death Claim?
Not everyone who cared for your loved one can pursue a wrongful death claim. Each state designates certain family members who are permitted to bring the claim, and the parameters are typically very narrow.
In Texas, the wrongful death claim belongs to the surviving spouse, children, and parents of the decedent (Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 71.004). Children who were adopted are entitled to pursue claims identically to biological children. These family members can pursue the claim individually, collectively, or in any combination.
One additional rule applies in Texas. If none of the family members listed above files a wrongful death claim within three months of the decedent’s death, the executor or administrator of the estate must file the claim, unless every one of those family members requests that they not do so.
Many families find this fact surprising and painful: siblings cannot pursue a wrongful death claim in Texas. Neither can grandparents, cousins, or a fiancé, no matter how close they were.
Each state draws these lines differently. Some jurisdictions permit siblings or domestic partners to pursue wrongful death claims. Other jurisdictions direct all claims through the estate. Speak with an attorney licensed in your state to determine who has standing to bring the claim.
If you are uncertain whether you have standing to pursue a wrongful death claim, ask before concluding that you cannot.
Wrongful Death Claims v. Survival Claims
Most fatalities resulting from a commercial vehicle accident involve both a wrongful death claim and a survival claim. Unfortunately, families are generally unaware that they may have both.
The wrongful death claim is brought on behalf of the family and seeks compensation for the family’s own losses, including the loss of income upon which the family relied, the loss of companionship, and the loss of the care and guidance the deceased family member provided.
The survival claim, on the other hand, is brought on behalf of the estate of the deceased (Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 71.021), and covers the damages your loved one accumulated from the moment of the collision until their death. Compensation through this claim includes your loved one’s pain and suffering before dying, the medical expenses incurred as a result of the injuries sustained in the collision, and funeral and burial costs.
Both claims are frequently brought concurrently as part of a single lawsuit, and any recovery obtained through the survival claim is distributed through your loved one’s estate to their heirs. It is ultimately your attorney’s job to address the procedural issues involved in presenting both claims. Your primary concern as a family is ensuring that both claims are presented, so that nothing your loved one was owed gets left behind.
Common Reasons for Fatal Truck Accidents
Fatal truck accidents rarely occur without some identifiable violation existing before the truck left the terminal, or a decision made by the driver in the final moments leading up to the collision. Identifying that reason is critical to developing a viable wrongful death claim.
Driver Fatigue
Federal hours-of-service regulations limit property-carrying truck drivers to 11 hours of actual driving time following 10 consecutive hours off duty (49 C.F.R. § 395.3). A fatigued driver responds slowly or fails to respond altogether. Fatigue-related crashes appear consistently in fatal crash reports, and the evidence of fatigue frequently exists in the driver’s own electronic log entries. (See our Fatigued Truck Driver Accidents page.)
Distracted Driving
Commercial vehicle drivers are prohibited from using handheld mobile phones while operating (49 C.F.R. § 392.82). At 65 miles per hour, the few seconds a driver spends glancing at a cell phone or dispatch tablet is just enough time for a collision to occur. (See our Distracted Driving Truck Accidents page.)
Speeding and Aggressive Driving
Due to its size alone, an 80,000-pound truck requires far longer distances to stop than any automobile ahead of it. Drivers pushing to meet delivery deadlines eliminate the margins designed to save lives. (See our Speeding and Aggressive Driving page.)
Mechanical Failure and Maintenance Issues
Federal regulations require carriers to keep every tractor-trailer in safe operating condition (49 C.F.R. § 396.3). Tire blowouts at high speed and brake system failures are common mechanical causes of fatal crashes, and the inspection and maintenance records often show the warning signs were there.
Underride and Rollover Crashes
Some crash configurations inherently produce fatalities, including underride crashes between passenger automobiles and trailers, and rollover crashes involving semi-trucks. Regardless of any action taken by the driver of the passenger vehicle, these crashes are frequently fatal on impact. (See our Underride Accidents and Rollover Accidents pages.)
Identifying what occurred before the collision identifies the parties potentially responsible for your loved one’s death. The evidence demonstrates what occurred. All that remains is to build the claim on those facts.
Types of Compensation in a Wrongful Death Truck Accident Case
Money may never replace a human being. Any family knows that, and any honest lawyer will say it out loud.
Compensation answers another question. What did the death cost those left behind, and who is responsible for paying that cost? The law says the trucking company is responsible for those costs, not your family.
Damages in wrongful death cases fall into the same categories as injury cases, economic, non-economic, and exemplary, but the content of the categories differs.
Economic Damages
These represent the tangible monetary losses resulting from the death. The largest is typically lost earning capacity. That means not just last year’s wages, but the earnings your loved one could have had throughout their entire working life, including increases in salary, benefits, and retirement contributions. For a 40-year-old breadwinner, lost earning capacity can run into the millions of dollars. Economic damages also include the cost of lost household services. Childcare, home repair, caretaking, everything the deceased did for their family that the family will now have to pay someone else to do, or do themselves.
