Episode 58: Conversation with David Myers

David Myers: When you get involved in crash, especially with a commercial motor vehicle, there’s a lot involved. So, you need to react quickly, and you can bet that the insurance companies will be notified immediately if one of their drivers is involved in a crash. And they will send a rapid response team to the scene to gather that evidence, which, once the scene is cleared up, is gone.

David Craig – Host: I’m attorney David Craig, managing partner and one of the founders of Craig, Kelley & Faultless. For over 35 years, I’ve dedicated my career to helping individuals and families who have been seriously injured or lost loved ones in devastating semi-truck, large truck, and other commercial motor vehicle accidents. When tragedy strikes, life can feel chaotic, overwhelming, and uncertain. Many people don’t even know where to begin or what questions to ask. That’s why I created After the Crash, a podcast designed to empower you with the knowledge and resources you need to navigate these challenging times.

In each episode, I sit down with experts, professionals, victims and others involved in truck wreck cases, to give you insight, guidance, and practical advice. Together we’ll help you understand your rights, protect your family, and move forward. This is After the Crash.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of After the Crash, the podcast that’s designed for you to learn about serious commercial motor vehicle wrecks and hopefully gain some helpful information. Today, we’re happy to have our guest, David Myers. David is an accident reconstructionist, and he’s the owner of D.L. Myers & Associates. David, welcome to the podcast.

David Myers: Thanks for having me, David. I’m glad to be here.

David Craig – Host: So David, why don’t you tell us a little bit about your background, because I know you’re a police officer. Tell us how you got into accident reconstruction.

David Myers: Well, I’ve been a reserve police officer for 31 years. I decided early on I wanted to facilitate that interest but also go into business for myself, so I became a licensed private investigator in 1995. I always gravitated towards handling the crashes when I worked the police department, and of course working for attorneys that handle crashes, that also fed into that interest as well. So, several years ago I decided that I needed to expand my knowledge and training and experience, so I got into the downloading of data out of vehicles, and that quickly led me to become a reconstructionist. I’ve spent about 3,000 hours training since that time in that new field for me. That’s how I got into it in a nutshell.

David Craig – Host: David does crash consulting, investigations, downloading, he does the whole gamut. So, when there’s a serious commercial motor vehicle case, which is what we typically do, when you have one of those cases, then David May be hired by … I assume you do either side, both plaintiff and defense work?

David Myers: I do. We’ve expanded into the defense side a little bit because, as an expert witness, you really need to be working for all sides involved, that way you’re not perceived as favoring one side or the other. So yes, we now work for a variety of insurance companies, plaintiff and defense attorneys.

David Craig – Host: Do you think that helps? I mean, as far as objectivity, does it make a difference if you’re doing both sides? Or some companies just do one side or the other — do you think it makes any difference?

David Myers: I think it helps me be a more well-rounded investigator because I get to experience the nuances of either side, what their particular needs are, what they’re focusing on as far as the case goes. I’m privileged to work for folks that want the truth. I don’t work for people that want me to try to fit their narrative. So, I am a seeker of fact and a seeker of truth. I provide that, and fortunately I’m facilitated in that endeavor by good clients. Then, they take the evidence I provide and make their case pro or con with that evidence.

David Craig – Host: How big of an area do you cover, David? I know you were saying the other day you were heading to Illinois. So, how big of an area do you guys cover?

David Myers: I get up to Iowa occasionally, down to St. Louis. I’ll be headed tomorrow to Tennessee. Ohio. I’ve been to Pennsylvania a couple of times, and of course my home state of Indiana. Due to some of the laws and whatnot up in Michigan, I don’t go to Michigan very often at all, but I have a wide area that I work in.

David Craig – Host: I know that you do commercial motor vehicle investigations, reconstructions, downloads. I know that you do that part of it. I guess for people out there that, unfortunately, may have found themselves as a victim of one of those type of wrecks, I wonder if you could talk to them a little bit about how important timing is, because a lot of folks look at it and say, “I’m dealing with my injuries,” or, “I’m dealing with a death, and I’m not worried about the wreck because the police are going to investigate it anyway.” What’s your opinion on that?

