CHR, Costco, and Coyote all sued for Trucking Accidents

Allen Miller is now a quadriplegic due to a truck losing control in icy conditions, the trailer crossed the median and collided with Miller's vehicle, pinning him under the trailer. Miller sued the trucking company, C.H. Robinson the freight broker. Meet his nationally recognized heavy-hitter plaintiff attorney, Michael Leizerman this Friday to hear about his theory of liability against the shipper and broker here.
We will also talk about the lawsuit against Coyote Logistics regarding an improperly loaded shipment.
Nationally recognized defense attorney Ted L. Perryman will also join us.

Sponsors:
Lean Staffing Solutions: https://leanstaffing.com/
OTR Capital: https://lnkd.in/dDfEgCY
Swan Leap: https://swanleap.com/

Watch on YouTube

#trucking #freight #truckingindustry #logistics #madgaines #transportation

Transcript

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[Music][Applause][Music] we are here happy friday this is a really big friday i know it's the end of the month people are booking loads people are probably authorizing carriers that they shouldn't uh but it's halloween and i decided to bring you um a scary plaintiff attorney and a scary defense attorney to scare the crap out of all of you uh because it's my favorite thing to do on halloween all right welcome to mad games live i am cassandra gaines i hope that you all can hear me okay let me check youtube real quick because that's where everybody should be i know a lot of you on linkedin facebook twitter something else i'm streaming on but what i want you to stream on and what i want you to do is go over to youtube in every social media posting i put the youtube links on there so go over there uh let's see it's looking good can you guys hear me okay hope you can let me know in the chat if you can't i want to welcome everybody to the show so today i have two attorneys for you that are going to join us and they're both very famous have a lot of experience with litigating broker and shipper liability cases which are very different than trucking cases and i think that this is a good time to talk about places because uh we have um just checking to make sure everybody can hear me and everybody's happy on youtube i think that this is a good time to talk about this because i'm hearing a lot of people lowering their vetting standards uh that's one thing uh because they're trying to gain capacity and we want to talk about that today and then the other pieces is that i'm seeing an increase in the amount of lawsuits against brokers and shippers so i want to bring you the experts today's show is sponsored by three companies these are three of my favorite companies so you can see down at the bottom you've got lean staffing which i think everybody right now is using lean staffing if you're not you need to reach out to david bell you need to talk to him because they will improve your operations and they're already servicing so many people and have such a great reach with regards to expertise and operations so reach out and and uh get get get to know david bell and lean staffing team welcome lean staffing uh otr capital my favorite factor income i love them they're based out of atlanta you guys remember grace she came on the show they i love the fact that they offer um like they have it's more like a family style factoring environment and they'll take care of you they have back office work that they do for you as carriers and brokers and we trust them we trust them with our data we trust them with no hidden fees so that's why i thought they were okay i love them and i want them on the show now a new one is over here swan leap isn't that a cool name i've actually known about swan leap for a while um i saw brad hollister speak on i think it was like a conference or something and he was so smart and i looked up swan leap and i got to know the company they are a dms they mostly are for shippers but they're starting to get into the brokerage space and what i want you guys to do is to check them out because personally i've worked with a lot of different tml tms products this one is flexible and you need flexibility with our tms and it and for those who are in legal and finance it runs a lot of great reports as well and i just think that this one is a better fit when you want to integrate with your shippers and when you want to run reports and you want to have different things done they just more flexible so get to know brad hollister he's around he should be in the comments i think i saw him uh you guys let me know if there's anything else going on with because i'm asking everybody to be patient with me because tech is so hard for me so uh two things about tech well about the rest of the show and then i'm gonna open right up and we're gonna get to the work oh i see destiny's here hi destiny she just joined the metropolis group roger moore just drawing the metropolis group um so let's talk about that for a minute when you see below you can see right underneath there's a button that says join and i made another button and i'm gonna do this right now so after this show at three o'clock central time so right when we're done uh my plaintiff attorney is going to escape but my defense attorney's gonna stay and we're gonna have a private um discussion about vetting carriers it will be intense it will be private and it's going to be here on youtube in a private group you can see in the chat on youtube i put the link in there amanda miller will probably um distribute it for us if she has time she's my favorite freight broker from alabama click on that link join uh more and more and more uh so become a member and we're gonna do that today and then later on i'll show you the link um for when we're gonna be there at 3 o'clock last thing and then we'll get to it last thing if for any reason i freeze and the and and you don't see me anymore just refresh the page and go back to my main mad gains youtube page and you'll see i went live again okay so that's all you have to do i can already see i'm kind of freezing up oh technology really loves me all right before i introduce my guess i'm going to play a video because it's easier to play the video and talk about the case then to um then to go through talking so give me one second i'm gonna pop on over and i'm gonna play our video mike was 25 years old and enjoying life when a tractor-trailer crossed the median into oncoming traffic and flipped over mike didn't have a chance as he tried to avoid the truck that had blocked all the lanes of i-80 he was rendered quadriplegic he now needs to be moved fed and cared for 24 7. the at fault truck company only had 750 000 insurance mike doesn't have the