If you are hurt by a truck in Cleveland, Ohio - KNR can help.
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Legal Help for the Injured
Cleveland’s highways, including I-90, I-77, I-71, I-480, and I-490, are heavily trafficked by large trucks and commercial vehicles, and lake-effect weather off Lake Erie only adds to the danger. When these trucks crash, the results can be catastrophic. If you have been seriously injured in a Cleveland truck accident, the experienced Cleveland injury attorneys at Kisling, Nestico & Redick are here to help. We know how overwhelming it can be to deal with medical bills, missed work, and insurance claims. Let KNR fight for the full compensation you deserve.
To schedule a free, no-risk consultation with a Cleveland truck accident lawyer near you, call (216) 658-1330 today.
We're Award-Winning & Highly-Skilled Attorneys
Cleveland sits where I-90, I-71, I-77, I-480, and I-490 meet, and the freight that moves through the Port of Cleveland and the Flats industrial areas puts semis on every one of them. The Innerbelt, the I-71/I-77 split, the I-480 Valley View Bridge, the Route 2 Shoreway, the Ohio Turnpike, and the surface streets that feed the port and the steel and rail yards along the Cuyahoga carry the heaviest commercial traffic in the county. State and local crash records also point to these surface-street hot spots:
These locations are prone to truck and other vehicle collisions because of high traffic volumes and complex road layouts, and lake-effect snow off Lake Erie makes every one of them worse from November to March. Our Cleveland car accident statistics page gives the broader crash picture for Cuyahoga County. Whatever the location, the outcome is driven by semi-truck versus car physics: an 80,000-pound truck against a 4,000-pound car, and the people in the car absorb the difference.
If you were involved in a Cleveland truck accident, the following steps protect your health and your claim:
The most common causes of truck accidents include:
At Kisling, Nestico & Redick, we have handled truck accident claims in Cleveland for decades. We have recovered compensation in all types of truck crashes, including:
Due to their size and weight, truck accidents often result in severe injuries. Common injuries from truck accidents include:
Cleveland’s trauma centers, including MetroHealth (a verified Level I trauma center), University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center (Level I), and Fairview Hospital (Level II), treat many of the region’s most serious truck-crash injuries. The worst of them, fuel and cargo fires and crushed passenger compartments, are why our Cleveland burn injury lawyers and Cleveland spinal cord injury lawyers are often part of the same truck accident team.
Severe injuries like TBIs, spinal cord injuries, or amputations often require ongoing medical care, physical therapy, and other rehabilitation, and PTSD or other psychological effects can make it hard to return to daily life or work. The impact extends to the family, who may need to provide care and support. The severity of your injuries drives the value of your claim, because more serious injuries mean higher medical bills, longer recovery, and larger lifestyle changes. KNR documents the full physical, emotional, and financial impact so that the compensation reflects it, including future medical expenses and lost income.
After a Cleveland truck accident, it is essential to determine liability in trucking accidents, whether it rests with the driver, the trucking company, or another party. Liability rests with the party whose negligence caused the collision, such as the driver speeding or the company failing to maintain the truck. Truck drivers, trucking companies, cargo owners and loaders, maintenance providers, and truck manufacturers all owe a duty to act as a reasonable party would, and negligence is a failure to do so. Identifying the responsible party allows you to pursue compensation from their insurer or directly from the business if needed.
Truckers have a commercial driver’s license, and in many ways, are held to a higher standard than regular drivers. Unfortunately, a common cause of truck accidents is still truck driver negligence.
CDL (commercial driver’s license) holders must obey the rules of the road. This means complying with federal trucking regulations and acting carefully to avoid an accident. The truck driver is negligent when they fail to take these steps.
Truck drivers can be independent contractors or employees. When a trucker is an employee who negligently causes a crash, the employer-trucking company is liable for the driver’s actions.
However, truck drivers are not always the negligent party. The truck driver’s employer is often responsible, and their neglect is the underlying cause of the collision.
Trucking companies that fail to inspect and maintain their vehicles properly are negligent. For example, a runaway truck accident could occur if poorly maintained brakes fail.
Ensuring all roadways are designed to be as safe as possible is a challenge. Engineers have to consider the amount of traffic on the road, the shape of the road, lighting, passing and no-passing zones, and necessary traffic instructions, like stop signs and lights, yield signs, and speed limits.
These factors must also be considered in construction zones. Construction companies and municipalities need to ensure signs and safety equipment are visible yet do not impede the driver’s ability to drive safely.
In some circumstances, truck accidents arise because the roadways or work zones are poorly designed and do not take into account the size, weight, and limitations of commercial vehicles.
