Accidents
Most people who come to me after a commercial truck accident assume the case works like this: the truck driver was negligent, the truck driver's employer pays, and the claim gets settled. That's understandable — it's how car accident cases generally work.
But trucking cases don't work that way. Not even close.
In my practice at SG Legal Group, commercial truck accident claims are some of the most legally complex cases I handle. The reason isn't just the severity of the injuries — though those are often catastrophic. It's that the legal framework governing the trucking industry operates on an entirely different level than ordinary motor vehicle law. There are federal regulations layered on top of state law. There are multiple theories of liability that exist independent of what the driver did. There are layers of insurance coverage most victims never know to ask about. And there are defense tactics designed specifically to minimize what you recover — or eliminate your claim entirely.
This article breaks down how carrier liability actually works in Maryland, what direct negligence by a trucking company looks like, what insurance is really available, and why the first hours after a serious truck crash matter more than most people realize.
When I take on a trucking case, I'm not just looking at what the driver did wrong. I'm building a case against a company.
Commercial motor carriers — the companies that own and operate commercial trucks — are subject to an extensive body of federal regulations known as the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations, or FMCSRs. These rules govern everything: who can drive, how long they can drive without rest, how vehicles must be maintained, what records must be kept, and how carriers must respond after an accident. The agency that enforces these rules is the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, or FMCSA.
This regulatory framework creates something that doesn't exist in ordinary car accident law: a detailed, documented standard of conduct that carriers are legally required to meet. When they fall short of that standard, the evidence of their failure is often sitting right in their own records — if you know what to look for and move quickly enough to preserve it.
That's a fundamentally different landscape than a typical two-car crash.
The most common tactic I encounter when I go up against a trucking company is the independent contractor defense. The carrier argues that the driver wasn't their employee — they were an independent contractor — and therefore the company has no responsibility for what the driver did.
I see this argument constantly. And it regularly fails, for a simple reason: federal law often overrides it entirely.
Under the FMCSA's leasing and operating authority regulations — specifically 49 C.F.R. § 376.12 — when a motor carrier allows a driver to operate under its DOT number and federal operating authority, the carrier is deemed the driver's statutory employer. It doesn't matter what the contract between the carrier and the driver says. If the truck was operating under the carrier's authority at the time of the crash, the carrier is responsible.
Think of it this way: the company whose name and DOT number appear on that truck cannot disclaim responsibility for what that truck does on the road. The regulatory purpose is exactly what the label suggests — ensuring that there is always an identifiable, financially responsible party behind every commercial vehicle.
Maryland courts also look past the independent contractor label to examine the economic reality of the relationship. If the carrier controls dispatch, sets routes and delivery schedules, mandates safety protocols, and has the power to terminate the driver, those facts point toward an employment relationship regardless of what the contract says.
The independent contractor defense is aggressively deployed because it works when plaintiffs don't know how to counter it. Knowing the federal regulatory framework is what makes the difference.
Even when vicarious liability is clear — even when there's no dispute that the driver was acting within the scope of employment — I always look for direct negligence by the carrier itself. This matters for several reasons. Direct liability theories survive the independent contractor defense. They open the door to broader discovery of the carrier's institutional practices. And in cases involving egregious corporate conduct, they can support a claim for punitive damages in certain states.
Here are the four theories I look at in every trucking case.
Negligent Hiring
Federal regulations impose specific, detailed obligations on carriers before they put a driver behind the wheel of a commercial motor vehicle. Before hiring, a carrier must verify the driver's CDL, pull motor vehicle records from every state where the driver held a license for the past three years, investigate prior employment history including any accidents or drug and alcohol violations, confirm current medical fitness through a valid medical examiner's certificate, and conduct a pre-employment drug test.
These aren't suggestions. They are mandatory requirements under 49 C.F.R. Part 391.
When a carrier fails to conduct this investigation — or conducts it and hires a driver with serious red flags anyway — that failure is itself an act of negligence. If the driver who caused the crash had a history of DUI convictions, prior accidents, or disqualifying violations that a basic records check would have revealed, the carrier's failure to discover or act on that information is powerful evidence of negligent hiring.
Negligent Retention
Negligent retention is different from negligent hiring. It's not about what the company failed to check before bringing the driver on — it's about what the company knew, or should have known, after hiring the driver, and failed to act on.
