Titusville Truck Accident Lawyer

A crash with a commercial truck starts out lopsided, and most people feel that before anyone explains it. The company that owns or insures the truck often knew about your crash within the hour. Its insurer may have sent investigators to the scene that same day, taking photos of the tractor and measuring the road before the truck moved. The industry calls that crew a rapid response team, and nothing about it breaks a rule. It does tell you the company opened a file on your crash on day one.

Since then, someone from the truck company’s insurer has probably called you, friendly and concerned. They asked you to describe the crash on a recorded line. Insurers call that a recorded statement, and they can use your answers to cut what they pay you. The truck itself is the most important object in your case, and it sits in the company’s possession.

Start with the clock on the evidence, because it runs whether or not you act. Your own decisions about a lawyer come next. The insurance floors, the companies that may owe you money, and the statute citations sit further down.

You Have Two Years to Sue and Three Months to Save the Proof

You’ve got two years from the crash to file a truck accident lawsuit, and the two-year deadline is the most forgiving clock in your case. The trucking company works on shorter clocks. The company may erase the truck’s inspection reports three months after your crash and the driver’s logs six months after your crash, and no rule makes the company wait for you.

A claim you start in month twenty is still a legal claim. A claim you start in month twenty is also missing the records that sat on a shelf in month two. The two-year deadline protects your right to sue, and the deadline protects none of the proof.

You stop the erasing with a letter. Once the trucking company receives a written demand to preserve the records, destroying the records costs the company far more than keeping them. Somebody has to send the demand, and the trucking company won’t send a demand to itself.

See a doctor within 14 days of the crash as well. Your own car insurance pays the first medical bills whatever caused the crash, and you lose the first-bill coverage for good after day 14.

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What Changes If the Trucking Company Calls You First

Someone from the truck company’s insurer has probably already called you, friendly and concerned. You don’t owe an insurance adjuster a recorded interview, and you can decline on the phone without giving a reason.

Insurers call a recorded interview a recorded statement, and they can use your answers to cut what they pay you. You’ll answer a written question more accurately, with your own records in front of you, than you’ll answer a surprise phone call.

The insurer’s investigators may have reached the scene the day of your crash and photographed the tractor before anyone moved it. You can’t undo the insurer’s head start, and you can decline to widen it.

You Pay a Truck Accident Lawyer Nothing Up Front, Whatever the Company’s Size

The size of the company across the table is exactly why the fee side works the way it does. Andrew Pickett Law takes truck cases on a contingency fee only. We take a percentage of what we recover for you, and we charge no fee at all if we recover nothing. You’ll never write us a check to get started, and you’ll never see an hourly bill.

Florida Bar rules cap a contingency percentage on a sliding scale, so no firm sets its own ceiling. The caps sit with the rest of the fee mechanics on the Titusville personal injury page. We back the Bar’s cap with a commitment of our own. A truck case runs on expert reports, downloaded engine data and records requests. We pay for the reports, the data and the requests while you’re still healing. Ask any firm you talk to, including us, who pays the advanced costs if you lose, and get the answer in writing.

Why a Truck Claim Is Harder to Run Alone Than a Car Claim

Some people settle a crash claim without a lawyer and do fine. A truck crash makes running your own claim harder than a car crash does, and here’s why.

You can handle a claim alone when one insurer covers one driver, fault is clear, and your injuries healed. A truck crash rarely arrives so simply. A driver, a motor carrier, a vehicle owner and a leasing company can each owe you money, and the paperwork behind the truck decides which of them does.

The federal insurance floor moves too. A for-hire truck crossing a state line carries at least $750,000, and a company hauling its own goods across that same line may carry far less. Nobody can tell you which floor applies to your truck without reading the company’s filings.

You can read the company’s federal safety record yourself, free, in about ten minutes. You can’t send a preservation demand that a carrier’s lawyers will treat seriously, and you can’t download engine data before a repair overwrites it.

Call us and find out where you stand in half an hour, whether the case looks small or large. The review costs nothing, and you’re not signing up for anything by asking. Even if you never call back, you’ll hang up knowing whether a truck claim like yours needs a lawyer.