David Myers: If you talk to any attorney who’s looked at more than just a few police reports, they’ll tell you that the police reports are generally fraught with inaccuracies and not as thorough as perhaps they should be. That’s not a reflection on the officer. In Indiana, for example, they only get, I think, about eight hours of crash training at the academy. It’s just not a focus. So, when you get involved in a crash, especially with a commercial motor vehicle, there’s a lot involved. It’s generally going to be a serious accident because of the sheer weight of that commercial vehicle plowing into a passenger car.

You need to react quickly, or your family needs to react quickly if you’re incapacitated. There are those of us in this industry that do rapid response. Sometimes we’re out at the scene before it’s even cleaned up, and you can bet that the insurance companies will be notified immediately if one of their drivers is involved in a crash. And they will send a rapid response team to the scene to gather that evidence, which, once the scene is cleared up, is gone. There will still be some evidence remaining, of course, but a lot of the other evidence will be gone. Some witnesses may be gone.

There’s times where I’ve canvassed an area or my staff has canvassed an area, and we find witnesses that aren’t listed on the crash report, or we find video that it may overwrite after seven days or two weeks. That is critical evidence. If you wait a month, two months — heaven forbid even more, but it does happen — then that evidence can be lost.

So, I think it’s important to talk to friends and family, and just let them know that, regardless of who you hire, hire someone like yourself or another experienced trucking attorney that will get someone like me out there right away and also preserve the records.

I mean, for example, I’ve got about a 12-page document I give to attorneys that is nothing but a list of federal regulations and documents that you want to preserve and request, and just hiring the family law attorney who did your will or your estate … I see that from time to time. Those guys are great for wills and estates, but not for the specialized trucking case. So, that’s what you need to focus on.

David Craig – Host: I agree. I get cases referred to me by other personal injury lawyers who are good personal injury, but they don’t do trucking. They don’t realize sometimes how important it is to invest in people like you to get them to the scene quickly to do the downloads. When I get the case referred to me, usually closer to the statute of limitations, they say, “I can’t get this case settled, David. Here you go, help us with it.”

And I say, “Okay, did you send preservation of evidence letters out?”

“No.”

“Did you do a download of the ECM?”

“No.”

“Did you look to see what type of software was available in this particular vehicle?”

“No.”

Then, it’s too late. Vehicles are gone; vehicles are repaired. Like you said, I’ll say, “Did you send somebody to the scene to look for security videos?”

“No.”

“Did you go canvas the scene to talk to witnesses to see if …”

I’ve had cases where, for example, out on the highway, there was a truck stop, and the actual window where people sat and ate looked out over the highway. A wreck happened as a truck is pulling out, and there were witnesses inside. Even though I wasn’t hired that day, I went back on the same day a week later, two weeks later, and we started looking, seeing, “[Are] there regular customers that show up? And would they have been …”

You would be surprised. There were people who had coffee every morning at this particular truck stop. They were regulars, and there were people who saw some things that were helpful.

So, I agree with you. I mean, to me, I think the biggest mistake that people make, whether it’s a lawyer or whether it’s a family, is waiting and not acting immediately to preserve evidence in these types of cases. Because the bigger the case, the more money is at stake, and the other side is not going to just roll over and give it to you. You’ve got to get there. Like you said, videos sometimes are like… There’s security video on pole barns, on businesses, on all kinds of different things that can be written over. Gas stations, they’re written over in 10 days.

David Myers: Well, and getting to the truck is also vital because there’s times where I’ve been inspecting a truck and I’ve found narcotic pain medication, or sleeping pills, or whatever it may be, or drugs that have the side effect of inducing drowsiness that the driver was taking. Now, you can bet if the driver’s allowed in there, or perhaps even the company, to clean out personal effects or whatever it may be, you can guarantee that those medications are going to be gone. Likewise, a lot of drivers have their own dash camera, because the company has a camera, but it shoots everything up to the cloud and they can’t access it. So, they’ve got their own dash camera.

