Plaintiff's attorney expects more trucking crash mitigation technology failure lawsuits
“This is one of the first cases I’m aware of where a piece of technology designed to avoid a crash actually set one up,” said plaintiff’s attorney Joe Fried.
Plaintiff’s attorneys Joe Fried and Michael Goldberg of Fried Goldberg and Karina Deochand and Romi Jayswal of Karma Injury Law recently secured a $16.6 million verdict out of DeKalb County in a case where a trucker’s automated emergency braking system failed, causing the truck to stop suddenly and their client to hit him.
Fried, an advocate for trucking safety and telematics systems to monitor truck driver performance, said this is one of the first cases he’s aware of where technology designed to avoid a crash instead set one up.
“As trucking technology that’s designed to mitigate crashes becomes more of the norm, you’re going to start seeing a lot more cases that involve some failure of that system, unless companies do a better job of training people how to override that system, because it’s not intuitive,” he said.
To do so, the driver has to hit the gas. “You’d think that, if you had a system like that, as soon as the hazard is out of the way, the same technology that saw it would see it was no longer there and would either disengage on its own or could disengage as simply as cruise control [does],” Fried said.
John Dixon of Dennis Corry Smith & Dixon represented defendant Brown Trucking Co. Dixon declined to comment on the litigation but noted his client was likely reviewing all its options moving forward and that, while the plaintiff’s counsel tried a good case, the jury did find the plaintiff, Avnish Dalal, to be 40% at fault.
According to Goldberg, “The defense lawyers were excellent and professional. But I had a personal dislike of the the insurance company. [Our client] had a million dollars in medical bills, and the insurer would not negotiate over their initial $2 million offer. Then they lowered their offer at trial. It was an unbelievable amount of stress.”
Brown Trucking employee Evans Tshongwe was driving a tractor-trailer on I-285 when a van pulled in front of him and slowed to exit the highway. Tshongwe began to slow down, and, according to the defense’s account in the pre-trial order, the truck’s emergency braking system engaged, causing it to come to a complete stop in the middle of the road. The plaintiff, on the other hand, contends the emergency braking system engaged because Tshongwe didn’t react quickly enough and could have been avoided.
A white car and another tractor-trailer immediately behind Tshongwe’s vehicle changed lanes, just before he stopped. Dalal was behind them, and according to his pre-trial order account, he tried to swerve to the right to get around Tshongwe’s truck but ended up clipping it, causing his car to bounce into a third tractor-trailer and then go under Tshongwe’s.
Ultimately, Dalal came away from the accident with a traumatic brain injury, permanent cognitive defects, a broken arm and scarring. His attorneys argued that Tshongwe should have recognized the hazard posed by the white van and acted accordingly, so the emergency system wouldn’t engage. Dalal’s lawyers also argued that Tshongwe should have known how to override the system to prevent the truck from coming to a complete stop.
The trucking company’s lawyer, on the other hand, contended that “Tshongwe acted reasonably under the circumstances and did not have sufficient time to ensure additional actions would be safe to avoid an accident with other traffic.” He also pointed out that Dalal was going 3 to 4 mph over the speed limit.
“This was a case where liability was hotly contested, and therefore we had to work hard to educate the jury about trucking safety standards,” Deochand said.
Fried said Tshongwe and the company testified he was trained on how to disengage the emergency brake; however, the truck’s black box showed that he only hit the accelerator with 16% of the force needed to shut it down.
“Part of our closing argument was: If he knew and didn’t do it, shame on him. If they let him drive the truck without really training them how to do it, shame on them,” he said. “And the corporate representative admitted on the stand [that] it would be indefensible for a truck driver to be driving a truck with that technology and not know how to override the system.”
Another challenge in the case was communicating to the jury the damages the plaintiff experienced, when “medically they appear subtle [but] in his life, they’re not subtle at all,” according to Fried.
He described his client as a high-achiever, a student at Georgia Tech with “truly exceptional” processing speed and intelligence. As a result, his counsel argued that diminished cognitive function was difficult to show because the standard it’s usually measured against is not the same level Dalal operated at before the crash. They also argued that the more consequential effect of the crash involved Dalal’s emotional health.
“His confidence was destroyed,” Fried said. “He’d gone from being a people-oriented, friendly guy to someone who was withdrawn, irritable and even sometimes inappropriate without even realizing it.”
Fried said this posed a challenge for his team, because Dalal lost so many relationships with people who could have served as potential witnesses, but this also painted a stark contrast of how his life changed after the wreck.
“The trucking company underestimated both their level of fault and the value of the case,” Jayswal said. “It was a hard-fought battle, but I’m thankful that the jury saw our side.”
The case was Dalal v. Brown Trucking, No. 21A04356, in the State Court of DeKalb County.
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