The Lawyer on the File Changes How the Trucking Insurer Plays It

A trucking insurer decides early how hard a claim will be to defend, and the lawyer on the file is part of what the insurer decides. Andrew Pickett grew up in Brevard County and prosecuted in the Eighteenth Judicial Circuit before he represented injured people. Brevard truck cases go to trial in the Eighteenth Judicial Circuit. He trained at the Gerry Spence Trial Lawyers College, and he finishes cases in front of juries rather than settling every file.

Clients tell us the same thing in their reviews: they always knew what was happening in their case. We’ll tell you the next step and roughly when it comes. If something changes, we’ll call you instead of waiting for you to ask.

Call Before the Truck’s Records Are Gone

A first call is a conversation, not a commitment. You describe the crash, and we tell you whether the records in your case are still alive and what saving them would take. The call and the review cost nothing.

Bring the crash report number if you have it, and the name painted on the door of the truck. You can call with neither.

If Andrew Pickett Law takes your case, our fee comes out of a recovery, and nothing comes out of your pocket while the case runs. If a lawyer wouldn’t add anything to your claim, we’ll tell you and you can stop there.

Is It Too Late to Bring a Truck Accident Claim?

Most people are not too late. You have two years from the crash to file a truck accident lawsuit, and that is the longest clock in your case.¹ The medical side moves faster than the court side. Florida pays your first medical bills through your own car insurance, no matter who caused the crash. People call that setup no-fault. That money reaches you only if you see a doctor within 14 days of the crash.² The Titusville car accident page explains how that coverage works.

The shortest deadlines in a truck case belong to the records, not to the courthouse. Federal rules let a trucking company erase the proof of what its driver did months before your two years are up. A claim started in month twenty is still legal, and it may be missing evidence that sat on a shelf in month two. Those dates get their own section further down this page.

A crash that took a life changes the claim at the first step

When a truck crash kills someone, Florida law lets only one person bring the claim. A probate court appoints someone to act for the person who died, and the law calls that person the personal representative.³ The two-year deadline runs from the date of death rather than the date of the crash.⁴ Everything else a family needs lives on the Wrongful Death Lawyers page, which is written for families. The record clocks on this page do not pause for a funeral. A family in a fatal case has to chase these records sooner, not later.

How Much Insurance Stands Behind the Truck That Hit You

How much money exists for your injuries was settled before your crash ever happened. The law sets a floor for the truck’s insurance, and that floor does not depend on how badly you were hurt. It depends on whether the truck’s work crossed a state line.

A for-hire truck hauling freight between states must carry at least $750,000 in coverage once its rating reaches 10,001 pounds. Hauling oil raises that floor to $1 million, and certain explosives and bulk hazardous materials raise it to $5 million. Those two higher floors apply to private fleets as well as for-hire carriers. A company hauling its own non-hazardous goods across a state line falls outside the $750,000 rule, which is why identifying the carrier comes before assuming the number.⁵ A truck that works only inside Florida answers to Florida’s own floors instead, and those state floors are a fraction of the federal ones.⁶ The state floors run $50,000 for trucks from 26,000 to 34,999 pounds, $100,000 up to 43,999 pounds, and $300,000 at 44,000 pounds and above.⁷ A Florida-only truck under 26,001 pounds, carrying nothing hazardous, sits largely outside the federal safety rules altogether.⁶

The same loaded truck, doing the same damage at the same intersection, can be a $750,000 policy or a $300,000 one. The two differ in whether the truck hauls for hire across a state line. A $300,000 policy does not cover one serious hospital admission, so the fork decides a great deal for a badly hurt person.

Both sets of floors assume the company actually bought the insurance. Florida treats a missing truck policy as a noncriminal traffic infraction, roughly a ticket.⁷ Some trucks really do run without valid coverage, and local dump and aggregate haulers are the recurring example. Your recovery then usually moves to your own auto policy. That policy may include coverage that stands in for the insurance the other side should have had. That coverage is called uninsured motorist coverage, and the Titusville car accident page explains it, including the notice rule that protects it.

The number an insurer eventually offers is also not the number you keep. A Brevard hospital can file a claim on your settlement with the Clerk of the Circuit Court within ten days of your discharge. A claim like that is called a lien, and you pay it out of your settlement money.⁸ A jury now hears the amounts actually paid for your care, not the larger amounts billed.⁹ The full money picture lives on the Titusville personal injury page.

