Late-night and daytime television are supported in large part by lawyers seeking out motorists involved in large truck crashes, and with good reason: it’s a lucrative business.
Large verdicts against trucking fleets are increasing dramatically, both in number and in size of awards, and have exploded by a factor of 11 in the last six years.
According to data compiled by the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI), which created a trucking litigation database detailing information on 600 cases between 2006 and 2019, there were 26 cases with judgements in excess of $1 million during the first five years of the data. In the last five years there were nearly 300. From 2010 to 2018, ATRI found the size of verdict awards grew 51.7% annually while standard inflation grew 1.7% and healthcare costs grew 2.9% during the same period.