Non-Economic Damages
These damages represent the family’s emotional losses. Loss of companionship and society. Mental anguish. For a child who lost a parent, this also includes the loss of that parent’s support, guidance, and counsel. In wrongful death cases, non-economic damages are awarded to each individual family member separately. Each spouse’s loss, each child’s loss, and each parent’s loss are evaluated on their own.
Exemplary Damages
When your family establishes by clear and convincing evidence that the death occurred due to fraud, malice, or gross negligence (Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 41.003), your family may recover exemplary damages. A trucking company that keeps a driver on the road beyond the federally mandated hours limits, or ignores a failed brake inspection, is the type of carrier this statute was designed for.
The compensation your family receives will depend on the evidence your attorney preserves. That brings us to the most time-sensitive part of the case.
Preserving Evidence in a Fatal Truck Crash Case
In a wrongful death case, the person who knew the most about the crash cannot testify. The evidence has to speak for them.
That is why sending a spoliation letter is the first step taken in every fatal truck crash case. That letter demands that the trucking company preserve anything that might be relevant: the truck, the trailer, all electronic information related to the crash, the driver’s logbooks, and all internal documents maintained by the company. Once the company receives that letter, destroying evidence exposes it to sanctions and to a jury instruction to draw an unfavorable inference from any destroyed evidence at trial.
The basic evidence collected in a wrongful death truck accident case includes the following.
The Black Box
The truck’s electronic control module collects data such as speed, braking, acceleration, and steering activity in the seconds leading up to impact. The black box provides answers to the questions your loved one cannot: how fast was the truck traveling, how quickly did the driver react, and did the driver even attempt to stop? (See our Truck Black Box ECM Data page.)
The Driver’s Logs
Most commercial drivers are required to use electronic logging devices that track and record duty status and total driving time (49 C.F.R. § 395.8 and Part 395, Subpart B). If the driver exceeded the allowed hours of service, those logs demonstrate it. And if the logs were falsified, that becomes its own powerful issue inside the case. (See our Truck Driver Logbooks and ELDs page.)
Post-Crash Testing
Federal regulations require post-accident alcohol testing as soon as practicable, within eight hours, and drug testing within 32 hours of a qualifying fatal crash (49 C.F.R. § 382.303). Your attorney will verify that the required testing took place, obtain the results, and treat a missing test as a red flag worthy of investigation.
The Driver’s Personnel File and Company Records
These include hiring records, previous disciplinary actions, prior crashes or violations involving the driver, documented safety training, and the maintenance records for the equipment. In many cases, a fatal crash case is decided not by what occurred immediately before the crash, but by what management knew about the problems beforehand and failed to act on.
Medical Documentation
The autopsy report and the medical examiner’s findings document the cause of death, and the treating physician records establish what your loved one endured from the moment of impact until their passing. Employment and income records anchor the economic damages case.
Evidence preservation in a wrongful death case starts from the moment of the crash, not from the filing date of the lawsuit. Data in the electronic control module gets deleted periodically. More evidence disappears as the truck is repaired and eventually resold.
All evidence has an expiration date. Families benefit from having their attorney’s investigators gathering it as early as possible.
Working With Expert Witnesses
A wrongful death truck accident case is assembled by a team, and your attorney must hire the proper expert witnesses.
- Reconstruction experts recreate the sequence of events surrounding the fatal crash using the physical evidence gathered from the scene along with the digital data from the truck’s electronic control module, and analyze exactly how and why the collision occurred.
- Economists quantify what your loved one’s death cost your family monetarily, including lost future earnings, benefits, and household services, reduced to a defensible number a jury can rely on.
- Vocational experts establish what career path your loved one would have followed, which is critical for younger workers whose greatest earning years were still ahead.
- Medical experts document the cause of death and, in survival claims, describe any conscious pain and suffering your loved one experienced.
The trucking company will employ its own experts to offer conflicting opinions about what transpired. Families should not enter that contest unprepared, or they risk being overwhelmed by the competing testimony.
If Your Loved One Is Blamed for Their Own Death
Be prepared for the trucking company to argue that your loved one contributed to their own death. Blaming the decedent is a common tactic in fatal crash cases, simply because the decedent cannot defend themselves.
Comparative fault applies in wrongful death cases in virtually the same fashion as in personal injury cases. Texas employs proportionate responsibility (Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 33.001). If your loved one is determined to have been 50 percent or less responsible, that percentage reduces the family’s recovery. If your loved one is deemed more than 50% responsible, there is no recovery at all.
Why do companies fight so hard to shift blame? Because every percentage point they successfully shift onto your loved one reduces your family’s recovery dollar for dollar, and enough percentage points equal zero.
The trucking company will tell its story about what your loved one did. The evidence tells what really happened.
Preserve it.
