Why the Right Legal Team Matters After a Truck Wreck

David Craig – Host: I think that people need to realize if you have one lawyer and that lawyer gets sick, that lawyer dies, that lawyer has trials, that lawyer is busy, no matter how good they are, then what happens to your file? What you want is not one lawyer. What you want is a team of people. You want a group of lawyers, you want a group of file managers, you want a group of people who care, who have the expertise, the knowledge, and the resources to handle a truck case.

I’m attorney Dave Craig, managing partner and one of the founders of the law firm of Craig, Kelley, and Faultless. I’ve represented people who’ve been seriously injured or who have had a family member killed in semi or other big truck wreck for over 30 years. Following the wreck, their lives are chaos. Often they don’t even know enough about the process to ask the right questions. It is my goal to empower you by providing you with the information you need to protect yourself and your family. In each and every episode, I will interview top experts and professionals that are involved in truck wreck cases.

In the Ask David episodes of After the Crash, we switch things up. Instead of me asking questions, I answer the questions. Nothing’s off limits and they ask me about truck safety, about truck accidents, about semi-truck litigation, about commercial motor vehicle wrecks. You name it, I talk about it. This is After The Crash.

All right, welcome ladies and gentlemen to another episode of After The Crash. This is the Ask David version. Today we have a special guest, a person who, this law firm, Craig, Kelley, and Faultless, couldn’t do without. Her name is Ashley Napier. She is in charge of everything to do with litigation. Well, I’m going to turn it over to Ashley. So Ashley’s going to ask the questions today and I will provide the answers.

Ashley Napier: Trucking cases are different. How are they different than just your regular run-of-the-mill personal injury case?

David Craig – Host: Yeah, I think that’s a great question. I mean, I think I probably didn’t know that at that time until I had a case. And so I think a lot of lawyers out there that they consider themselves personal injury lawyers, but until you actually have a truck case, you don’t really realize, you don’t know what you don’t know. And so first of all, trucking cases, commercial motor vehicle cases, whether it’s a semi, a tractor trailer, flatbed, lumber truck, dump truck, bus, any other type of commercial motor vehicle case, tanker, any type of a truck case that is involved in interstate commerce, and even some that are in intrastate commerce if the state has adopted the Federal Motor Carrier safety regulations, they’re regulated by federal law.

And so they have this federal law and the federal law applies to it, and that’s different than car cases. In addition, to be a truck driver, you have to have a certain license, you have to have a CDL, commercial driver’s license. To get that license, you have to have certain qualifications, both physically as well as you have to be able to drive and pass a test. So these drivers are professional drivers. So in order to handle these cases, you’ve got to know the Federal Motor Carrier safety regulations. You got to know what the CDL manuals say, and each state, although they’re very similar state by state, you have to know what the state laws are that regulate trucking cases.

And you have to know what the industry standards are, what is the industry standards? And then what type of things do you see pretty regularly in truck cases that come up all the time? Whether it’s sleep deprivation, whether it’s sleep apnea, whether it’s dangerous driving speed, whether construction zones, all those type of things, you kind of have to know. And then you have to know which experts to hire. I mean, trucks, it has a sophisticated computer system and especially in the newer trucks. And so you have to know, “How do I get that information out of that truck and what experts do I want to use throughout the country depending on where the wreck’s at?”

And so most lawyers don’t know that. Certainly even most personal injury lawyers don’t know that. They don’t know where to turn, who to hire, what are the issues, how important it is to preserve the evidence immediately. Because if you don’t, that evidence is gone. I mean, I’ve had cases where we were hired even within weeks, and yet the trucking company had taken the evidence, either destroyed it or moved it or relocated it, repaired it. And so the trucking company has these rapid response teams, which we also have one, but they have these and they send them out right away. And these folks are protecting the trucking company. They sometimes get to the scene before our clients are removed from the vehicle, if it’s a death case.

