Liability means legal responsibility. To obtain any judgment and therefore any money in a court case, someone must be proved to be legally responsible for the acts that caused the injury. The court is ultimately responsible for determining who is liable for any incident. You, as the victim of the accident, will be acting as a plaintiff. The difficulty is sometimes figuring out who should serve as the defendant. There are lots of reasons a big truck can be involved in an accident. Who is to blame is sometimes hard to figure out. A legal firm has specialists in this area who can advise you. Together you can figure this out. Obviously, the driver of the big truck will be named as a defendant, but there may be others. The trucking company that the driver works for may qualify as a defendant if the driver was under the control of the company as part of his employment. There may be others as well. As part of trying to avoid having to pay, the company will try to claim that they had no control over the driver. This is usually true only if the driver is an independent contractor, and even then, that defense may not stand up in court. With few exceptions, the trucking company is found to be at least partly liable in court. The only exception is if the driver deliberately tried to cause harm, such as in the case of road rage. There may be other people or entities serving as defendants too. This is why your lawyer must hear all the details of the accident before determining who to sue. Other possibilities for the role of defendant include: 1)The person or company that leased the truck or trailer 2)The shipper of the cargo 3)The loader of the cargo 4)The owner of the truck cab 5)The owner of the truck trailer 6)The manufacturer of the truck, the trailer, or any part of these that could have caused the accident. Although it is not usually done, it may even be appropriate for the manufacturer of the cargo to be a defendant. One case in which the manufacturer was successfully sued occurred when chemical gas was released into the air, resulting in respiratory problems for the accident victims. In that case, important factors were who was informed of the danger of the cargo and what safety measures were taken. Obviously, each of these potential defendants will try to convince you that other persons or entities are the ones who should be held liable. Each defendant that actually ends up in court will spend substantial time trying to convince the court that you were really more to blame for the accident. That is just one of the reasons you need a good law firm. The terms “big truck,” “commercial truck,” “big rig,” and “semi” are used interchangeably in these FAQ. Basically, we mean trucks that weigh between 10,000 and 80,000 pounds. That’s up to 25 times what a typical passenger car weighs.