money to get the care he needs with medicaid only paying for limited home health care mike's future care will cost from 7 million to 18 million dollars like mike many truck crash victims end up on programs like medicaid which burden taxpayers and still don't meet the victims needs the cost to care for an injured 20 year old who needs part or full-time medical care is from 2 million to over 20 million this doesn't include medical expenses or account for inflation all right welcome we are done with our video which i am having feedback it's a little choppy maybe maybe not let me know in the remarks and i'll try to figure out what i can do to fix that okay i'm going to welcome my guest michael can we start with you our famous plaintiff attorney first question is uh do you have your face on a billboard i do not you do not i see them all over the place the texas hammer the crazy billboards and i'm like oh boy plaintiff attorneys yeah it it's interesting because um on one hand it's easy i i hate them right and the ads and a lot of them are so schlocky they make us all look horrible um and it's kind of interesting people on who are hired by insurance companies um they don't have to go out to advertise to get the business so how do people know about you that being said um i don't need to do it i don't do it my cases all come from other lawyers um you're freezing up but i'll just keep talking i'm just not i'm sorry about the internet you've frozen a good me um it wasn't something i was conscious about but actually i remember as a little boy so there's a case leezerman in the state of michigan right in the truck with him and it was like one of the doors fell off on him and he heard it he gotta hurt you but anyhow so like i love trucking um i always wanted to be a lawyer my family had the law firm i got involved in and i suddenly realized i want to do things i was doing well but i want to do things that make a difference in the world and make the world safer that i just feel great about and i had a couple trucking cases in the 90s and i saw trucks where brakes weren't working electrical wasn't working um horrible injuries and i thought here's a place where there's a niche where i can represent people and do some good in the world that's very important to me yeah it's it's i like hearing that story because often when i ask people oh how did you get into the transportation industry uh they're usually like oh i just i got socked in and then i never came back out that's usually my stories i got sucked in and didn't come back out uh ted um welcome to the show ted could you tell us a little bit about yourself sure sure yeah it's a it's an interesting question you know i guess michael and i had a little bit in common uh my dad was a truck driver as well uh and i have a son that's a truck driver uh and michael and i are both truck drivers so we both have our cdls and so i guess uh when i got into law there probably was a whole lot of alternatives so i've been representing truckers for a long time and you know somebody has to stand up for these guys i mean they have a tough job it's uh away from home they work long hours and they have to put up with a lot of crap on the highway and so i guess i just come by it naturally yeah i'll make one correction is i do have a commercial driver's license and it's exhibit a um i am not a truck driver there's a difference between having a cdl and being a truck driver a huge difference um uh so okay so uh michael this lawsuit the one that i led the discussions about um i'm glad i'm hearing the audio is coming through live and clear the video's just a little squishy uh so whatever we're just gonna keep going and then i'll fix it later on um so uh so this lawsuit for those people who the video was glitchy or they didn't they weren't able to really understand what's going on the video could you tell us a little bit about it and this is the ch robinson costco miller lawsuit the one that i've been kind of leading with because i want people to i wanted to attract shippers and brokers to understand this case and liability yeah and there was just a decision in the ninth circuit the highest court in the land to address um broker liability in this way so it was a huge decision congratulations by the way yeah thank you and thank you um i'm so thrilled for michael miller so you know you started talking about plaintiff's lawyers um and let me say i take i handle a dozen cases at a time right now i have ten death cases and two quadriplegic cases michael miller's one of those um i sit with families i've sat with his mom and dad who take care of him every day um in just in ways that are disgusting i can't even get into the things they have to do to take care of his body[Music] i mean i really want to help so i sit with them i look at what happened and i look at the motor carrier and i see where do i have good faith arguments who's responsible here you know it wasn't michael he's driving down the road a tractor trailer um in icy conditions um crosses the median flips over um he tries to avoid it and can't goes underneath it so um you know tractor trailers shouldn't uh should be driving at a safe speed and shouldn't go across the road and flip over i look at it and i see i want to look at the motor carrier and see what was the vote and i wanted um what i did in that case is i looked um and as i looked more and more what i saw was a chameleon carrier i saw a carrier that um had its authority taken for over and over having out of service violations and fines and insurance problems and then reformed and then reformed and i see a lot of themes in cases i've seen this in other cases and when i looked i found the broker i thought the broker should know this and it turns out they did know it they actually knew because they had done business with the prior saying oh formed a new um entity under his dad's name but continue to talk to him um so that was uh ch robinson um we sued the broker and we sued costco in the case costco has been since dismissed we had a good faith basis when we looked there were questions of what did they know who did they hire did they do due diligence and when we looked into it um and we're satisfied we ended up dismissing them so there's ways we can sorry to interrupt it back up for those shippers who are kind of leaning in like what did you look at um because there's something a lot of drivers are new to this they're like wait i didn't hire the carrier what do you look what were you looking at yeah that's so that's a good good question um when you say i didn't hire the carrier so i kind of divide the shippers into two right away i'm looking did the shipper directly hire the carrier and if so um what did they look