Well, I want to go try to grab that information, or at least document it so someone like you can put out a preservation letter for company equipment and driver owned equipment, and you can learn a lot about driving habits of a particular driver by watching their dash camera. We generally won’t get from the company any other video besides what’s applicable to our crash. But on a driver camera, you’ve got maybe days’ and days’ worth of driving that you can take a look at.

David Craig – Host: David, let’s start off with the scene. So, you’ve talked about how important it is to get out to the scene, to hire a lawyer, hire the right experts. Let’s talk about the scene. What kind of evidence are you looking for when you get called, and you get hired early enough, and I call you and say, “Hey David, I just got this semi wreck on I-70 and I need your help.” Tell me what you’re going to go out and look for at the scene.

David Myers: Sure. Scenes change. So, again, we need to get out there as quickly as possible. What comes to mind: Just a few weeks ago, we had a crash where a commercial motor vehicle ran the stop sign and collided with another vehicle. Well, the stop sign was obscured by a tree in someone’s yard. Helpful neighbors or the homeowner will come out and trim those branches.

We want to try to get evidence that these were freshly cut branches or hopefully get out there in time to see that the stop sign is still obscured. So, whether the neighbors do that or the homeowner, either trying to be nice or fearing liability… I’ve even had city and town, or the state, come out and try to do what’s called post-remedial measures.

Sometimes, there’s construction signage in play, and it’s important to either get a construction sign expert or sometimes just the plan that the contractors were supposed to follow. Did they put up the signs correctly? Did they put them at the proper distances to notify oncoming traffic? That’s all important, because the scene will change, and it will change quickly. Also, some cases may have lighting come into play. Was there enough lighting there? So, we take out a lumen meter, or a lighting meter, that will measure the ambient lighting from either streetlights or a lack thereof, and that then leads into conspicuity.

How well did a pedestrian stand out from the environment? All of those things need to be taken into consideration, especially if there was just natural lighting from the moon or other sources, and that changes day by day as the year progresses.

We’ve already talked a little bit about CCTV witnesses. Were there any defects in the road? Was there any broken down vehicles in the area that maybe might have contributed that have now been moved? There’s a variety of reasons for us to get out to the scene as quickly as possible. Even if, perhaps, you’re not sure if your family member is going to hire the attorney, go out there and take some pictures same day. It may not be as helpful as us going out, but documenting the scene is important

David Craig – Host: I would recommend that you make a decision because, sometimes, people don’t even know what happened. So, if somebody in their family got killed and nobody else was in the vehicle, they don’t know what happened. They don’t know whether it was their family member’s fault, or was it someone else’s fault? Rather than waiting — because the way personal injury lawyers work, the way I work, is it doesn’t cost you anything to investigate a case — I pay people like David to go out and help me determine what happened.

Then, I make a decision. I can tell a family whether we have a case or we don’t have a case, and I’ve told many people that, unfortunately, it was their family member’s fault.

I’ve also told them that the police report was wrong and that it was the truck driver’s fault. But I would say that you need to make that decision, even though it’s hard decision to make. I think it should be made within two to three days after the wreck, if possible.

Where I disagree a little bit with David is that going out to the scene and taking photos is helpful. I agree with David, it’s better than nothing, but you can’t do what David does. David knows what he’s looking for, like he talked about the lighting; he knows what he’s looking for, and it’s not always safe for you to get out there.

These guys know what they’re doing. They have the right reflective gear, they have the right equipment, they know what they’re doing. So, if you’re not going hire a lawyer, hire one of these companies to go out and do it. But you should pick a lawyer who knows who to use, knows who’s qualified, and you need to hire somebody who knows trucking. And one of the questions I would ask the lawyer if I was interviewing a lawyer that had a serious truck wreck, or one of my family members was killed, I would say, “What are you going to do? What steps are you going to take immediately?” And if they don’t say, “Send out a preservation letter,” then you’ve got the wrong lawyer.

