Can I sue the truck driver’s employer?

You absolutely can sue the truck driver’s employer. And again, it can be for a number of reasons. One simple reason is if they own the vehicle, because then it’s more typical of that relationship—what’s called respondeat superior, where the employer is responsible for the employee, especially if the employee is driving the employer’s vehicle.

But it goes deeper than that. It could be a negligent hiring claim. It could be a negligent retention claim. It could be a lack of training on the part of the employer. So the simple version is: yes, you can sue them if they own the vehicle—but then it goes deeper.

For instance, we had a case recently that we handled where a construction company hired an individual and never road-tested him. He wasn’t capable of driving the vehicle he was in when he crashed into our client. They didn’t give him any training. They didn’t do anything to set him up for success. Even though they allegedly had safety people in place, those people really weren’t doing their job.

When they negligently hired him, didn’t properly test him before putting him in their vehicle, and didn’t do anything to set him up for success, they’re responsible for that. If you go deeper, there are cases where people have a bad history of collisions, violations, and similar issues. When employers allow them to continue to work for them and continue to drive their vehicles, they are negligently retaining them. In those cases, they have liability as well.

So it’s very case-specific and very fact-specific, but the employer is very often—especially in a truck crash case—100% responsible. A lot of these issues go back to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations, the FMCSR. The rules are there. The rules need to be followed. And when they aren’t followed, just like the driver is responsible, so is the employer who hired them.