at what did they know or should have known that type of thing now if a shipper goes out and is reasonably careful in hiring a broker right um and it turns out that they actually didn't have any part of selecting the carrier they've done what i believe is reasonable um then i'll look at it and dismiss him or the reality is i get along with a lot of defense lawyers because this is all i do is trucking and i'm at the point where i'll exchange documents early on sometimes before the suits filed to kind of save that that lawsuit what so um so ted when you're defending these types of cases because ted i wanted you to come on the show because there's actually not a lot of defense attorneys that truly know how to defend a broker-shipper case um they the defense attorneys and the insurance adjusters they try to approach it as a trucking case and as we all know any of us who worked in logistics and worked a trucking company and then we worked at a logistics company it's completely different um so ted what what do you think plaintiff attorneys are looking at with ship reliability in addition to what michael has said and then also how do you defend it well i may end up saying this a lot because at all due respect michael uh and uh i had a judge once tell me well when you ever say that i know the rest of it you're you're not gonna agree with the thing i said but uh uh but here the reality of it is that in most cases where you have a trucking accident and the michael or a police attorney names the broker and or shipper as a defendant it's usually only in catastrophic cases because they're looking for a deeper pocket to uh pay a judgment or a settlement or a verdict so you know typical cases you know a typical trucking company has a million dollars and liability insurance well if the case is worth less than a million dollars michael's never going to sue the broker or the shipper it's only those cases he talked about death cases and he talked about uh paraplegic cases those cases uh usually if the motor carrier only has a million dollars that he's looking for a deeper pocket so you know in all due respect in terms of safety and liability most plaintiffs lawyers follow the money am i am i wrong michael well i i'll say two things one is you're right it doesn't make sense to sue the broker if it's a broken bone that's healed um you know there's enough coverage many times um with the motor carrier um i would you know i take a little exception maybe it's the way i work of saying that it's not about safety it's it's about both um and i hear you uh you know what i caution so i talk to lots of lawyers i teach lots of lawyers and we now have a board certification um through the academy of truck accident attorneys and the mbta in truck accident law[Music] and so when i'm talking to lawyers i'll say exactly what you said you don't just sue brokers or shippers because they're the deep pocket you have to do some due diligence so i agree we shouldn't just scatter shot these things and there's a duty of reasonable care so i'm looking for these specific was there a conditional rating was it a new entrant and there was no due diligence done was there evidence it was a chameleon carrier there's all kinds of you know checklists of things for my shippers um to dig in deeper you had said that you look at the reasonableness of how they've selected a broker or a carrier let's talk about a broker though uh like in this case what were you thinking when you when you were thinking well maybe i should sue the shipper here um because they improperly picked c.h robinson for the shipment is that what you were thinking well so so or you can speak in general you don't have to speak about this case either yeah i mean that it's an ongoing case and there's some kind of strategic decisions uh there um but on the whole again i'm looking like did they directly um hire the motor carrier were they involved in that sometimes so i'm almost always brought in by other lawyers there it's great if i get a case early on if i call the defense lawyer most of them know me and we can start talking and i can get information you know if someone calls me and there's a person that's quadriplegic in the statute of limitations the you know we have to file a lawsuit this week or they lose the right to sue uh then in that situation i'm gonna look if there's a good faith basis i'm gonna look at the shipper and the broker and maybe dismiss them but um you know sometimes it doesn't come in as ideally as i'd like i'd like to have time to look at those things um ted i have a lot of clients and friends that still hire conditional carriers and what they do is they take they call the carrier and they say hey you're in conditional status but we it's tight capacity we really need capacity we need to run this load it's friday five o'clock let's go um so so then they say what do you do you have a do you have like a safety plan or a plan you can share with us as the broker or the shipper and let us know that hey you're working on this conditional status you're okay so we can keep moving loads with that with you have you have you seen that and how do you def and what are your thoughts about that kind of activity because i still see it a lot and cassandra has a very aggressive thought as you know on rated carriers probably 80 are rated so you you left with those with have a satisfactory rating and then of course you have some unconditionals i think as a as a broker you're always taking the risk by hiring a conditional carrier because if you know god forbid there is a tragic accident a catastrophic accident you could probably almost bet you're going to find yourself in a lawsuit and michael's going to love the idea that you're conditional and he'll have experts lined up to say that a motor carrier that a broker should never hire a conditional carrier but as we know sometimes you you know carriers maybe have a one bad accident or they have a series of issues and they're put on conditional status and they work very hard to try to get out of that condition status and get back to at least unrated i mean i've helped carriers do that in the past but sometimes you can do it over a period of weeks but sometimes it takes some time to do it and uh so i look getting a plan from the motor carriers better than just saying oh you're conditional you're authorized to run so go ahead and run i think if you at least do some due diligence say well what's your plan or what was the reason uh you were put on conditional status what are you doing to address those reasons you know that's going to help you i think uh later on down the road don't you think michael yeah well for sure i mean if if a broker hires a conditionally rated motor