Harpootlian built his case using satellite data routinely collected by the company to track its trucks' movements. He also used other documents to reconstruct the driver's movements. Taken together, the evidence proved that the trucker's written log, which showed him dutifully adhering to federally mandated work-rest ratios, was false. Again, the secret of the plaintiffs' success was a painstaking reconstruction of the driver's movements during the time leading up to the accident - using receipts, bills of lading, and other documents to prove that the driver had falsified his log to evade federal regulations limiting hours worked. Burns predicts that future lawsuits will also hold the shipper and receiver liable for tired trucker crashes, since they often are a prime source of pressure for truckers to exceed federal hours restrictions.
Drivers know that late delivery can cause an entire factory or assembly line to be shut down.
The tension between the legal requirement to pull over when tired, and the economic requirement to deliver on time, has not been addressed by the industry. He notes that Department of Transportation regulation 49 CFR Sect. Harpootlian notes that lawyers taking on the trucking industry need to immerse themselves not just in federal regulations, but in state regulations as well. Constructing a Case There does appear to be an imbalance in truck-litigation expertise between defense and plaintiffs' lawyers. Lawyers who defend truck cases frequently have a regular diet of truck-crash litigation and can justify spending significant time each year attending CLE programs it.