When trucking companies hire drivers, they are selecting employees who will be operating large commercial motor vehicles that sometimes weigh as much as 80,000 pounds. In some cases, these truckers will be transporting hazardous material and heavy loads.
It’s imperative that trucking companies do their due diligence, ensuring that drivers have the proper credentials and the necessary experience to be safe on the roads. Unfortunately, companies often fail to do that. When a company engages in negligent hiring, unqualified drivers can end up causing serious or even fatal collisions.
In these tragic situations, accident victims have the right to pursue a claim for justice. In fact, drivers can pursue a case not just against the trucker whose carelessness caused a crash, but also against the hiring company that failed to fulfill its obligation to put only safe drivers behind the wheel.
If you or someone you love was harmed by an unqualified truck driver, the St. Louis truck accident lawyers at Drafahl Law Firm are here to help. We have extensive knowledge of FMCSA training requirements, and we have experience investigating negligent hiring cases, including subpoenaing hiring records, reviewing job advertisements, auditing employment practices, and finding experts to testify about trucking company failures.
To find out more about how we can help you, give us a call today.
When are trucking companies liable for negligent hiring?
Trucking companies must take certain steps to ensure that the drivers they hire are safe. Typically, this means they must:
- Ensure the driver has a valid commercial driver’s license
- Confirm the driver has any necessary endorsements required based on the type of vehicle being driven or the type of material being transported.
- Conduct thorough background checks to determine if the driver presents an undue risk on the road or has a history of DUI or other high-risk behavior
- Confirm that drivers have the training they need to load and operate vehicles safely
If the trucking company fails to follow any regulations established by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration when hiring, this creates the presumption of negligence. In these types of cases, accident victims simply need to point to the regulatory violation to prove the company failed in its responsibilities to avoid harm. They can recover compensation if they show that the company’s negligent hiring was the direct cause of their damages.
Even if no regulatory violations occurred, trucking companies can still be held accountable if a reasonable company would have done more to ensure that the driver they hired was trained, and if the company’s failure to fulfill this basic obligation led to an accident.
Getting Help With a Negligent Hiring Claim
It is up to victims and their loved ones to prove the company failed in its hiring practices, and that the result was an unqualified driver who caused a collision to occur. Drafahl Law Firm can help.
Our firm will fight to help ensure that you can hold a trucking company with poor hiring practices accountable for your losses so you can be fully compensated for economic and non-financial damage.
To find out more about how our St. Louis truck accident lawyers can help you after an accident with an unqualified driver, give us a call today. Your consultation is free, and we’ll get to work on gathering the evidence necessary to show why the company’s lack of care in hiring employees should make them liable for your losses.