If they don’t say, “I’m going to hire a reconstructionist and an investigator,” you’ve got the wrong lawyer. You need somebody who knows what this … How important [this is].

Construction zones, David talked about construction zones. Oh my God, there hasn’t been a year in recent history that I have not been hired by someone who lost a loved one in a construction zone. Construction zones — the back end of a construction zone where it starts slowing down and funneling in — year after year, month after month, people get hurt or killed. David, I think you’re absolutely right; those scenes can change overnight.

David Myers: Totally.

David Craig – Host: You’ve got to get somebody out there, like David, to go out and capture the scene. Now, some of them will run videos; they’ll have crews that run videos through, but I’ve seen cases where that’s been lost. It’s not shown up. They haven’t done it. We want to have somebody like David go out and say, “Okay, what happened here? Why was there traffic backed up? Were there signings, warning signings going into it?” David will go out and investigate it, and David will capture those signs. The sooner we can get hired, the better off we are because those signs do change, and the construction site will change.

The police are worried about, “Let’s get the road back open.” I have body cam of police officers, when my client was burning the death in a vehicle, and the police officers were [saying], “How are we going to get this road open?” It’s a highway, and everything was backed up, so I get it. But they were worried about, “How do I get …”
They weren’t worried about preserving the evidence, they were worried about, “Let’s get these vehicles off, let’s figure out how we’re going to get this highway open.” So, you talked about witnesses, signage, lighting, and looking at the scene, photographing. Sometimes you said there’s actually evidence on the roadways-

David Myers: Absolutely.

David Craig – Host: … the road surface, the road construction. Anything else about investigating the scene that we haven’t touched on, before we move to the vehicles?

David Myers: Well, I don’t think so, other than just reiterating what you’re saying about the police. Their job is to get that road open and look for anything criminal. I still work on a county crash team, a fatal crash team here in central Indiana. Whenever we get called out to a scene, it’s the same thing. “Is there anything criminal going on? If not, when can we get the road open?” It won’t be long before the mayor, the supervisors are calling, or a county councilman, “When is this road going to be open?”

There’s a lot of pressure put on these officers to get that road open. Once it’s not criminal, they don’t care about your civil case. They couldn’t care less. They’re going to do the best job they can, but they don’t have a dog in the fight, so to speak. If someone’s negligence caused a death or serious injury, that needs to be taken care of. That needs to be compensated.

David Craig – Host: Well, let’s talk a little bit, then, about the vehicle inspection, and we’ll start off with the car. So, the victim may be in a car, SUV. Let’s talk a little bit about what you’re looking for, what do you do? Do you check that out? Do you check the vehicle? What kind of things are you looking for?

David Myers: Sure. There’s a marked difference between whether we’re looking at a commercial vehicle or looking at a passenger car. But the passenger car, to start with, we’re going to do a very thorough examination from bumper to bumper. We’re going to look at the tires, the tread. We’re going to look at, “Did the airbags deploy properly? Could this possibly be a claim against the manufacturer if something didn’t work right?” I’ve had those cases. I’ve had improper repair cases that caused a death because the airbag didn’t properly get repaired, so it didn’t deploy.

We’re going to download the data. A lot of people have heard that vehicles have a black box. Well, unlike an airplane, it does not record voice, but it does record a lot of parameters, such as speed, steering, braking, throttle. All of that can be used to determine whether the driver was driving in a proper manner or not. But, more times than not, in these types of commercial vehicle cases, it’s not necessarily the passenger car’s fault. These big trucks, they change lanes, they get blown all over the place sometimes, but we need to determine what was going on at the time of the crash. And the black box, which is the electronic data recorder — that’s its technical term — that will help us.