carrier my first question is what did you get their corrective action letter no many times the the answer will be what what's that oh yeah yeah um you know so many of the cases i see are are pretty extreme um they're conditional but they never looked the linhart case you know that was in oregon where we got punitive damages was a conditionally rated carry we're not actually sure if it was showing up at the time as conditional or unsatisfactory because the motor the broker never looked um to see any of that so um you know if there's a letter i mean that's that's better than nothing now what does the letter say i literally i have letters that i've gotten where the motor carrier said i'm not making this up i didn't know that we had to do drug testing now that we know that we'll well we'll do it now we'll be better yeah until our crash but um yeah i always tell my okay so so uh ted wait no i won't ask dad i'll just make the statement i don't know how much brokers know about trucking safety so when they receive those conditional letters or whatever the corrective action plans do they even know what they mean what's going on and uh is that sufficient and that and i i fear opening that door um for michael to make exactly the argument i'm making and then you have someone on the stand who has no idea with safety and they're like oh well they just here's a corrective action plan i just went with it and we have an accident and to me it's it's slam dunk i mean michael got punitive damages for that case so um i suspect that sophisticated brokers know about the different ratings and if you have an unsophisticated broker uh then you know that could be a that could be an issue but uh you know most brokers are are get on carrier 411 or some other type of uh platform where they can check out carriers or they're notified about carriers who are on conditional status and you know you see different kind of you know the broker-carry agreements that you see sometimes they say you cannot be conditional you have to either be satisfactory or auto rated you can't have a condition or unsatisfactory rating so sometimes those are taken care of i mean you whatever standard you have for your motor carrier you ought to put that in your carrier um michael can we we have some comments in it by the way there was a really funny comment i have to tell you guys oh good someone says i once got an loa that looked like it was written in crayon by a four-year-old sorry i saw that [ __ ] and i was like oh yeah i can see that so um i think that uh right now we have a lot of compliance and legal people who are being put on the spot by leaders of brokers and shippers saying we need more capacity and the quickest way to get more capacity is do you remember where you said that you would only were only going to hire carriers with one year of authority i want to go down to three months now um michael what do you do when you hear that what is usually your approach to a case when you hear a three-month-old carrier got in this big accident and the broker used to have a year of authority year year requirement but now the broker the shipper's like we need capacity so we're going to three months yeah i want to know what what are they thinking i think i know what they're thinking and i think there's an assumption brokers assume that motor carriers um know what they're doing motor carriers assume the brokers know what they're doing so and shippers assume that they all know what they're doing the brokers and carriers know what they're doing yeah and so the the cases that i see these motor carriers um and let me just say this um it's very important um most truck drivers most truck companies are doing everything they can to be safe they're honest good hard-working people that want to you know get home to their families or loved ones they're trying to do the right thing you know so um i am the first to correct lawyers when they get up and talk about oh these drivers on crystal meth and whatnot i mean yes those are cases that i see a lot that's not the typical truck driver just like the typical plaintiff's lawyer is not the way you're describing on a billboard and having six million dollar birthday parties sorry michael i had to stand i can't leave it alone and also while i'm at while i'm at it making blanket statements i might as well just say that it annoys the ever living daylights out of me ted it annoys me that we still have carriers on the road that are getting in accidents high on drugs and and driving drunk and watching porn while they're driving it drives me up the wall that we still have this activity um and then people get mad at plaintiff attorneys well what do you think is feeding the plaintiff attorneys this group you know what porn and now video gaming and other activity on the phone causes more crashes than anybody would imagine many crashes that you've heard about that end up under protective orders and non-disclosures so you can't talk about them yes those kind of bad things happen and you get carriers the carriers that i see do you disagree ted i mean i see this it's crazy how often you hear things like that michael i mean it's always anecdotal it's always well uh i have a case where a guy was on math or i have a case where a guy was video streaming at the time i i always look for data are there studies out there that show this that you know if you're on your cell phone uh with bluetooth you're more apt to have an accident or uh are there studies out there to say what percentage of truckers are watching for and i mean i i don't know that to be the case i mean i i don't want to indict the whole industry simply because there's a few examples of of somebody every once in a while looking at their phone i think my frustration ted is that it still goes on like and and what do you think the community's doing from a safety perspective like i wish i wish we had more lobbying maybe it's out there you're more in tune with this but i wish there was more lobbying for more maybe a higher bench barrier to entry for carriers or something um well i mean we're having trouble attracting drivers to the industry in the first place and and i'm not suggesting that we only tracked it because you can use your cell phone while you're while you're while you're driving i'm not suggesting that at all but you know i i think to say that this is uh i mean i see people their passenger cars doing the same thing all the time i mean i see no disrespect for this but i mean i see i see ladies putting on makeup while they're driving the car that's i mean we all have this distracted uh this tendency to be distracted while we're driving and you know look every once in a while i get a case where uh there's drug or