The Driver Is Rarely the One Who Pays You

A truck driver’s own money is small next to a hospital bill, so look at which companies stand behind him. Several usually do. The names on that list are set by the paperwork behind the truck, and by a rule Florida applies to vehicles generally.

Start with the door of the truck. When a tractor is leased, federal rules bind the company whose name and registration number are painted on that door. That company holds exclusive possession, control and use of the vehicle for the life of the lease, and the lease has to say the company takes complete responsibility for operating it.¹⁰ Courts have long treated that arrangement as making the company on the door answerable for the driver, even when the driver owns his own rig. In Florida the same control brings the company within the dangerous instrumentality doctrine described below.

Florida also reaches the owner of the vehicle. An owner who hands the keys to someone else answers for what that person does with the vehicle. The rule treats a vehicle as dangerous enough that lending one carries responsibility with it. Florida courts call the rule the dangerous instrumentality doctrine. Florida caps that liability when the owner is a person rather than a business, at $100,000 per person and $300,000 per crash for injuries, plus $50,000 for property damage. The cap has a hole in it. If the driver he lent the vehicle to was uninsured, or carried less than $500,000 of combined coverage, the owner is on the hook for up to another $500,000 in economic damages only, which is to say medical bills and lost earnings.¹¹

A leasing company is where the list usually closes, and it closes by design. Federal law bars holding a company that rents or leases vehicles liable simply because its name is on the title. Lawyers call that bar the Graves Amendment, and it leaves one opening: the leasing company’s own negligence in maintaining the vehicle.¹² You may hear that the leasing company is the deep pocket in a truck case. It usually is not. The pockets that stay open are the motor carrier on the door, that carrier’s insurer, and any separate company whose own conduct contributed.

A government truck changes the rules again. A city vehicle, a county dump truck or a school-board bus brings damage caps with it. It also brings a rule that the agency must receive formal written notice of your claim before any lawsuit, a step called a pre-suit notice. A crash involving a federal contractor around Kennedy Space Center can move the claim into federal procedures. The Titusville personal injury page carries both sets of rules.

The Trucking Company Can Legally Erase the Proof While You Heal

Right now, while you are getting treatment, the records that would decide your case are moving toward their destruction dates. Nobody has done anything wrong. Federal rules tell a trucking company how long it has to keep each record, and the shortest of those periods is three months. The company holding your evidence has no duty to keep it for you, and no reason to think about you at all.

Losing a case to a destruction date is the loss most people never learn about. Below is what exists today, who holds it, and how long each record lasts.

The proof that the driver was too tired to drive lasts six months

Every working truck driver keeps a running log of driving time, other work and rest. For most carriers a device wired into the truck records that log automatically, and it is called an electronic logging device. Those logs are how fatigue gets proven or disproven. Federal rules cap most long-haul drivers at 11 hours of driving inside a 14-hour working window, after ten straight hours off duty.¹³ A truck that works only inside Florida answers to looser state limits. Those limits allow 12 hours of driving, with a cutoff at the 16th hour on duty.⁶

The carrier has to keep the logs and their supporting papers for six months.¹⁴ The electronic back-up copy lasts the same six months, and after that the rules let the company erase both.¹⁵ A claim that turns serious in month seven can find the fatigue evidence lawfully gone.

The report that would show a brake failure has the shortest life in your case

Drivers write the truck up at the end of each working day. The write-up lists brakes, tires, lights, steering and anything defective, and the company has to certify the repairs. That daily write-up is called a driver vehicle inspection report. It is where a brake or tire failure stops being your word against theirs, and the retention rule gives it three months.¹⁶

Other records last longer and hold the pattern behind a single crash. The company’s register of its own accidents runs three years.¹⁷ The driver’s qualification file, holding his hiring, testing and violation history, survives his employment plus three years.¹⁸ A driver with a history is a different case than a driver having one bad morning, and the file is where the difference shows.