There’s also other information in the car, in the infotainment system. If your car has a screen on it and you can pair your cell phone to it, then there’s a world of data in that device as well. That goes far beyond what’s in the electronic data recorder. So, what we do is we go out and grab all of that information, and sometimes if you’ve waited too long, the car is gone. It’s been sold at auction. Again, I hate to keep harping on it, but you’ve got to act quickly. We had a case recently where the data from the recorder would have been crucial, but someone waited too long, and the car was on a container ship headed to Africa to be sold over there. That data is permanently lost. There’s a whole host of data to get out of a car.

David Craig – Host: Yeah. One of the things we often have to check is the brakes, because if there’s an issue as to whether or not the vehicle, the car, braked properly, you may be able to get that from what you call the black box. [It] may give you a little bit of data on the braking, but you also may want to check out the brakes. What people don’t understand is, a lot of times, I hire people … so, I’ll have David, but I also have a mechanic … and we’ll look at things. What we’re trying to do is rule out things, because within a week of the wreck, I don’t know what the defense is going to say. I don’t know if they’re going to claim it’s the car driver’s fault. So, we’re going to do things, then lock in and prove there was no problem with the brakes, no problems with the steering; the car was going the speed limit. Sometimes you’re doing that stuff to disprove negligence, versus prove [it].

David Myers: Absolutely. That’s going to the data recorder. What the computer sees is the pressing of the brake pedal, the completing of that electronic circuit. Were the brakes pressed, yes or no? That doesn’t necessarily mean that the brakes were operating correctly, so, you’re absolutely right, a mechanical inspection of the vehicle needs to take place. The speed, that can also be off, too. If your tires aren’t in good shape and they’re virtually bald, that’s a different sized tire than what the computer’s programmed for. So, that could have a significant impact on the speed. As you said, we are trying to disprove the other side’s allegations or assertions that the car was being improperly operated or was not roadworthy.

David Craig – Host: Let’s talk about the 18-wheeler, the flatbed, the garbage truck, the dump truck, the bus or other commercial motor vehicle. What are you looking for when you get hired to go out and do an inspection of that vehicle?

David Myers: When we inspect a commercial vehicle, I have a 13-page inspection form. Just yesterday, I was up in Chicago. We spent 14 hours on that job, and about nine of it was on the actual tractor-trailer. This isn’t an inspection that’s going to be done in an hour. We are going to go through every system on that truck, which is called a tractor, the semi-tractor, and the trailer.

Sometimes they’re pulling two trailers, and those trailers are connected in between by a dolly. So, there could be multiple vehicles to inspect and apparatus to inspect. We’re crawling underneath the truck, we’re going to each wheel, each axle, each brake pad, checking for proper operation.

We’re hooking up air to the truck braking system, because truck brakes work completely different than those of a car — they work off air pressure — and we’re testing each brake. Does it work properly? Are the brake pads the correct size? Are they the correct thickness? Because sometimes these trucking companies will throw on the wrong size tire or run the brakes a little too long, and that can affect how the truck operates. We took the headlight assembly apart to look at the bulbs. Were the truck’s headlights on at the time of the crash? Did the marker lights work? I mean, we will spend hours with this truck, looking for every little thing, positive or negative, because again, the attorney needs to know the good, the bad, the ugly, because no attorney I’ve ever worked for likes to be surprised at a deposition, mediation, or, let alone, trial.

David Craig – Host: I think, like you said, there’s so many things to look at. There’s a difference between lawyers that do trucking; there’s also a difference between reconstructionists that do trucking. There’s reconstructionists, there’s investigators, that don’t do trucking cases. They might do a one-off. Quite frankly, folks, those are not people you want… Because that long checklist that David just showed, I mean, that is what you want. You want somebody who understands conspicuity.

I’ve had cases where the tape wasn’t the right type of tape, conspicuity tape on the side, or it was covered by ash. It was dirty. If that hadn’t been preserved, if we hadn’t taken photographs of the ash… In this particular case, somebody went under the side of a trailer, and the police photos made it look like you could see it, like the tape reflected, but they were shining lights on the tape — they were bright lights — to take the pictures.