And so you don’t have that in personal injury cases. You don’t have that in a car crash, you don’t have the defense with a rapid response team sending out their reconstructionists, their lawyers. I mean, sometimes the lawyers get to the scene while the vehicles are still there. And some contracts, and I’ve actually seen them, where they’re required to be there within so many hours after a wreck. So it is a completely different ballgame. In addition, it takes a lot more money to run a trucking case. And so I’ve gone to trial with a case where I had over a quarter of a million dollars in a really horrific multimillion dollar case, tens of millions of dollars case, and we had a quarter of a million dollars in expenses in it. And not all lawyers have a quarter of a million dollars to put into a case. So trucking cases are completely different than any other kind of personal injury case that I’ve worked on or do work on. And they take a lot more money, a lot more expertise, a lot more knowledge, experience, to handle.

Ashley Napier: What’s one piece of advice you would give a new attorney that’s just starting out and maybe wants to grow their commercial motor vehicle practice?

David Craig – Host: Yeah, I think that it’s a challenge to do that. I mean, I think the first thing you do is you have to learn. I would encourage a lawyer that wanted to get into this area to actually join a firm where you have experienced truck accident attorneys. My partner, Scott Faultless and I, we’re board certified in truck accident law, which is required to be on… There’s a national trucking group and we’re on the board of Regents on that trucking group, and that’s a national plaintiff lawyer… This is lawyers that represent victims of truck wrecks. We’re on the Board of Regents in that.

In order to be on the board, you have to be board certified in truck accident law, which is not easy to do. And so there’s only four in the state of Indiana at this time. And so I think if I was a young attorney getting ready to start, I would join a firm with board certified lawyers in truck accident law. I would go somewhere where I could get some experience. I would study, read, go to the seminars and try to learn as much as I could possibly do on that particular niche because, and there’s a lot of niches within the niche.

I mean, there’s product liability when these trucks, like if they have an automatic brake and emergency braking system and it doesn’t work, you could learn a niche within this, in our area of truck wrecks. And so construction zones, there’s a lot of truck wrecks in construction zones, so you could learn that niche. But I would definitely join a firm, and also a firm that would not only give me some experience, let me tag along, but also would send me to conferences and seminars and things like that.

Which I’ll throw back at you because I mean, I think as paralegals… I mean I see a lot of law firms, I mean truthfully, paralegals, file managers, people like that, they’re critically important in moving a case. And here, my file managers deal with truck cases. You deal with truck cases, you’re a file manager, you deal with truck cases. How are they different, from your perspective, from the other personal injury cases that you handle?

Ashley Napier: That’s a great question. I think that as your practice has grown with commercial motor vehicles, we deal with commercial motor vehicle cases a lot more frequently than we used to. I think the major difference is the front end, and that’s two components. So I think that the front end of the case, it is critical, as you said, to secure the evidence. You have to preserve things because the trucking company is looking out for themselves. They’re not looking out for the injured party or the wrongful death that they may have caused at the hands of their truck driver. So preserving evidence, getting out to the scene, utilizing our rapid response team to go to the scene, take photographs, scan everything, getting the police department to give us the investigation that they’ve done.

I think that the file managers here, we’re kind of on a scavenger hunt, so to speak. We’re trying to uncover all of this evidence that might not be readily available. So you have to be persistent. You have to follow up with anyone and everyone to come up with the little nuggets that might not be necessarily large in the beginning, but you come around and it could make or break your case, whether you had that information or not. I mean, clients that are involved in commercial motor vehicle cases, whether it’s families that have lost loved ones or you have catastrophic injuries, either way, you are meeting these clients or the family at the most awful time in their life.

And so the compassion that you have to possess in dealing with families that have just had their world turned completely upside down; I think that we walk with them through their mourning of their previous life and getting them set up for whatever success looks like for them. Getting them the treatment that they need, the emotional support, whether that be with us, as the file manager, and just talking with them and being there for them, or if that is seeking professional help in way of a therapist or a life group or just a support system of some sort. I think it’s just so impactful what we do and what our team does in helping our clients navigate the challenges that come with getting hit by a commercial motor vehicle.