Time Limits for Filing Wrongful Death Suits
In Texas, wrongful death suits generally must be initiated within two years from the date of death, not the date of the incident (Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 16.003(b)). If your loved one lived for some period after the accident, the clock begins running on the date of their passing.
There are exceptions. Claims involving minors are sometimes governed by different limitations rules, and other jurisdictions impose different periods than Texas, some as short as 12 months. These limitations are very fact-specific, and failure to meet them may result in dismissal of the claim. Only an attorney can advise you on which limitation period governs your particular claim.
If a government vehicle was involved in the fatal accident, formal notice-of-claim procedures come into play, and those can create filing deadlines as short as mere months. Those deadlines frequently arrive while families are still grieving, which is exactly why families miss them.
Two years is the statutory deadline governing most wrongful death claims. The realistic deadline is much sooner, since the evidence does not wait. The strongest wrongful death claims are built when the attorney’s investigators begin gathering evidence shortly after the crash.
Common Myths About Wrongful Death Truck Accident Claims
Truck accident claims are complicated enough. They should not be made even more confusing by misinformation. Here is the truth behind six common myths surrounding wrongful death claims in Texas.
Can siblings file a wrongful death claim?
No. The statutory beneficiaries are limited to the spouse, children, and parents of the decedent (Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 71.004). Regardless of how close a sibling was to the deceased, siblings are precluded from filing a wrongful death claim in Texas. A sibling may still be able to recover through the estate’s survival claim if they are an heir, and some other states do permit siblings to file a wrongful death action.
Are wrongful death claims and survival claims the same thing?
No. Wrongful death claims compensate the individuals closest to the deceased for the losses resulting from the premature death of their loved one. These may include:
- Loss of consortium and love
- Lost future earnings and income
- Loss of support and companionship
- Loss of care and guidance
Survival claims, on the other hand, compensate the estate of the deceased for the losses that arose before the time of their passing, including:
- Medical expenses incurred before death
- Pain and suffering endured before death
- Funeral and burial expenses
A wrongful death claim and a survival claim can usually be filed simultaneously. However, each type of claim has its own distinct elements that must be met in order to prevail.
If my loved one was partially at fault, does my family have no claim?
Maybe. Each state has comparative fault rules that affect the compensation recovered when the deceased is found partially responsible. In Texas, if the deceased is found more than 50 percent at fault, the family is completely barred from recovering damages. A thorough investigation and reconstruction of the events leading up to the collision is therefore crucial, and the truck’s electronic data plays an important role in establishing what happened and who was most at fault. The trucking company will typically deny responsibility for its driver’s actions, so the burden falls on your family’s attorney to produce the evidence demonstrating the company’s negligence. Remember, the person who knew the most about the crash cannot testify. That makes obtaining the evidence even more critical.
Is there unlimited time to file a wrongful death lawsuit?
No. In Texas, there is generally a two-year limitation period from the date of death within which a wrongful death claim must be brought (Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 16.003(b)). Depending on the circumstances, different limitations periods may apply, such as for minors, or different rules may govern, such as government-vehicle cases. Never rely solely on your own calculation of these limitations periods. Always consult an experienced wrongful death lawyer to ensure compliance.
Are wrongful death settlements divided pro-rata among beneficiaries?
Not necessarily. Each statutory beneficiary’s damages are calculated separately, according to their individual loss, but the actual division of a settlement is not always pro-rata. The distribution depends on negotiations between counsel representing the beneficiaries, or on court approval when necessary, especially where minor children are involved. If the case reaches a verdict, the jury divides the award among the family members directly.
Must wrongful death cases go through trial?
Wrongful death cases rarely go to trial. Most are resolved through negotiation and settlement. However, strong settlements occur when the attorney has prepared for trial: the evidence has been collected and preserved, expert testimony has been obtained, and liability has been established. When a trucking company knows it has a weak position going into trial, it is far more likely to settle the claim for full value.
Need Help From a Wrongful Death Attorney After Losing Someone in a Commercial Truck Collision?
Losing someone in a truck accident creates an overwhelming array of emotional challenges. What complicates things further is that multiple clocks start ticking immediately after the accident.
The first is the evidence clock, and it begins upon impact. The truck’s data recorder, the driver’s logs, and the physical evidence at the scene all begin eroding quickly. The second is the legal clock. Every state sets a specific timeframe within which a wrongful death lawsuit must be filed.
America’s Truck Accident Network connects grieving families who have lost a loved one in a commercial truck wreck with experienced wrongful death lawyers throughout the United States. Your initial consultation is complimentary and carries no obligation, and your wrongful death lawyer only earns a fee if your family recovers.
Let someone else shoulder the legal burden. Let them fight for justice while your family focuses on healing.
Attorney Advertising & Legal Information Notice: This article provides general educational information and does not constitute formal legal advice. America’s Truck Accident Network is a case evaluation network, not a law firm, and submitting an inquiry does not form an attorney-client relationship. Rules, comparative fault allocations, and filing deadlines vary by jurisdiction. Always consult an attorney licensed in your state.