When we did the inspection, we saw, “Wait a minute, this is covered by ash. It’s not appropriate, it’s not put in the right spots.” But if you don’t have an inspector or investigator who understands that, or if you don’t have a lawyer who understands that, or hopefully have both, then you may lose evidence that could make a difference in your case.

The light bulbs, the lighting, the headlights on both vehicles, I mean, that’s something that can be a factor. We don’t know exactly what the truck driver is going to say. We may know what he told the police, but we don’t know what their defense is going to be. So, you better be very thorough because you’re not going to get another shot at that tractor and trailer, typically, after that first inspection.

David Myers: You’re right, because those are revenue generators for the companies that own them, and they want those trucks and trailers back on the road as soon as possible. It’s almost like the police wanting to open the road as soon as possible. The trucking companies, insurance companies, know that there’s going to be an inspection. I’ve had some cases where I’ve been brought in, and I’ve come to find out the crash happened a week or two ago but the truck’s already back on the road. That’s inappropriate. Those trucks need to be parked until we have a chance to examine the evidence. You need to have that preservation letter sent quickly, because the trucking company can always say, “We were never told not to repair the truck, not to put it back on the road.” So, if you’ve waited six months, it’s going to be back on the road; it’s going to be repaired.

David Craig – Host: Yeah. I had a case out in Missouri where a young girl was paralyzed, and a semi-driver hit a van, and I got hired pretty quickly, within a week, and we sent our preservation letters out. So, the wreck happened in Missouri over by Colorado, over by Denver, right close to the state line, and that tractor was two states away within a week. The police, they didn’t put a hold on the vehicle, and they said, “Well, we had to get it back in service.” They said that it hadn’t been repaired.

Luckily, I was able to see it within a week or two, and my mechanic that looked at it saw that it was new pieces, new parts, and it had been repaired.

If it got back in service and got dirty, it might have been harder for us to figure out. But there were some nice, shiny parts that are like, “Okay, this is a brand new piece to the brakes, the braking system.” The trucking companies will say, “One, we need to get that tractor back in service.” If the tractor’s not able to get back in service, or the trailer’s not able to get back in service, they’ll say, “Well, we don’t want to pay storage. Storage is running up. I mean, we got to get this thing out of here. We need to mitigate our damage, and we need to reduce the amount of money we’re paying for storage. And the facility where it’s at is charging us way too much; we have to move it.”

That can be an argument. Certainly, there is a cost involved. However, if something’s moved and destroyed in the process of moving it, now you’ve lost evidence. My preference always is going to be: Do the inspection. Ideally, we’d all like to do it right there at the scene, but that’s not going to happen. Do it as soon as it’s moved and relocated, but don’t let it be moved multiple times because you risk the chance that it could be damaged.

David Myers: I’ve had that case too, where the cab of the semi-tractor was moved three times, and one of the boxes inside the cab — the brake controller — was gone. Did it fall off the tow truck on the way from point A to point C? Who knows? We were never able to find it. I even went so far as to talk to the tow truck company and the transporter and find out their route and drove it, just to see if I saw the thing on the side of the road. Because these trucks hold so much data that it goes far beyond your typical passenger car, that it’s vital that we get this data.

Unfortunately, due to the clout that the trucking companies have, there is no law about data recorders like there is with passenger cars. This data is very volatile. It can be wiped out. It just needs to be obtained as quickly as possible. Going back to the scene inspection, if there are skid marks from the truck, those, a lot of times, will help me determine whether the brakes were operating correctly at the time of the crash. If I go to the inspection, and the brakes look fine, but there’s evidence at the scene showing this dark skid mark, I’m going to presume that the brakes were not operating properly — anti-lock brakes — at the time of the crash. So, all the pieces fit together. If we’re missing one or two pieces, then it just makes the job a lot harder.