alcohol a part of the other driver but i will tell you from my practice it's a small percentage it's very small it should be zero but but uh it's it's not it's not commonplace most of the guys test negative after the crash i'm curious what you meant um because and i started out by saying that this i see the worst of the worst so i'm not saying that every truck driver is out there watching porn streaming on their phone and i see it many times more than you would imagine so when you're saying they could be on bluetooth i hope you're not saying it's okay to be watching porn as long as you're on the bluetooth um right and when you say that there's someone putting on makeup while they're driving um should car drivers be more careful hell yes you know do a majority of car truck collisions are they caused by the car i think so i think a slight majority maybe 60 percent the best i can tell absolutely and there's a reason why we have commercial drivers licenses and training because as horrible as it is that person putting makeup on driving their honda pilot is not going to do as much damage as driving a 40-ton truck good point there is a difference i mean i don't i i get that and and the uh it's difficult for motor carriers to constantly monitor every activity of the driver while he or she is on the roadway and our driver's gonna look at their phone from time to time or they got a text from time to time of course they and but i i don't i i would like to see some data on the subject before we start saying well this happens with any degree of regularity um okay so here we go right uh we have to go back to the comments because the goal of this show is to make sure that because i've got two experts here um and i want to make sure that people get the chance to ask these two experts questions um and uh so we had a lot of activity when it came to vetting the carriers and comments so i want to go back to that uh oh before i do for those of you who are just joining us yes we seem to only have audio and a little frizzy of the the video apologize for that i tried my hardest um after this show uh you're going to here's a sign up here's the link in the comments um join us after the show for private discussion about details of carrier vetting activating and inactivating carriers how exactly your vetting carriers and the liability that's associated the conversations that we want to have but we can't win michael's around sorry michael i'm happy to leave and you can talk about me you're so awesome um but i want to say that uh click on those links and join us and what i'll do um i will stream differently than how i'm streaming now i can't change now because we'll lose 200 and we'll lose 300 people on all platforms so i won't do that but i will um do a different stream when we jump on the next after the show discussion so the links are in the comments here on youtube and you can watch it now oh it's better now thank you rhonda all right so we had some comments come through that i want to go back and look at thank you amanda miller for escalating some of these questions um okay um let's see oh good question what's up to michael or to ted what are the best ways to document that a broker and a shipper has done their due diligence like are you looking for documentation that they've done it is a certificate what have you seen and you tell people that you prefer to see ted i'll let you start i have some thoughts okay sure well i think you know the first thing especially in a lit gated case you're looking at the broker carrier agreement to make sure there is an agreement and what the the terms of that are usually to define a relationship and also sets forth the criteria that the murder carrier has to lead to have that so if you don't have a broken carry agreement you can get one of those and then the second thing you should probably do is is make sure whatever criteria you adhere to whether it's you know operating authority or insurance and and whatever the rating you want the carrier to be you should make sure that you actually do that and you uh broker that freight make sure that that carrier meets that that particular uh uh criteria that you set forth and you know there's there's several services out there uh there's uh and i'm not advocating any of these in particular but there's like carrier yeah don't use that one use safer watch whatever whatever the the uh platform is i think probably most of the larger brokers would use that and so obviously that has its own documentation you can keep with it you know it it's one of these things you're damned if you do damn if you don't yeah there are experts out there that adhere to the plaintiff's side that you should do some more due diligence in terms of the motor carrier like what well that you should send them surveys or or interview the safety director or michael do you believe that do you believe that we should send okay i'm a broker and i've got or shipper and i've got 15 000 carriers in my database do you believe that i should be sending them surveys well in the right circumstance yes you already are if there's a high value cargo load the broker will get on the phone and call the motor carrier to say hey our customer big box is really concerned here's you know 150 000 worth of usb drives um please come on just say vcrs we were talking yesterday i said 150 000 worth of vcrs maybe they're all beta beta vcrs i want them back keep going though i'm sorry yeah that hates me but but if so if you have a high value cargo load you get on the phone and you say are you going to be locked up overnight are you going to protect the cargo load yeah brokers do that now do you have to do that on every load if you're using rmis say for watch carrier 411 whatever you're using you're getting a lot of data and if there's certain criteria if they're conditionally rated i mean i'm not going to give an extensive list because those companies have all kinds of yeah they have list you know but if there's a conditional rating if it's a new entrant have they been through a safety audit how do you know if they have any safety in place because i can tell you some of the cases i have where we've sued brokers one of them a 22 year old who comes over from the ukraine with no experience that says hey this is a way to have make some money no cdl knows nothing about trucking nothing against ukrainians or 22 year olds but all those things together they just send into the usdot they're 300 bucks and they can start operating and then when the government asks for a safety audit they ignore it so there are things if if i'm a broker and i see that there's a new entrant carrier that hasn't been through a safety audit i'm not going to hire not many of