David Craig – Host: When you get hit with 40 tons of steel and the injuries are catastrophic and hard not to have a brain injury with that kind of impact. Unfortunately, people die. And I think people who are listening to this, this is geared towards the average everyday person. And unfortunately people who may have found themselves as victims of a heavy or big truck wreck, I don’t think people realize that it takes a team. It really takes a team. And so Ashley is the head of a great awesome team of file managers and one of these episodes in the future, we’ll have them on there and we’ll talk to them. But I think that people need to realize that when you have a lawyer who says, “I’m the lawyer, I’m the reason why you should hire us,” and they stand on trucks and wave checks or they do stupid stuff like that. And they say, “I’m a truck guy and you need me.”

And that’s BS, because if you have one lawyer and that lawyer gets sick, that lawyer dies, that lawyer has trials, that lawyer is busy, no matter how good they are, then what happens to your file? What you want is not one lawyer. What you want is a team of people. You want a group of lawyers, you want a group of file managers, you want a group of people who care, who have the expertise, the knowledge and the resources to handle a truck case. Sure, you want good truck lawyers, but you should have a team of them, not just one.

And that’s one of the things that I’m really proud about our team is that we work together as a group. We have you guys as the file managers, we have Clint who runs our rapid response team. Patrick gets out and does our investigation. We’ve got great file managers, you guys. So many law firms, they hire paralegals, they turn them over and they don’t really invest in them. Hopefully, we invest in you guys. You guys, you’ve been to Atlanta, Georgia, you’ve been to Nashville, Tennessee. I think this year is Texas. I mean, the reality is we send you to classes on trucking because you need to know, when you handle these trucking cases, you need to know more than what the average paralegal knows, don’t you think?

Ashley Napier: Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think the continuing education that we get here in the commercial motor vehicle subject is, you can’t even put a price on that. Our team meets after every conference and we have takeaways. We say, “Okay, what are the takeaways that you had? What do we need to do differently?” What’s different here is you guys invest in us. You invest in us having the education to better serve our clients. And I think that it makes a world of difference.

David Craig – Host: And I think if you really care more about the person, the clients, than the money, I mean, I’m being brutally honest, there’s some personal injury lawyers that just are in it because they want to make money. But we want to make a positive difference in the lives of our clients, and we also want to make a positive difference in the lives of our employees and our families. And if that’s your attitude, if that’s your goal, then it’s different than how much money. I mean, certainly we want to take care of our clients. I belong to the multimillion dollar forums. I mean, I’ve gotten tens of millions of dollars from my clients. That is important, but that’s not the most important thing. How you treat the clients along the way, and also make sure you take care of them financially, but how you treat them along the way, make sure that you’re getting them the full value, fair value, and then letting them make a decision whether they want to wrap it up, settle it, whether they want to go to trial, that’s up to the clients.

But you have to have a full team, a good team, a great team. And I get tired of sometimes when I see people… I mean, to be a trial lawyer, you got to have a little bit of an ego to walk into a room—

Ashley Napier: No, no.

David Craig – Host: To walk into the courtroom, you’ve got to think you’re good. You’ve got to know you’re good. But the reality is, we’re only as good as our team. So you want to invest in your team, you want to have the right people. You want to have the right head of your rapid response team, the right investigators, the right file managers, the right lawyers. There’s a lot more involved in successfully handling a truck case than one person, one paralegal, one… And so that’s why we invest in each other, how we help each other, how we share and learn from each other.

Ashley Napier: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that the team aspect here is different than any other firm that I’ve ever been a part of. Any client can call in, and if that paralegal that’s the lead on their case is out, they will get two other paralegals, myself, anybody else that can help and assist them.

You mentioned earlier that a new attorney that wants to get into trucking, they could maybe look at certain niches that they could get involved in. One thing that I thought was so far out, I would never see it in my lifetime, is driverless semis. What issues do you think that that’s going to cause when you have driverless semis on the roads today?