The truck’s engine remembers your crash until the truck goes back to work

The tractor itself is a record. Its engine computer stores data about speed and braking that specialists can read later. No rule requires the company to save that data at all. The engine computer records over it in normal use, once the truck is repaired and working again. The company’s own investigators, on scene since day one, have already photographed the vehicle and taken what they wanted from it. Keeping that data available to you takes a written demand, which a later section explains.

The tests for drugs and alcohol had to happen within hours

If anyone died in your crash, federal rules required the driver to be tested for alcohol and drugs. After a crash with injuries treated away from the scene, or a towed vehicle, the rules required a test only if the driver got a ticket. The windows here are the shortest on the page. The rules tell the company to stop attempting an alcohol test eight hours after the crash, and a drug test at 32 hours.¹⁹ Those hours have usually run out before a family thinks to ask.

A missed window turns the question around rather than ending it. Whether a required test happened, and what the company did when it did not, is written down somewhere. Records like that sit on the same destruction clocks as everything else here.

A school-zone camera may have your crash on video, and the city erases it

Some recordings never belonged to the trucking company at all. Titusville runs ten school-zone speed cameras, on Garden Street, Knox McRae Drive and other named streets. A crash inside one of those zones may be on camera right now. The city’s ordinance orders that footage destroyed within 90 days of the recorded event’s final resolution.²⁰ The Titusville car accident page covers how to ask the city to hold it.

You Can Read the Government’s File on the Trucking Company Today

You do not need anyone’s permission to look into the company whose truck hit you. The lookup takes about ten minutes and costs nothing. The carrier’s record changes how you read your own case. A carrier with a bad safety history is a different problem than a carrier with a clean one.

Every commercial carrier operates under a federal registration number, called a USDOT number. The number is painted on the cab, usually on the driver’s door. If anyone photographed the truck, the number is probably already in the pictures. It also appears in the crash paperwork once you have that paperwork.

Go to safer.fmcsa.dot.gov, choose Company Snapshot, and enter the number.²¹ The page that comes back is the federal government’s file on the carrier. It shows how many trucks and drivers the carrier runs, its official safety rating, and its recorded crashes. It also shows how often roadside inspectors ordered a truck or driver off the road on the spot. That share is called an out-of- service rate, and it appears beside the national average.

A satisfactory rating means the carrier had adequate safety management controls in place at its last full federal review. A conditional rating means it did not. Its controls fell short in ways that could produce the failures the rules list. An unsatisfactory rating means those failures already happened. An out-of-service rate far above the national average means this company’s trucks get pulled off the road at an unusual rate.

Save what you find. Take screenshots with the date visible, because the page updates as new inspections post. You want the record as it stood the week of your crash. The lookup hands you the outline of a pattern. The records that prove or disprove that pattern sit on the company’s shelves. The three-year accident register and the driver’s file are among them, under the same destruction dates.

The Records Survive Only If Someone Demands Them in Writing

The destruction dates on this page never pause on their own. You stop the destruction with a written demand that names each record and orders the company to preserve every one. The demand lists the driver’s logs, the inspection reports, the engine data, the accident register and the qualification file. Lawyers call that demand a preservation letter.

Once the company has the letter, destroying a named record stops being routine housekeeping. It becomes destruction of evidence, and a court can punish it. The letter accuses nobody of anything. It also cannot wait for the fault argument, because the destruction dates arrive whether or not fault is ever contested. The letter has to go out before anyone is at fault for anything.

Federal rules already require a carrier to preserve accident records and to answer federal and state safety investigators about them fully, truly and correctly.¹⁷ Your letter does something different: it names the records, which is what puts the company at risk if they disappear. The company’s side has needed no such step, since its file has been open, staffed and growing since the day of the crash.

Other Case Types We Handle

• Car Accident
• Motorcycle Accident
• Uber & Lyft Accident
• Pedestrian Accident
• Bicycle Accident
• Scooter Accident
• Golf Cart Accident
• Boating Accident
• Slip and Fall
• Premises Liability
• Airbnb and Vacation Rental
• Dog Bite
• Sexual Abuse
• Workers’ Compensation
• Wrongful Death

Areas and Zip Codes Served From Our Titusville Office

• Titusville — 32780 and 32796
• Mims and Scottsmoor — 32754
• North Brevard County