Trucking and Transportation
Gallo Vitucci Klar LLP’s Trucking and Transportation attorneys have extensive experience in counseling and representing intrastate and interstate motor carriers of persons and property, drivers, owner-operators, shippers, freight forwarders, third-party logistics providers (3PLs), insurers and other transportation-related entities throughout the nation.
Trucking Accident Defense Litigation
The firm defends hundreds of lawsuits ranging in exposure from minor soft tissue injury or injury to property, through innumerable catastrophic injury suits involving claims of amputation, quadriplegia, brain injury and loss of life. Our defense of these suits often begins pre-suit through our involvement at accident scenes where we coordinate the emergency response, including locating and obtaining favorable witness testimony, and measuring and analyzing the accident dynamics with emergency response experts and investigators.
Immediate Response & Investigation with Gallo Vitucci Klar’s Emergency Response Team
Immediate response is critical when trucking accidents occur because many involve serious bodily injury or death. Our national Emergency Response Team (ERT) members are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week to respond when accidents occur and are immediately implemented in order to preserve physical evidence, obtain witness information, investigate the cause of the accident and evaluate the potential exposure.
Our ERT members have appeared before state agencies post-accident, such as the Department of Motor Vehicles, to defend drivers in connection with safety/license suspensions and hearing/traffic violations, and have also acted as an interface with the New York City District Attorney’s Office. Our ERT members are experienced transportation attorneys, expert consultants, field adjusters and investigators. We strive to assist clients in resolving claims efficiently and in a cost-effective manner that meets the clients’ goals through pre-litigation investigation assistance and litigation.
Our ERT has the capability and resources to upload Engine Control Modules and 3D laser scanning of vehicles, and can facilitate Department of Transportation-approved alcohol testing of drivers. Our ERT has been used to aid in various post-accident measures, such as expediting biohazard clean-ups, making towing arrangements of the various trucking vehicles, and assisting in the release of vehicles from impound.
High-Profile Catastrophic Accident Defense Litigation
The firm currently represents defendants in several catastrophic losses recently covered by local and national news organizations, including:
- a pedestrian fatality involving a bus driven by an allegedly intoxicated tour bus operator
- an Upstate New York bus accident with multiple fatalities involving a collision by a double-decker bus with a bridge abutment
- a multi-vehicle collision leading to pedestrian contact by a school bus, which ultimately led to a bilateral leg amputation
Our involvement in each of these representative cases began with our attendance at the accident situs to obtain and preserve crucial evidence, and to obtain, where necessary, competent criminal representation for the involved drivers.
We regularly engage in preventive counseling for trucking and transportation clients as it relates to changes in federal regulations, state law and industry practices. Our attorneys also advise clients on risk management, claims-handling practices, and state and federal law and regulatory developments through client seminars, industry seminars and firm publications.