David Craig – Host: Yeah, I mean, it is crazy. So in Arizona and Texas, that’s when they first started really running a lot of these driverless semis, and initially they were running with a driver in the cab, but not behind the wheel. But now they’re actually testing them with nobody even in the cab. So driverless semis are just running without drivers. And in a lot of states, they are also, autonomous vehicles are driving, whether it’s cars up in Noblesville, taxis. I saw a lawyer the other day hop in the back of a… Or was it a Newport taxi? I can’t remember which, but he hopped in one of these vehicles with no driver, and he’s filming it as the car takes him off somewhere. The reality is that we’re moving in that direction. A lot of states, a lot of cities are allowing it. Some are really aggressively doing it because they want to kind of get the capital, get the money, get the investment from these huge corporations.

Some states like Indiana had legislation here recently that they had said, “We’re not ready for that. We want a driver in the cab.” And it didn’t go. So there’s been debate in the legislatures as to whether or not we can have autonomous vehicles with or without drivers. But there’s so many different issues. I mean, in the Midwest that we practice, we have lawyers licensed in Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Iowa, Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana. And so in all these states, I mean, there’s a lot of bad weather. And so what happens if the weather changes? I mean, we’ve all driven and all of a sudden it goes from a light rain to a downpour where you can’t see it. We go to where visibility is completely blocked. We have snow where it’s snowed and all of a sudden turns to ice. I mean, there’s so many different things that an experienced professional truck driver it’s trained to do.

Now, certainly driver error is a huge cause of wrecks. And so when you have a computer driven vehicle, you don’t have that. I mean, you don’t have the human error side of it, you don’t have a tired driver, you don’t have a driver that’s impaired. But the reality is there’s still a lot of issues, and the weather is one of them. If a truck breaks down and you’re supposed to put out triangles or flares. If your truck breaks down, you pull off the side of the road, there’s a semi, and you get out and you put flares or triangles out behind your vehicle, and you have to do that as soon as possible, no later than 10 minutes. Well, obviously if a truck is driverless, there’s nobody in the cab, then there’s nobody to put out flares or triangles. And so some states are trying to change the rule so that they don’t have to. Well, there’s a reason why we have triangles and flares.

If it’s foggy, if it’s dark, there’s a lot of reasons. Those semis can be extraordinarily dangerous along the side of the road. And so I think, I’m all for technology that makes it safe, that makes the road safer. I’m a little scared. I’d be scared to be next to a semi when I looked up and there’s nobody in that 40 ton vehicle; that would scare me a little bit. I’ll be honest. And I hope they continue to develop the technology. I hope they continue to do some things, but I do believe that right now it’s a little bit scary.

Ashley Napier: I feel like all of the… Not all, most of the cases that we handle, there’s a bad truck driver, there’s a bad trucking company, there’s a bad broker, and you’re getting burnt up right now on Facebook from truck drivers that are saying, “Not all of us are bad.” So burning question, are all truck drivers bad?

David Craig – Host: Absolutely. Every one of them should be… [laughs]. And you’re right. I mean, on Facebook, truckers attack me on a pretty regular basis. And the truth is, my current guest on my podcast this month is a truck driver, and we actually represent a lot of truckers who are hit by other truckers. The majority of all truck drivers are professional, caring, good people who all they care about is making a living, getting the merchandise from one place to the next, and getting home to their families and getting home safely. And they try their best to make sure that the roads are safe and that they’re doing their part. And it’s a tough, tough job. And I believe that over 90% of the truckers on the road and 90% of the trucking companies are good, safe companies and good, safe drivers.

The problem is there’s a small percentage that are really bad, and that percentage seems to be getting worse. The bad trucking companies, they don’t care. They put profits ahead of safety. The bad companies drive bad equipment, unsafe equipment, they carry minimum insurance, they have bad drivers And then you have some bad drivers, some folks who just look at it and go, “Hey, this is a way I can make a living.” And they don’t really care. You have tired drivers, distracted drivers. You got people using their cell phones when they’re not supposed to, you have impaired drivers. What we do is we go after the bad drivers. Sometimes the victim is another trucker, all too often.

