Being involved in a truck accident can be an extremely traumatic event, both physically and financially. You may be facing substantial medical bills, property damage costs, lost wages from missed work, and ongoing pain and suffering.
In the aftermath of such an accident, suing the truck driver personally may seem like the most direct way to achieve this. However, before taking legal action, there are several important considerations to weigh.
Financial Motivations Behind Suing the Truck Driver
Let’s first examine some of the financial factors that might compel you to pursue a lawsuit against the individual driver:
- Covering health care expenses – With severe injuries, your medical costs can rapidly skyrocket. Long hospital stays, surgeries, medications, and therapeutic care add up quickly. If insurance is unable to cover all these bills, suing the driver personally could provide additional funds.
- Replacing damaged property – Bringing your property back to pre-accident condition often carries high price tags. Beyond vehicle repair or replacement, there could also be costs stemming from destroyed cargo, electronics, clothing, and more. Again, if the at-fault driver’s coverage falls short, seeking further compensation from them directly could help to replace your financial losses fully.
- Reimbursing lost income – Inability to work due to injuries sustained can severely impact your finances through missed paychecks. These lost wages could amount to tens of thousands of dollars or more, depending on the extent of time off needed to recover. Suing the driver might provide reimbursement for this loss of expected earnings.
- Funding long-term care – Some severe injuries require extended treatment like surgeries, therapy, in-home care, case management, adaptive equipment, prescription medications, and more. The costs here can be tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars when totaled over a lifetime. Targeting personal assets could give access to more funds to cover this ongoing care.
Clearly, when insurance payouts fail to fully cover accident-related damages spanning health care, property loss, lost income, and long-term care needs, suing the driver personally takes on a new appeal to bridge remaining gaps.
When Suing the Truck Driver Personally Makes Sense
Beyond just the financial motivations, there are some particular situations where suing the truck driver as an individual defendant does make the most legal and strategic sense:
The Truck Driver was Underinsured
Federal regulations with respect to insurance require truck drivers to carry substantial liability insurance in case they cause an accident. Exact minimums vary between $750,000 and $5 million based on cargo type and truck ownership rules.
However, this could still prove insufficient in very severe crashes involving terrible injuries or multiple deaths. In these cases where your proven damages exceed available coverage, you may have justification to pursue the personal assets of the driver at fault to fully account for additional losses.
The Truck Driver was Uninsured
Although rare, there are unfortunately some cases where truck drivers are operating a commercial vehicle entirely without federally-mandated insurance. Reasons for this could include financial difficulties, lapsed payments, fraud, operating without a valid commercial license, or driving a truck they do not own without permission. Regardless, lack of proper insurance essentially means no guaranteed third-party compensation source at all. Suing the at-fault driver personally would become your only recourse to recover damages.
The Truck Driver was Unlicensed
Federal regulations are very strict about who is qualified to operate the largest Class 8 tractor-trailers based on training requirements, medical fitness, and testing. However, there have been instances of drivers using fraudulent licenses or operating a vehicle requiring a Commercial Driver’s License (CDL) without one. If an accident is caused by a criminally unqualified driver, their insurance company could deny the claim entirely. Again without policy protection, the only option to recoup costs would be to pursue legal action directly against the fraudulent driver.
The Truck Driver was Impaired
Situations where intoxication, distraction, fatigue, or reckless behaviors play a contributing role often denote a higher degree of negligence and blame on the truck driver’s part. Under many state laws, the doctrine of joint and several liabilities or pure comparative negligence allows drunk, distracted, or blatantly dangerous drivers involved in crashes to take on more financial responsibility – often up to 100% of damages. So again if insurance policies only compensate a portion because of these negligence findings, filing suit against the driver personally could allow fuller recovery.
The Accident Involved Severe Recklessness
Even when insurance is present, in some very extreme cases of reckless conduct like vehicular assault charges or blatantly life-threatening behavior, victims maintain the legal right to demonstrate moral outrage through civil action against the driver responsible. While financial compensation may still ultimately derive largely from corporate insurance funds, naming and demanding justice from the actual driver, not just their employer, recognizes the severity of the harm they’ve committed through their unrestrained actions. Punitive damages also become an option against individuals in applicable cases.
In each of these situations where insurance is severely lacking or financial fault weighs much more heavily on the personal actions of the driver, suing them may align practically to help guarantee access to reasonable damages.
Potential Challenges With Suing Truck Drivers Personally
While sometimes legally valid, there are also significant practical financial drawbacks to pursuing the truck driver exclusively as your sole individual defendant:
- Truck drivers rarely have sufficient personal assets – Most over-the-road tractor-trailer drivers earn fairly modest middle-class incomes in the range of $45,000 – $58,000, especially as independent contractors. After living expenses, few maintain substantial personal savings or property.