Truckers and trucking companies are highly regulated by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA).
The federal and state trucking regulations that apply in Ohio cover several areas. Some of the ones we often address during truck accident cases in Cuyahoga County include:
At KNR, we are well-versed in FMCSA regulations and will thoroughly analyze the evidence for any violation. Identifying and proving such violations is crucial in establishing negligence.
Federal hours-of-service rules limit how long a commercial driver can stay behind the wheel, and violations are a frequent source of negligence in truck crashes. Under FMCSA rules, a property-carrying driver may drive a maximum of 11 hours after 10 consecutive hours off duty, and may not drive beyond the 14th consecutive hour after coming on duty. Drivers are also capped at 60 hours on duty in 7 days or 70 hours in 8 days, and they can restart that weekly clock only after 34 consecutive hours off duty. When a driver or carrier falsifies logs or pushes past these limits, those records often become powerful evidence that fatigue and corner-cutting caused the wreck.
If you are injured in a truck accident, we will thoroughly investigate the incident. We will look into the truck driver’s history as well as the trucking company’s records. In addition, we will search for any indication of FMCSA regulatory violations.
At first glance, a violation may seem minor. However, failure to conduct even one inspection could lead to a defective truck going out, placing the driver and other motorists at risk. Prior violations can establish a truck driver or motor carrier’s negligence. Therefore, they should be held liable for your injuries. Our guide to proving a truck accident claim walks through the evidence step by step.
Fight for Everything You’re Owed
When a truck accident injures you, and it is another person or business’s fault, we are here to help you pursue full and fair compensation for your injuries.
The attorneys at KNR have assisted numerous Cleveland truck accident victims in securing the compensation they deserve. Whether through an insurance settlement or a court award, your truck accident compensation should cover both economic and non-economic damages. To understand the full range of recovery available, see how truck accident damages and compensation are calculated.
Economic damages, sometimes called special damages, are the losses with a dollar figure attached:
Non-economic damages, sometimes called general damages, cover the harm that has no receipt: the pain and suffering you endured, your emotional distress and mental anguish, and the loss of consortium resulting from your injury. Valuing these damages is subjective, and we may encourage you to keep a journal documenting your pain and psychological impact to strengthen your case.
If the at-fault party acted particularly recklessly, you might be entitled to punitive damages. These are designed to punish the wrongdoer rather than compensate you for injuries.
If a loved one initially survived a truck accident but later passed away, their estate can pursue a personal injury claim for the damages incurred from the accident to the date of their death. This is known as a survival action.
If your relative died immediately from their injuries, you would need to pursue a claim for fatal truck accidents. This claim covers your mental anguish, the loss of income, services, and companionship due to their passing.
A demand is only as strong as the proof behind it. We obtain the police report, the photos you or witnesses took, and any traffic, weather, or surveillance video, and we seek out witnesses who did not come forward on their own. Because the trucking company controls the records that matter most, we send a spoliation letter early and use discovery to obtain the truck’s electronic control module (black-box) data, the driver’s hours-of-service logs and qualification file, the carrier’s maintenance and inspection records, and its history of accidents and regulatory violations. To put a value on your injuries, we work with accident reconstructionists and trucking experts on liability, and with medical, vocational, and economic experts on the pain you have suffered, the care you will need, and the income you will lose.
Even if you were partly at fault for the crash, you may still recover. Ohio follows modified comparative negligence under ORC 2315.33: you can recover damages as long as you are not more than 50% responsible for the collision, and your recovery is reduced by your share of fault. For example, if a jury values your case at $100,000 but finds you 20% at fault, you would receive $80,000. Because insurers use any hint of shared fault to cut what they pay, building a clear liability record is one of the most important things we do for your truck accident claim.
KNR secured a $3,100,000 settlement for a client who suffered severe injuries from a truck collision on I-71. The settlement resulted from pre-suit negotiations and was essential in helping the driver get his life back in order without financial devastation.
We were able to obtain a $750,000 settlement for our client, who was t-boned by a truck in a Stark County intersection.
Our client was heading west on Windmill Road in Portage Township when the defendant failed to stop at a stop sign and hit our client’s car. Our client suffered numerous injuries which needed multiple doctor appointments. The case was settled for $912,500.
Following a truck wreck, the best way to get compensation is typically through an insurance settlement. The trucking company should have a liability policy with a significant policy limit, and an independent-contractor driver typically needs proof of insurance to work. However, the presence of an applicable insurance policy does not guarantee a settlement or a smooth claim process.
Another important FMCSA regulation is insurance coverage. Truck drivers and companies must have public liability insurance that covers both property damage and bodily injuries.