And most of the truckers that I represent will tell you that the quality of some of the drivers has gotten worse. Some of the driving schools that they’re putting people through just to get them their CDL, they don’t train drivers. They’re not properly trained. They’re bringing drivers in from out of other countries that struggle to speak and read English, which obviously you have to be able to read English under the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations, if you want to be able to communicate and to read signs and warnings and all those type of things. Obviously, if you’re in the United States, the signs are going to be in English, so you have to be able to read those. But it’s just, the bad ones are bad. The victims of those bad ones need the right, qualified attorneys. But I do believe that most truck drivers are really good, caring, and safe drivers. It’s just that our firm protects you against the worst ones.

Ashley Napier: If just a small percentage of truck drivers or trucking companies are bad, whether it’s the equipment, distraction, medical issues of drivers, how do you combat that when you’re driving? If I’m teaching a kiddo to drive, it’s always defensive driving, but how do you drive differently around semis? What would you suggest?

David Craig – Host: Yeah, you can’t represent the victim of a semi case like we do where you see the police photographs, where you see the videos where people have died, people have burnt to death, people have been crushed. I mean, it affects you and it changes you forever. If you’re a compassionate person, there’s no way you can do what we do and not think about it. When you’re on the highways, when I drive, I definitely look at trucks differently than I did when I was young, which it was a while ago. And so I do. And so my kids, I taught them to be careful around trucks. We’ll give them room, keep distance, don’t cut in front of them. I mean, trucks oftentimes will leave themselves room between their vehicle and the vehicle in front of them because they know they can’t stop suddenly, they can’t stop on a dime. So they try to leave a safety cushion.

And it’s amazing to me how many cars just zip right in because they say, “Oh, there’s a little opening there,” and they zip right in, not thinking. And then people don’t understand blind spots. Trucks really shouldn’t, with all the modern technology, with the mirrors, but some trucks still do have blind spots. And whether I think they should or shouldn’t, that doesn’t matter. The reality is they do. And so you need to be aware of those blind spots. They can’t see when you’re right in front of a vehicle, if you’re walking in front of a vehicle, for example, at a crosswalk, they may not be able to see you down there. They’re not going to see you if you’re right behind the vehicle, if you’re on the right side of the vehicle, it’s harder to see. And so you have to be aware of that.

The other thing is a Jake brake. People have had cases where people were killed because a truck driver had a Jake brake on. Again, once you have one of those cases, then you look different. A Jake brake is the trucker has it, if it’s set on, and he takes his foot off of the accelerator it’s like braking, you hear that noise, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba. You hear it. And so the problem is it brakes, but if you’re on snow or ice or wet pavement, it can cause your trailer to jackknife. Now you’re not supposed to use your Jake brake when you’re in snow and ice, but yet I hear those every now and then, especially in the mountains. And so the reality is that I stay away from those trucks.

Construction zones. I mean, every year, and we’re getting ready for construction season before long. There’s no question that people will die this spring because of construction zone wrecks with semis. I can’t think of a year recently where I haven’t represented victims of a semi-wreck in a construction zone. So when I go into a construction zone, I make sure that I move ahead, I get up. When I see the signs, I pay attention to the signs, and then when I see one coming up, I get myself positioned where I’m not in front of a semi, I’m not behind a semi hopefully, I’m not in front of a semi. I try to put myself in between cars and then get into this construction zone.

Ultimately, usually the wreck crashes happening in the beginning of the construction zone or if the lanes switch and curve, but you don’t want to be in the back end of a construction zone sitting there because, unfortunately, if the driver’s distracted, driver’s tired, falls asleep, has his truck on cruise control, they may plow into the back end of you. But so I do do the things. We took our office out to Montana and had some of our attorneys ride in trucks and we actually rode on the highway with truckers, professional drivers, and it is amazing to me how tough a job it is but also how people zip in and zip out of you. And so I don’t do those things and I teach my kids to not do those things.

Ashley Napier: Yeah, absolutely. I was going to ask you because I know that a lot of the attorneys here went to Montana to sit in a truck, drive a semi. Has that changed the way that you conduct your depositions or the way you practice, having been in a semi, knowing their blind spots, and knowing how it operates?