them have been michael it's like a very small percentage that has i'm not talking about ratings so there's i'm not talking about a fitness rating that they get a satisfaction we're talking about the same thing the new entry audit thing yeah but actually this the statistics uh they just came out this year that i think 86 percent over 20 the last year was like 2017 of new entrants were able to get the safety out it was much worse in previous years for the safety audit program provides that they have to be audited within the first 12 months uh and they're they're a new entrant i guess for a period of 18 months but but yeah you know i i have to disagree with michael on the new entrant i mean i i don't know too many guys come over here from ukraine and just buy a 150 000 truck and start a trucking company usually you know they have they're an owner operator before they at least purchase trucks and then they get their own operating authority so i think the driver himself herself or uh it's usually small companies that are probably more new interests and large companies and i think you probably have to look at that new extra to see what the level of experience is um but uh i mean i certainly don't want to advocate a system where you know it's been time-honored in this country that a driver starts with one truck starts a company he builds it up i mean look probably two-thirds of the trucking companies our country started that i mean uh even some of the larger ones started with you know a handful of trucks they were all a new one can i ask you both a question though when did when did brokers and shippers step into that role of ensuring carriers are safe it feels weird like brokers don't know [ __ ] about safety they're tech companies they're kids on the phones like michael when did when did we get there and why we've always been there because there's the law of negligence the law that says whatever you do you better do it reasonably carefully so if you actually know that this carrier used to be abc trucking and now they're xyz trucking so that they can evade the you know their fines well a jury gets to decide was that reasonable for you to give them that load if you're hiring a new entrant without seeing if they have a modicum of safety and again i'm seeing the worst of the worst cases but unlike what ted is saying i'm seeing i'm getting ready to take a case to trial where there's two guys who both said this was a disaster waiting to happen we made a mistake it was a guy who was a realtor who thought let's start a motor carrier hire a truck you know lease on a truck and they they didn't know what they're doing um anyone you and i right now we could um well maybe a little bit know we're doing you know we could do gains leisure and impairment um we could send in 300 bucks and by the end of the day we could have a trucking car i know it's unreal i guess our government has decided that that's okay though i'm all for everyone you know the american dream that's really not what's happening so do that but make sure that someone has does pre-employment drug and alcohol testing audits their logs has some systems in place because i'm seeing cases where they don't anyhow go ahead and enough no i asked a question i wanted to hear this for sure by the way someone in the comments uh going back to ted's comment about you know folks coming over and just buying a truck uh because i'm i'm not very good at this i thought they did i thought it was really easy but somebody said 150 thousand dollars for a truck any dirt ball operator can be buy a beat up freightliner for 10k and get on the road sorry you guys are cracking me up with these comments and i get to be unprofessional these two still have to maintain their game face so i get to have fun while you guys are working um so we had some other questions that popped in i see that mark perkins is here one of my one of my favorite defense attorneys i actually used him when i was at schneider he was wonderful to work with um so what i'm looking at here is someone else says uh ted or michael how do you want us to vet carriers what do you want us to look at when they have no safety ratings well no safety ratings so that's different than a a new entrant where there's no data if you're saying an unrated carrier which ted is right it's 80. i've heard recently 90. somewhere 80 to 90 percent of carriers are not rated so that means they haven't had a compliance review but there's still data out there so what i'm going to look to is what's the outer service rate how often are their drivers and vehicles pulled off the road for being illegal and if i look on the government website which i can do in about 12 seconds and i see that they're at a 30 percent you know one in three of their trucks are out of service then i'm i'm going to look further and i'm going to they may not caution brokers against hiring that unless they are doing some due diligence saying why is you know maybe there's an explanation we had this look it was one driver who was responsible for all that he's no longer with us and you verify that but otherwise i wouldn't hire a carrier that's got a 30 out of service rate well i would add that you know probably michael you do this because i've seen it on a lot of cases uh i mean you'll go to uh csa and look at the basics on motor carrier and probably try to find out whether there are any alerts uh whether there's an action plan in place and things like that so i would i would think csa is probably not a bad place to start especially when you can if on the public website you may not be able to get some of the information but if you are actually going to vet a carrier if you're looking for the most careful way to do it you probably would dig in and ask the cure to provide you with either crash rating safety scores you know i'm not advocating that i'm not saying that that's that's the standard i don't know that's a standard in the industry but but the question was you know how do i vet them i think that's probably the easiest way yeah because most of that data is online and for those of you don't look good i'll go ahead michael i mean i'm sorry because look we don't have a case together right now so we can talk and we won't hold against each other in a case but you know i you can look to out-of-service rate by going to safer says you can look to a lot of this stuff the reality is even though you're going to fight and say the fast tax says the csa relative scores aren't the reality is that brokers have access to that through safer watch care 411 they have the e csa scores and um certainly uh you can see if someone's at a 99 um you know the worst one percent that there's red flags that get thrown and i saw one of my