David Craig – Host: Another thing that I’ve seen are the loads. There are some times I’ve had cases where the trucks were overloaded, and that has an impact on the stopping distance. Yet, if you wait, and the truck is unloaded… Because that’s one of the things that we’re going to want to do, is get that cargo off of there.

I had a box truck that was overloaded, and we actually got hired quickly. We were able to send our preservation letters out. When they objected, I filed a restraining order, a temporary restraining order, to keep them from doing anything. Then, we weighed that. We actually took the vehicle and weighed it, and it was overweight.

We had a trailer not long ago where a piece fell off the trailer. The trucking company only had the minimum insurance, or they had a million-dollar policy, instead of $750,000, which is the minimum required. But the question was — it was a wrongful death, so the case was worth a lot more to the family than that — so, the question was, why did something fall off? If that truck trailer had been unloaded before my people got to it, we would have never known why a piece fell off. Luckily, we were hired quick enough that we were able to go in and say, “Hey, don’t touch it.”

I put an investigator out, sitting there and watching that, because it was in an unprotected and unsecured field. Sure enough, even though they promised me they wouldn’t unload it until a set time, the crews showed up early in the morning at sunrise, and my investigator calls: “David, there’s a whole bunch of equipment going on.”

I called the defense counsel and was able to stop it, but they were going to unload that truck. It turned out that we were able to prove that the shipper had loaded that truck wrong, and that contributed to the merchandise falling off, which then allowed me to sue the shipper and get more additional funding and money for the family. But that would have been gone if we hadn’t hired the right investigators and hired the right people or got hired quick enough. You’ve got to have people like David who have that long, detailed checklist that says, “Okay, what’s every possible scenario?”

David Myers: Absolutely. I’ve been on cases where an attorney just goes after that primary insurance and that’s it. Sometimes, I have to educate the attorney that there are other insurance sources out there. I mean, some of these truck drivers, they don’t load the cargo. Who loaded it? Who owns the cargo? Were there not the right chains used? There’s a whole variety of things we have to look at. In a typical auto case, there may only be two insurance companies, and most times, that’s it.

But, on a trucking case, there are so many other avenues to go after. If you’re not using a skilled trucking attorney, you could be leaving, I don’t want to give an example, but a lot of money on the table. And sometimes it is about the money, sometimes it’s about teaching a lesson, and that’s how jury verdicts and settlements work. If you’re trying to take care of someone long-term, or you’re trying to do something in their memory, the better the recovery, the better your ability to do those things.

David Craig – Host: Well, David, I appreciate the fact that you agreed to be on our podcast. Is there anything else that we haven’t covered that would you like to cover?

David Myers: We use a lot of technology doing what we do. We’ll take a three-dimensional scan of the vehicles, the tractor, the trailer. These allow us to create simulations, recreations, animations allow us to take measurements, because again, once the evidence is gone, it’s gone. And for example, yesterday on that long truck case, I took over 600 pictures. You can’t always measure from a picture, but you can from a three-dimensional scan. We will use all the technology and expertise at our fingertips to ensure that we’re providing the best investigation, the best reconstruction for our clients.

Ultimately, you can be with the best attorney in the world, but if they don’t have the evidence, either because it wasn’t obtained or it they didn’t know to get it — or they weren’t able to get it because someone waited a year or two to call them — there’s not going to be much they can do for you. It’s a lot of key players doing their part to put the puzzle together to get the biggest and best result for the client.

David Craig – Host: Couldn’t agree more. David, thank you so much for being a guest. Ladies and gentlemen, this has been After the Crash.

This is David Craig, and you’ve been listening to After the Crash. If you’d more information about me or my law firm, please go to our website, ckflaw.com. Or, if you’d like to talk to me, you can call 1-800-Ask-David. If you would like a guide on what to do after a truck wreck, then pick up my book, Semitruck Wreck: A Guide for Victims and Their Families, which is available on Amazon, or you can download it for free on our website, ckflaw.com.