Outside of garnished wages, any lawsuit judgment could yield minimal assets. Even securing a verdict of several million dollars may only produce actual collections of a few thousand or tens of thousands from individuals. This is why it is often advisable to hire a truck accident lawyer and then go after the trucking company. For example, if you are in Texas, you can hire a law firm near you to sue a trucking company in Texas, mainly because they have deeper pockets and thus have a higher likelihood of giving you the compensation that you deserve.
- Bankruptcy can erase monetary judgments – To avoid ongoing wage garnishments from lawsuits, it is unfortunately common for truck drivers found liable for accidents to declare personal bankruptcy. This discharges judgments against them as individuals and releases them from further payments owed. It can nullify even multi-million dollar decrees down to just pennies on the dollar actually paid out by the now-bankrupt driver.
- Increased legal expenses incurred – Adding an individual driver to a negligence lawsuit along with their company’s insurance definitely drives up administrative and legal costs required to secure reasonable settlements. Discovery efforts multiply along with document filing expenses. Unless extremely high-value cases with proven negligence, the extra time investment often fails to yield corresponding higher ultimate compensation.
Drivers have limited budgets – pursuing them can yield minimum benefits at maximum hassle. Let’s examine better options.
More Optimal Alternatives to Suing the Truck Driver Directly
Rather than investing effort into suing the likely judgment-proof individual driver, several preferable alternatives exist to obtain your deserved compensation:
File a Claim Directly With the Trucking Company
Rather than targeting drivers, initiate settlement talks directly with trucking companies. Corporate policies generally reach $1 million or higher. As the licensed motor carrier, they bear overall responsibility for hiring, training supervision, safety monitoring, and retention of drivers. Their liability is separate from drivers.
Large carriers in particular have extensive cash reserves allowing reasonable settlements without litigation to contain legal risks.
Leverage Your Own Insurance Resources
- Carry substantial uninsured, underinsured, and medical payments coverage on your personal auto policy to protect assets.
- Consider adding umbrella insurance to bridge gaps between policies.
Pursue Third Party Contributors
Beyond drivers, investigate the liability of cargo owners, manufacturers, vehicle mechanics, parts makers, or contractors whose negligence potentially contributed. These peripheral entities often have “deeper pockets” via robust insurance or cash holdings allowing for increased settlements.
Focus claims on those with the greatest ability to pay – the corporate trucking firms and contributing third parties. Drivers themselves should be an absolute last resort for recovery.
Key Case Factors Dictating Driver Lawsuit Merits
Whether legally targeting the truck driver makes sense depends primarily on three case-specific factors:
Table 1. Financial Standing and Ability to Pay
| Driver’s Situation | Likelihood of Personal Assets |
| Independently wealthy | Higher |
| Leased operator model | Lower |
| Company driver only | Lowest |
Carefully assess the driver’s actual ability to pay judgments from non-exempt assets before deciding to add them as a defendant. Bank accounts, property, and other seizable holdings should be validated upfront, not just assumed.
Table 2. Insurance Coverage Limits
| At-Fault Party Policy Limits | Potential for Max. Recovery |
| Underinsured or uninsured | Driver may be the only target |
| Robust coverage confirmed | Insurers should be the main focus |
Fully investigate the extent of potentially accessible insurance funds before naming the individual driver in a suit. Sufficient corporate trucking coverage reduces any benefit from personally pursuing the driver.
Table 3. Applicable Laws and Driver Qualifications
| Driver’s Documented Circumstances | Changes in Liability Exposure |
| Valid CDL and authorized operation | More liability protection |
| Unlicensed or medically unqualified | Increased liability vulnerability |
| Under the influence or severely reckless | Potentially 100% liability with punitive damages |
The driver’s sobriety, licensing status, and operating authority at the time of the crash all impact their degree of personal liability exposure and fault judgments.
Essentially, the practicality of pursuing the truck driver for compensation for your injuries hinges on the specific intersection of:
- Their ability to pay reasonable judgments from non-exempt personal assets,
- The limits and applicability of corporate insurance coverage, and
- Their projected legal liability and negligence burden is based on driving fitness, impairment, recklessness, and regulatory compliance.
Carefully weighing each of these unique case factors helps determine if adding the driver to a lawsuit makes strategic financial sense.
Conclusion: Suing the Driver Should Be a Last Resort
Obtaining fair compensation after a devastating truck crash requires wise legal strategizing to access adequate funds. While directly suing the truck driver personally does offer the appeal of confronting an individual, in most instances it proves ultimately impractical. Except for very specific uninsured, unlicensed, or intentionally reckless contexts, better financial results typically arise from targeting corporate insurance assets, personal injury protection, outside contributors, and the trucking company itself through settlement talks or court action. The individual driver is best regarded as an avenue of absolute last resort for recovery rather than your optimal prime target. Approach any truck accident lawsuit ultimately filed thoughtfully and not just reactively. Analyze where both responsibility and sufficient resources overlap to satisfactorily fund your complete damages claim.