David Craig – Host: I mean, I think that the more experience you can get, no matter what it is, the more compassion you have for the truckers. If you spend time with professional truck drivers, the more you understand what is a pre-trip inspection, what is a post-trip inspection, how do you secure loads? The more experience you can get, the better off you are. I actually think it would be a good idea for you file managers to go out and drive trucks and actually see it as well. Again, our firm is different because we do things differently. We spend time and money to learn and to get experience. And certainly it has definitely helped us, helped me, helped other attorneys. And I think the next step is to get file managers and paralegals that have that same training. Plus, I just love watching you guys drive trucks.

Ashley Napier: That would be scary.

David Craig – Host: I was terrified. I was absolutely terrified.

Ashley Napier: Yeah, I’ll have to gear myself up for that. I mean, I still remember the first semi wreck that I handled like 13 years ago when I started here and it was on snow and ice. Our client was merging, she merged lanes, lost control, and the semi was going too fast and couldn’t stop in time. To this day, I have changed the way that I drive, especially on snow and ice. I mean, it sticks with you. For victims of commercial motor vehicle cases, what can they do? How can we make things safer? I mean, I think the death toll is rising due to commercial motor vehicle cases. And, again, not all truck drivers are bad, but that 10%, what can we do to make sure that 10% can start shrinking so we can help families and make sure that what happens to our clients doesn’t happen that frequently anymore?

David Craig – Host: Yeah, I think just being aware. So right now is going to be a challenging time in a legislature. I mean, one of the things is that the cap on insurance, for example. Truckers have to carry a minimum of $750,000 worth of insurance. Well, that’s been the same for decades. So it hasn’t raised. Now the cost of medicine is going up, the cost of medical bills is going up, cost of care, cost of everything else is going up, but they haven’t raised that insurance. Now, the problem with that is the lower that is, the more trucking companies can risk putting bad drivers on the road, trucking companies can put bad equipment on the road because the insurance is relatively cheap and they can buy $750,000 worth of insurance. And they know that the trucking company has no assets above and beyond that. And so they put bad drivers in.

So low insurance is a bad, unsafe thing. And that’s one of the things, I mean, we had a client called William Card. He had passed away. His medical expenses were over half a million dollars or his expenses were half a million dollars. His vehicle was destroyed. He died after being in a coma for a period of time. Two other people were injured, the car was damaged. And they carried a million dollars, which still was inadequate. If they would just raise and keep it up with the inflation, you would see the minimum would be at least 5 million. But they haven’t done that. And so that would be the easiest thing that if people would lobby or people would support raising the insurance rates. Because then, if there’s more at risk than the trucking companies and the insurance carriers, we’ll make sure that there are better drivers, better equipment that’s on the roadway.

But there’s also things such as side underride guards. We have had under ride guards in the back of a semi for years. Jayne Mansfield got killed when she ran underneath a semi. She was a famous actress. A lot of people probably don’t know who she is, but some of us older folks do, you can Google it, but she was a famous actress. Her daughter’s a famous actress on television. But anyway, she went underneath and was decapitated. And that was the beginning of putting under ride guards on the back of semi tractors. And so they have come a long way. They could still get better, but they don’t have them on the side of the semis. And people every year go underneath the side of the semi. And so lobbying and trying to make changes so that trucks are safer, whether they have emergency braking.

I mean, a lot of cars nowadays have blind spot indicators that light up if you’re in blind spots. It is not that expensive to put those on semis. And that would save a lot of wrecks. Sudden emergency braking on the front of a semi, technology on a semi so that if it comes up on stop traffic, it could stop. Now, there are issues with those, but they still would save lives. And so many of my clients die when they’re rear-ended by a semi who’s distracted or fall asleep or impaired. And so there are safety things that we could all advocate for that would be beneficial for all of us, and also higher insurance. And those are some of the things that I can think of off the top of my head.