I handled a case involving exactly this situation. After the initial hire, red flags emerged about this driver — the kind of information that should have prompted the carrier to take action. It didn't. The company kept the driver on the road, and the result was a serious accident that harmed my client.
What makes negligent retention claims compelling is that federal regulations require carriers to conduct annual motor vehicle record reviews for every driver. Under 49 C.F.R. § 391.25, this isn't optional. If a driver accumulates moving violations, gets cited for reckless driving, or tests positive for controlled substances during employment, the carrier has an obligation to discover that information and respond to it. A carrier that ignores warning signs — or never bothers to look — cannot later claim ignorance as a defense.
Negligent Supervision
Negligent supervision addresses the carrier's ongoing failure to monitor driver conduct and enforce safety compliance. This is where ELD data becomes particularly important.
Since December 2017, most commercial drivers have been required to use Electronic Logging Devices that automatically capture driving time, duty status, location, and vehicle information. If a driver is routinely exceeding the federal hours of service limits — which cap driving at 11 hours per day and require mandatory rest periods — that data exists in the ELD records. If the carrier had access to that data and did nothing, that's negligent supervision.
The same principle applies to drug and alcohol testing programs. Under 49 C.F.R. Part 382, carriers must maintain random testing programs and conduct post-accident testing when required. A carrier that fails to administer required tests, or that fails to act on results, has breached its supervisory duties.
Negligent Entrustment
Negligent entrustment is exactly what it sounds like: entrusting a dangerous vehicle to someone unfit to operate it. A fully loaded tractor-trailer can weigh 80,000 pounds. The forces involved in a collision between one of those vehicles and a passenger car are not comparable to anything in ordinary traffic — the injuries reflect that. Handing the keys to an unqualified, unfit, or impaired driver isn't just careless. In the right circumstances, it's actionable on its own.
The FMCSA's Compliance, Safety, Accountability program — known as CSA — assigns safety scores to every registered motor carrier across seven categories: Unsafe Driving, Hours of Service Compliance, Driver Fitness, Controlled Substances and Alcohol, Vehicle Maintenance, Hazardous Materials Compliance, and Crash Indicator.
These scores are generated from roadside inspection data, crash reports, and FMCSA investigations. They are publicly accessible at https://ai.fmcsa.dot.gov. And critically, carriers are notified when their scores exceed intervention thresholds — meaning a carrier with elevated CSA scores has been placed on notice that there is a problem.
A carrier with persistent high scores in Unsafe Driving or Vehicle Maintenance can't claim it had no idea its operations were dangerous. The government told them. In litigation, that evidence is powerful for establishing what the carrier knew, when they knew it, and what they chose to do — or not do — about it.
I review publicly available CSA data as part of my investigation in every serious trucking case. Combined with the carrier's internal records, this data helps paint a picture of whether this was an isolated incident or a symptom of something systemic. That distinction matters — for liability, for damages, and for holding companies genuinely accountable. You can read more about how I approach evidence in trucking cases in my earlier post on truck accident liability and commercial vehicle safety issues.
Here is something most truck accident victims don't know going in: federal law requires commercial motor carriers to carry significantly more liability insurance than ordinary drivers — and many large carriers carry far more than the federal minimum.
Maryland requires passenger vehicle drivers to carry a minimum of $30,000 in liability coverage. For commercial carriers hauling general freight in interstate commerce, the federal minimum under 49 C.F.R. Part 387 is $750,000 per occurrence. Carriers hauling certain hazardous materials must carry up to $5,000,000. Large national fleets routinely carry $5 million, $10 million, or more in combined primary and excess coverage.
The structure typically looks like this: a primary commercial auto liability policy sits at the base. Above that, excess and umbrella policies provide additional coverage. In a catastrophic injury or wrongful death case, identifying every layer of coverage — and accessing it — is essential to making the victim whole.
Almost no truck accident victim has heard of the MCS-90 endorsement before they talk to me. It is one of the most important tools in these cases.
Required by 49 C.F.R. § 387.15, the MCS-90 is a federal endorsement attached to every motor carrier's liability policy. Its function is to guarantee that even when the carrier's underlying insurance policy has an exclusion, a coverage gap, or has lapsed — the insurer must still pay any final judgment entered against the carrier for bodily injury arising from the negligent operation of a commercial vehicle, up to the applicable federal minimum.