favorite people brad hollister just popped up and said well what is a good percentage rate and i think uh and i saw that come out a couple more people had asked that question uh when you guys go to the website it'll tell you what the national average is um and then you can compare that carrier's uh percentage to the national average right is that correct uh michael intended to talk about the out of service rate or the csa relative right out of service rate i mean there's a whole discussion there the first thing that i have to say because it bothers the heck out of me that it's gone down from 23 i think it's been as low as 18 right now it's around 20 percent out of service rate for vehicles what that means and that's crazy what that means is crazy one in five tractor trailers that are pulled over for random inspections or post crash inspections um the post crash are a small part of it but random inspections um have violations so severe they're illegal to drive another inch um severe safety violations that's crazy that we have that level about a service violation now if your company is over it doesn't preclude i mean i think if someone's at 16 percent i still wonder why but if you're over those and it says right on the uh safer sys when you look at it it'll say national average and this company for driver vehicle and hazmat so that's one thing to look at um hold on one minute i was just checking to make sure that people don't have more questions on that point at all uh to further it but um i would like to dive in and say for those of you who are looking for exact details we said now we're going to talk about that afterward like i have my own standard of how i've that carriers and how i think the carriers should be that um not saying that that's gold standard not saying that that's going to keep you from getting sued because you can get anyone can sue for anything um it's just a mad game standard you need to start giving people they can put it in the file we were mad certified yes well let me i am going to have that right let me there's a there's a school of thought out here that brokers shouldn't be sued or be liable for the conduct of the motor carrier and and really it's relatively new that this whole idea of suing the broker uh it's sort of a new concept i guess it starts i think you'd probably agree with me michael starts with the sram decision that goes goes goes on from there ch robinson's been getting annihilated with these cases i don't know that i don't know that every state has accepted the idea that there's no reliability i mean it probably depends on the jurisdiction and there's obviously there's case law out there that supports it but you know the the original school thought was well look brokers shouldn't as you said brokers should not be in the business of trying to dictate safety motor carriers uh they shouldn't be trying to to uh uh vet them in that that capacity i mean the old school was okay do you have operating authority uh yeah do you have insurance yeah uh do you have a do you not have an unsatisfactory rating those were the three and there's a whole school of thought out there that's all you need uh okay we have to pause there i want everybody at metropolis to listen because i know you guys can hear me perfectly even though the screen's all scary sometimes listen to what he just said because back in 2012 when i started working for the first broker i ever worked for which was a dumpster fire of a broker just you guys know um attorneys were saying don't look at safety data broker shipper don't look at safety data that's not your job stay away from it and i think they were trying a black and white approach so that when the broker started getting into safety uh michael couldn't dig into well what did you look at what is your experience in safety instead it was we just this is what the government tells us to do government doesn't say we have to look at safety we're not gonna do it that used to be the old school thing so for those of you and i know some of you out there have some really really old transportation attorneys that are still telling you don't look at safety data you gotta look at safety data so sorry ted i just had to make sure everybody heard what you just said because the times have changed and michael's here illuminating that i know some folks in our industry who still uh fervently believe that's the case and and you know maybe that's what it should be but i think in reality that it doesn't happen that way anymore uh being asked to do more vetting on it but you know what here's here's my biggest gripe against broker live so let's let's assume i vet the company and they meet my criteria how am i going to vet that truck driver that's pulling my load i mean if even if you have say you have a company that is really a bad company but you have a good truck driver and uh uh the truck drivers uh uh uh hasn't had any accidents no tickets he's he's you know a million miles without a uh an accident and then he he happens to have an accident but he works for a company that's not so good i mean there's no way that a broker will can ever control who that motor carrier puts into a truck and and the law's pretty clear that they don't have to do that and that's that's when i when i look at every broker case i've ever had i always wonder how how is that broker going to control who's who's actually going to be driving that loan michael yeah it's one of the things i have to look at so there's a few parts of that which are interesting different brokers and i get to see a lot of different brokers and i can't talk about their systems because there's proprietary stuff but i've seen many different brokers who have data on every driver that's hauling one of their loads and they're pinging that driver every five minutes every hour they are in touch with that driver they know everything about that driver so first of all they brokers are getting into the drivers but the other thing is where i see a case because i hear what you're saying there's um you need to do what's reasonable what is reasonable when i look at a case and there's a motor carrier who doesn't do pre-employment drug and alcohol screening then they hire someone that an mvr would show drug and alcohol problems and then they get in a crash that's caused because they're on drugs or alcohol well now that's foreseeable so that's why we have these legal concepts of like causation and was it reasonably foreseeable um you know the the linhard case which was the only case i think in the country where there's ever been punitive damages for a broker negligently selecting those were extreme facts you had a guy on crystal meth who got caught driving on crystal meth who