Ashley Napier: So, some people, truck drivers I’m assuming, in the comments of Facebook are against Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations. Now, they’re professional drivers. They should be held to a higher standard than me, you, because of what they’re driving. Can you speak to why maybe Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations or higher standards for a truck driver is beneficial for the public?

David Craig – Host: Yeah, I mean, obviously we have to have semis on the roads. We’re going to have semis. There’s more semis on the road now. We’re a culture today that, “I want my Amazon delivered immediately.” And so stuff is shipped all over this country and you’re going to have more and more trucks, more and more semi drivers, commercial motor vehicle drivers on the road. And so they are held to a higher standard. They’re required to be professional. They’re paid to drive. And so I think having regulation standards, for example, the CDL, how they’re trained, if the roads are wet, they’re supposed to decrease their speed by a third. If it’s packed snow, they decrease their speed by 50%. If they’re on ice or need to get off the road. Well, truckers after I post said, “Everybody else needs to get off the road. I can drive.”

Well the problem is not everybody else is going to get off the road. I mean, cars are going to be on the roadway. So then what should you do? Well, you should be held to a higher standard. You should be taught how to drive in bad or adverse weather. You should be taught how to maintain your equipment. I’ve had trailers fall off of the back of the fifth wheel because they didn’t have the proper grease because of the weather condition. They came from Texas or Mexico where the weather was warm, come up in the Midwest winter and all of a sudden the grease isn’t working, the trailer comes off. Well, yeah. So I don’t need to know that as a car driver. I don’t need to know how to maintain my equipment. So I mean, my car’s going to get me here and there, but if I’m pulling a trailer and I’m going to block a roadway at night where people could die, sure, I should be held to a higher standard.

And I think most of us would recognize and say, yeah, no truckers, they should be held to a higher standard. Now, on the other hand, they should also be treated right. They should be paid well. They should be given time off. They should be given safe places to park. They should be given, I believe, over time. There’s so many times they have to sit and wait for a load and they’re not paid because they’re only paid by the mile. And there’s so many different abuses of truckers. Truckers are abused and they’re taken advantage of by trucking companies. And so that needs to be fixed as well. They don’t even have places, if they have to go to the bathroom, there’s some businesses won’t let them go into the bathroom to use the bathroom at the places where they pick up their loads.

And there’s legislation that’s been out there proposed by Republican and Democrats together that say, “No, if you got truckers coming into your facility to pick up cargo, then they should be able to use your bathrooms.” I mean, there’s just so many different things that I think truckers get abused and treated improperly that need to be taken care of as well. So, yes, they should be held to a higher standard, but on the other hand, they should be treated better than what they are treated today.

Ashley Napier: Absolutely. They make our economy go and it’s just a few bad apples that really are what we deal with day in and day out. So what sets our firm apart from all the other firms that handle commercial motor vehicle cases, like why choose our firm?

David Craig – Host: Well, I think it’s important that people pick the right attorney. And our firm is different in the sense that for a trucking commercial motor vehicle case, we have the expertise to properly handle the case. We have the experience. I’ve been doing this for 38 years, 35 of those years I’ve been handling commercial motor vehicle cases. We have the ability, the experience, the education, the knowledge, but we also have the resources. We have the money to invest into the case. But more importantly, we have a team. We have a team of qualified people. We have a great group of people that your case is going to be moved no matter what. If one of my file managers is gone, Ashley is going to make sure your file’s taken care of. If one of your lawyers is gone, another lawyer that understands trucking is going to be there to help out. We’re going to all work together.

One of the things we do right off the bat is have a team kind of meet and greet where we do a zoom where you get to meet all the attorneys that are working on your case. And on a big truck case, it’s usually at least three attorneys on the case of, which I’m one of those, my partner Scott Faultless, who’s also board-certified truck accident, he’s one of them. And then there’s going to be one of the other partners or one of the other attorneys involved in the case and maybe at least one of them, if not two. So we do take care of things. I think probably the biggest thing that distinguishes us is we treat clients the way we would want them to be treated. We treat clients the way they would want to be treated, as well. So if we were a client, how would we want to be treated?