The minimum policy limit depends on the truck’s weight and the cargo type. For example, for-hire vehicles under 10,001 pounds moving non-hazardous freight must have at least $300,000 in coverage under 49 CFR Part 387, while heavier non-hazardous freight haulers must carry at least $750,000.
These regulations are often helpful to truck accident victims. Such insurance requirements increase the likelihood that the at-fault party has insurance, and policy limits are higher than personal auto insurance requirements, so there is a greater likelihood of obtaining a fair settlement for your injuries.
Do not expect the adjuster to be friendly or helpful. The insurer’s job is to protect the policyholder and its bottom line, and it will pay only what it has to. It will ask you for a recorded statement; your best response is to decline and speak with a Cleveland 18 wheeler accident lawyer first.
The insurer will also look for any evidence that you were fully or partly at fault and use it to reduce your payout, and it will ask you to sign a medical waiver that opens all of your medical records, not just those from the crash, so it can blame your injuries on something from before. By working with an attorney, you avoid both traps. Your lawyer supplies the records the adjuster actually needs and pushes back on comparative negligence claims to reduce your assigned share of fault.
After being injured in a trucking accident, your focus may be on getting a settlement. We will strive to obtain you a fair settlement as quickly as possible, though this can take months or years. When you accept a settlement, you do so in exchange for agreeing not to file a lawsuit against the liable party or for dropping an ongoing lawsuit. However, a settlement is not always possible. You may find that the truck driver or trucking company was not insured as required. Or, the insurer may have wrongfully denied your claim and refused to settle. Another possible problem is an insurer that simply refuses to negotiate in good faith and resolve the claim for a fair amount.
When we cannot obtain a pre-trial settlement and the insurer is acting in bad faith, we will prepare for trial.
If you need to take your truck accident claim to court, you have to prove the other party’s liability, that the negligence directly caused the accident, and the type, severity, and cost of your injuries. During a trial, we present that evidence to a judge and jury in the most persuasive manner possible.
One of the pre-trial phases is discovery. During discovery, the parties exchange information through interrogatories (questions), requests for documents, and depositions (out-of-court interviews with witnesses and relevant parties). We begin our own investigation before any lawsuit is filed, but some records are controlled by other parties and can only be obtained through discovery: the trucker’s driving log and employment history, the trucking company’s maintenance records and accident history, and the truck’s stored electronic data.
Witnesses to your truck crash can make a significant difference, especially if a witness is an objective third party. If someone saw the crash and is willing to testify, we will ask them to speak in court regarding what they saw and heard.
The Ohio statute of limitations for personal injury and truck accident lawsuits is two years under ORC 2305.10. This means that you generally have two years from the date of the crash to file. For fatal crashes, wrongful death claims follow their own two-year deadline under ORC 2125.02, measured from the date of death. These deadlines only apply to lawsuits and not your insurance claim.
Insurers require that you notify them of a claim soon after the accident. Waiting to notify the insurer can lead to your claim being denied based on the delay.
Contact a truck accident lawyer if you are worried about the statute of limitations.
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What Makes KNR Special?
Since our inception in 2005, Kisling, Nestico & Redick has been dedicated to helping personal injury victims fight for the compensation they deserve after an accident affects their way of life. We have helped more than 10,000 people, and we’re ready to keep fighting for Ohioans and anyone who deserves compensation for their personal injury claims.
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Contact KNRWhat Makes KNR Special?
At Kisling, Nestico & Redick (KNR), we are committed to making the recovery process after a truck collision in Cleveland as smooth as possible. Dealing with insurance claims can be overwhelming when you are in pain, but our experienced lawyers know how to get results.
With 750+ years of combined legal experience and substantial results for Ohio clients, including many right here in Cuyahoga County, we are confident in our ability to help you secure maximum compensation. Our Ohio truck accident attorneys handle these claims statewide and bring that experience to every Cleveland case.
“Excellent, in all aspects. Kind and compassionate, and listened to details. Well, satisfied. Thanks, guys !!” John P.
From understanding liability to knowing the steps to take after a collision, these answers cover the questions Cleveland truck accident victims ask us most.
If you or a loved one has been injured in a truck accident in Cleveland, KNR is here to help. With offices across Ohio, we proudly serve the Cleveland area and offer free, no-obligation consultations. We also handle related cases for our neighbors, from Cleveland car accident lawyers to Cleveland motorcycle accident lawyers. Our experienced team is ready to take on your case. Call (216) 658-1330 or 1-800-HURT-NOW today for your free consultation, or schedule a free consultation online.
Truck Accidents
Truck Accidents
Truck Accidents
Truck Accidents
Truck Accidents
Truck Accidents
