Holding trucking employer’s accountable for accidents: a brief look at potential legal grounds, P.1

In personal injury litigation, it is critical for an accident victim to pursue every available avenue of liability to ensure he or she has the best chance of obtaining just compensation for injuries and losses. We’ve been talking in our last couple posts about suing a trucking employer for its role in accidents caused by negligent trucking employees.

In Tennessee truck accidents like the one we’ve been discussing, there are several possible grounds for potential liability on the part of the employer. These include, first of all, negligence in hiring, retention and supervision. The idea with such a claim is that an employer has the duty to exercise reasonable care in preventing harm to third parties by drivers the employer hires.

A trucking employer can fail in its duty to prevent third parties from harm by its drivers by hiring a driver who is unfit for the job, by placing or retaining the driver in a job which creates an unreasonable risk of harm to third parties, or by failing to properly supervise the employee and thereby putting third parties at unreasonable risk of injury. The duty to exercise reasonable care in hiring, retention and supervision also includes the duty to properly train or retrain a truck driver.

There are different ways of proving negligent hiring, retention, and supervision, depending on the circumstances of the case. Failing to take reasonable steps to ensure a trucker is properly trained, that he or she is drug-free, that he or she has an acceptable driving record, and so on, are some of the possibilities.

In our next post, we’ll continue looking at a couple other types of claims a plaintiff might assert against a trucking employer in personal injury litigation.