So we try to treat people that way. But more importantly, we say, “What’s important to this client and how do we treat this client that way?” And so you can look at our reviews and you can see that we’re different than other people. We’re different than other law firms. We’re not the only ones. There’s other good ones out there. I believe people should interview and be comfortable with their choice, but we certainly can handle the cases, do a good job. But more importantly, we can help the clients through the worst time in their lives in a way that’s empathetic.

Ashley Napier: I mean, I think that not only are our attorneys and file managers and everyone that works on commercial motor vehicle cases extremely skilled at what they do, but we also have compassion for the people that are involved.

David Craig – Host: And also, we’re not afraid to try cases. I mean, so some law firms never try cases. We do try cases, and if you have lawyers, you need a law firm that’s… You don’t want to go to trial. I don’t know any clients that want to go to trial. But the reality is sometimes you have to go to trial. And if you have a lawyer who never goes to trial, the insurance companies know tha,t and they’re not going to ever treat you fair. So you have to have lawyers who are willing to go to try cases, who can be successful if they do go to trial in order to get you a fair resolution.

Ashley Napier: Something that you didn’t touch on. Something that we do differently here is, it’s something you adopted, what? 35 years ago when you handled your first commercial motor vehicle case. But we prepare every single case as if it is going to see the courtroom. We hire the experts on the front end, not only for liability, but also for medical. We collect data, we collect all the evidence, and securing that and making sure that the case is prepared if it ever does see a courtroom, is something that I think sets us apart as well.

David Craig – Host: Again, our attorneys are experienced, but also our file managers are experienced in what we’re doing. We have Clint, who runs our rapid response team, he’s experienced. He’s been with me for, gosh, I don’t even know how many years now, but a long time. And our investigator, he’s great at, he’s a veteran, he’s a past firefighter, and he’s fantastic on getting out. We have great experts that we use on a regular basis, but then also the guy who does our intakes, John, he has a degree in psychology. And so he’s good at listening. And some people have intake people who are good at selling. We have somebody who’s good at listening. We just hired somebody that is a social worker, has a degree in social work that can help put the needs of a client and look for help and assistance, whether it’s support groups or whatever it may be.

These cases, I mean, I’ve had cases where a mom and dad are killed and a child is left as an orphan. And then there’s a lot more complicated things. Not only do we have to take care of the trucking case, but we have to help the family decide who’s going to raise this boy, how are they going to raise this boy, how are they going to financially help this boy or this child? And so there’s a lot more involved than just the litigation, the trial stuff. That’s the part that lawyers know how to do. But we have a whole team of people that can help provide the support stuff and help a family through the tough times so the lawyers can handle the legal part, but yet we have a group of people who can handle the other part.

Ashley Napier: And I think that that’s also, it’s going above and beyond. Not all law firms are going to do that for you. That’s our client-centered approach, making sure that we take care of all aspects of their life that has just shattered into a million pieces. We try to do our best to be the super glue, to put things back together as best we can for them. Now, there’s nothing that we can do to bring a loved one back, but we can try to lessen the stress and make their day-to-day life just a little bit more bearable.

David Craig – Host: Yep. I would agree with that. All right. What do you think? Anything else?

Ashley Napier: I have very burning questions. These are high-end questions. Now if you had to choose between living in a world with no eclairs or no chili cheese dogs, which would you choose and why?

David Craig – Host: Well, that’s a tough one. I would probably pick the world without eclairs, although it would be hard because I eat chili cheese dogs a lot more often than I do eclairs. So I probably would pick the world without eclairs. But I would be really sad if I lived in a world without chocolate eclairs.

Ashley Napier: What would you do without DoorDash?

David Craig – Host: I’m really sad now just thinking about it. Why’d you ask that?

Ashley Napier: Oh my gosh. That’s hilarious. That’s all I have.

David Craig – Host: All right, well thanks folks. This has been another episode of 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-ASKDAVID. If you would like a guide on what to do after a truck wreck, then pick up my book, Semi Truck 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.