It is not traditional insurance coverage. It is a federal suretyship obligation that exists specifically to protect the public. If a driver wasn't scheduled under the carrier's policy, or if the policy had lapsed, or if some technical exclusion would otherwise defeat coverage — the MCS-90 steps in.
Courts, including the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals — which covers Maryland — have consistently recognized the MCS-90 as a public protection mechanism that cannot be circumvented by policy language or carrier non-compliance.
The practical takeaway: there is often more coverage available in a trucking case than the carrier initially presents. Understanding the full insurance picture — and knowing how to access all of it — is part of what an experienced trucking attorney brings to your case.
Trucking accidents routinely produce catastrophic injuries. The physics are not subtle: a loaded tractor-trailer at highway speed carries forces many times greater than any passenger vehicle. The resulting injuries — traumatic brain injuries, spinal cord damage, multiple fractures, amputations — reflect that reality in both their severity and their long-term impact on a person's life.
In Maryland, compensatory damages in a serious trucking case include past and future medical expenses, past and future lost income and earning capacity, and non-economic damages including pain and suffering, emotional distress, and loss of enjoyment of life. Economic damages — your medical bills, lost wages, future care costs — are not capped. Non-economic damages are subject to Maryland's statutory cap, which for causes of action arising in 2025 sits at $965,000.
There is one defense tactic in the damages phase that I want to flag directly, because I see it in almost every serious trucking case: carriers and their defense teams routinely attempt to minimize the severity of injuries. They do this through independent medical examinations — where a physician hired by the defense renders opinions that tend to favor the defense — and through vocational experts who argue that the victim's impairment is less significant than their treating doctors have documented.
This is expected, and it can be countered. Building a damages case that is credible, well-documented, and resistant to minimization starts with strong medical evidence from treating physicians, life care planning for serious long-term injuries, and economic analysis from qualified experts. The defense will try to chip away at every number. Our job is to make sure the evidence supporting those numbers is airtight.
In cases where the carrier's conduct was particularly egregious — knowingly putting an impaired driver on the road, falsifying hours of service records, operating vehicles with known mechanical failures — punitive damages may also be available. Maryland requires proof of actual malice by clear and convincing evidence, which is a high bar. But other states have lower thresholds for punitive damages.
There is a reason trucking companies and their insurers dispatch rapid-response teams to serious accident scenes within hours. They are working to preserve favorable evidence and shape the narrative before you've even thought about calling an attorney. That is the reality of how sophisticated carriers and their defense teams operate.
From my side of the case, the first priority after retention is evidence preservation — and I mean immediately.
ELD data can be overwritten on a rolling basis. Dashboard and driver-facing camera footage records on a loop. Event Data Recorder information from the vehicle's onboard systems — capturing speed, braking, throttle position, and steering input in the seconds before the crash — may be lost if not preserved quickly. Maintenance records, driver qualification files, dispatch communications, and drug and alcohol test results all need to be locked down before they are altered, lost, or conveniently unavailable.
I send a preservation letter to the carrier, its insurer, and any other identified parties as soon as possible after I'm retained. That letter specifically identifies every category of evidence that must be preserved — ELD data, camera footage, the driver's qualification file, maintenance records, dispatch records, the driver's cell phone records — and puts the carrier on formal notice that destruction of any of it will be treated as spoliation of evidence.
Under Maryland law, a party that destroys relevant evidence after a duty to preserve has attached can face serious sanctions, including an adverse inference instruction to the jury — meaning the jury can be told to assume the destroyed evidence would have been unfavorable to the carrier. That consequence is one of the few things that gets the attention of even the most aggressive defense teams.
If you've been seriously injured in a truck accident in Maryland, the time to contact an attorney is not after you've dealt with the insurance company, not after you've given a recorded statement, and not after weeks have passed. It's now. The evidence that could be the difference in your case may not exist a week from today.
If you'd like to talk through what happened and understand what your options are, reach out to me directly. There's no obligation — just a straightforward conversation about your situation.
Disclaimer: The information provided in this article is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Laws and regulations are subject to change, and individual circumstances vary. For advice specific to your situation, please consult with a qualified attorney.
Joshua C. Sussex, Esq.
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