“Commercial vehicles” can range from 18-wheeler semi trucks to buses to delivery vans to pizza delivery cars and anything in between. Whenever a driver is engaged in commercial activity or business by driving – usually in the form of deliveries or transportation – then any crash they cause becomes their employer’s problem, often changing who you might sue as the victim.
Victims in a commercial vehicle accident can often sue the driver who hit them directly, but there may be opportunities to sue their employer, too. A commercial driver’s bosses can often be held accountable in place of the driver for on-the-job negligence, but they can also be held accountable for their own mistakes and misconduct – e.g., negligent vehicle upkeep. However, your ability to sue in the first place is often limited if you have a limited tort car insurance policy, so there may be hurdles to overcome.
For help with a commercial vehicle accident, call The Reiff Law Firm’s Philadelphia, PA car accident lawyers right away at (215) 709-6940.
Can You Sue for a Commercial Vehicle Crash in Pennsylvania?
Before we can look at who you can sue, we need to look at whether you can sue in the first place. Car accidents in Pennsylvania work on a “choice no-fault” insurance system, which sometimes blocks a car accident victim’s access to a lawsuit.
In a traditional no-fault system, drivers cannot sue for injuries in a car crash unless they have “serious injuries” that meet certain definitions. Instead, they rely on coverage from their own insurance, which pays them no matter who caused the crash. If you have a “limited tort” policy in Pennsylvania, then you fall under similar rules – though we have more excuses aside from personal injuries that allow you to sue under 75 Pa.C.S. § 1705(d)(1). If you have a “full tort” policy, these restrictions don’t apply, and you can always sue.
Many commercial vehicle accidents are going to meet these standards, especially when trucks are involved. Our Wayne, PA car accident lawyers often see commercial truck and bus accidents meeting these thresholds to sue, given that the victims – often in smaller cars – can face very serious injuries from a huge vehicle like an 18-wheeler or a bus.
Even if you do have the right to sue, your own insurance might cover some damages up front without you needing to prove fault. This can help you get interim payments for medical care and other expenses while you take the time to file a lawsuit against the at-fault parties.
Suing Commercial Drivers Directly in Pennsylvania
A commercial driver needs to have insurance like any other driver. This often means that there is some money there for them to cover your injuries with, especially given the fact that commercial drivers often need to carry much higher insurance than the typical driver.
Drivers can be held directly liable for their own fault, but often, these drivers are just everyday people who cannot afford to pay for damages above and beyond policy limits. This might ultimately limit how much you are getting out of the case if you only sue the driver and they cannot afford to pay you full damages.
Drivers who are self-employed or work as contractors might be the only party you can sue, as they have no “employer.”
Suing a Driver’s Commercial Employer for Crashes in Pennsylvania
When a driver is working for an employer within the scope of their duties, any negligence they commit or accidents they cause can be pinned on the employer instead of the individual employee. This allows you, e.g., to sue stores for a slip and fall instead of suing an individual store worker, but it also applies to commercial drivers and the companies they work for. Additionally, a trucking company or other transportation company might be liable in its own right for mistakes it made, allowing you to sue them for their share of direct fault.
Vicarious Liability
The principle of “vicarious liability” that allows us to hold an employer liable for an employee’s mistakes is called “respondeat superior.” In this system, the employer answers for what their employee did in the service of the employer.
For this to work, the employee’s negligence has to have happened during the course of their job duties. For commercial drivers, driving is a core part of their job duties, and this usually qualifies. Employers might argue that an employee was outside the scope of their job duties if they were violating company policy by speeding, driving under the influence, or otherwise violating the law. This argument is often unsuccessful because whether they were following company policy or not, they were hired to drive. There is, however, a successful argument that might stop your case: if the driver was doing personal errands or taking their commercial vehicle way off route for personal reasons, they might not have been in service of their employer when the crash happened.
As long as you can prove the crash happened during the driver’s job tasks, then you can often hold the employer to pay for all of the damages the worker would have paid for.
Direct Liability
A commercial driver’s employer might also share liability for the crash happening in the first place. While the driver behind the wheel will face most of the blame in most cases, they might have crashed because of problems with the vehicle, or the employer might share negligence in putting a dangerous driver behind the wheel in the first place.
Suing the driver’s employer for negligent hiring or retention of a dangerous employee is common, though not always successful. Employers must screen commercial drivers for a past history of driving violations, vehicular assault, and other issues, and failing to look hard enough to find these errors – or hiring a driver they knew was dangerous – could be negligent.
Additionally, commercial drivers often use a company vehicle, like a truck or van from their employer’s fleet. These vehicles are often kept and maintained by the company, not the driver. That means that any mechanical failures that cause a crash or contribute to the crash might be the company’s mistake.
Call Our Pennsylvania Commercial Car Accident Lawyers Today
If you were hit by a commercial driver, call the Allentown, PA car accident lawyers at The Reiff Law Firm at (215) 709-6940 for a free case evaluation.
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