and again this is not every driver out there but that was this case was put in jail for five years for being on meth when he gets out of jail the motor carrier who had reincarnated 19 times they had 18 or 19 different companies that were part of business for not drug testing people um put him back on the road without a drug test and then he went off the road and hit another truck driver who was doing what he was supposed to put in the chains on his tire kelly linhart and killed him the broker never even looked to see that they had a conditional rating um or unc or unsatisfactory wasn't clear but they never looked they never there was no insurance because they were supposed to be certificate holders or additional insureds and they weren't they didn't do some of those basic things so um is every do they have to get into every nitty-gritty of the company no um but going back to what you're saying is like do you just do the basics and have a blind eye and use that as a defense as a trial lawyer where i can't come in and convince eight or 10 or 12 jurors of something that isn't reasonable it's not so easy you know plaintiff's lawyers you don't just get up in front of a jury and they give you money there needs to be some common sense right that's there and so if the broker has really done they've looked they've looked at the corrective action plan they've acted in good faith you can put him on the stead stand ted and the jury's going to listen to them right now if they haven't even looked what am i going to say you didn't even look yeah it was willful blindness easy argument now there's this family that's dead well i mean i i agree with you michael i i think in practice you know if we had some some guidance from the courts as to well this is all you need to do uh would be those three things and i think you could probably get away with that but the problem is you're going to ask those questions at trial and that motor carrier is going to say no we only check insurance operating authority and as long as you're not unsatisfactory you're okay with us and you're right they don't have much of a defense especially if you find that the motor carrier has been non-compliant in a lot of different areas but my gripe with with with the sometimes what you'll find is they're not compliant as a particular error let's say drug and alcohol but the accident has nothing to do with drug and alcohol and yet you make a broker case because they they have a high drug and alcohol uh problem but you know the accident had to do with uh distracted driving or whatever the case may be there's there's not always a nexus between what's happening with the motor carrier in that particular drive i want to pause on this conversation because we have seven minutes and i have something very important i want to talk about um which is the coyote case and the plaintiff attorney for the coyote case was supposed to come on here and explain his theory of liability which he articulated to me was a truck driver who um had some safety concerns i saw on the complaint but allegedly um i think what said the complaint was that the truck driver swerved the truck or something like that and it was a flatbed truck and then the the the truck swerved and the chassis was a huge rail chassis that was on the flatbed came off landed on another vehicle and killed a guy so again this is just me reading from the complaint but the theory of liability was more focused on the um how dangerous it is to move a flatbed oversized shipment in florida where the case was filed there was a uh there was a if you were engaged in dangerous behavior law um and ted and michael will probably know that maybe you know that a little bit better than i would um but where you can't make an argument when you hire an independent contractor who's doing something that's considered a little bit dangerous you can't lean on the i'm just the independent contractor not the employer florida does not allow for that so in this case there are two parts to it one is this moving in oversized load is a little bit more dangerous um so you can't just say you're an independent contractor and you're not their employer then another piece is loading and unloading and i don't know if we can do this in five minutes but first could one of you explain better than i did the if you know uh the florida law or kind of know the basics of it i know neither one of you probably licensed in florida but well i i'll take a stab at it keep in mind the you know and broker liability law even before this idea of just broker negligence if the shipment was unusually dangerous uh then there's several courts out there like michael's favorite uh circuit the ninth circuit has held that that there is a duty to investigate the motor carrier especially if the load is unusually dangerous so there's one there's a several long line cases that hold that so in that case what's that duty to investigate well maybe obviously more than just getting what they have operating authority insurance if you have an unusually dangerous load you may have to do that survey or you may have to call that motor carrier and find out how they're going to manage that load uh and uh so i think the word of the wise if you if you have that situation you need to you need to do that but generally just general trucking without uh you know regular reefer running up and down the road most states have held that that's not hazardous uh activity but mike i'll let you weigh in on it well i think that facts really drive cases and are important and i do i have a partners in the law firm in florida um although i'm not licensed there be clear about that um in that case the important fact to me was they took pictures of how to load a locomotive that they put on a flatbed and they said here this is how you properly move this super heavy locomotive and then they never gave the pictures to the carrier the the i believe the broker got the photos then they were told by the customer make sure you load it this way and they never gave them the photos so when you hear those facts i mean look i understand the law dangerous instrumentality it's almost like strict liability we can make those arguments i think the facts that drove this are oh my goodness you were told this is dangerous do it this way and you didn't even relay that information the court's going to find a way to hold you responsible that's my just not a legal take on it this video will be available for re-watching and replay and i think oddly enough although it's skipped around in live it'll be great for it'll actually i bet it would look good on post production um i want you guys rewind this section if you are a flatbed broker or flatbed shipper or flatback carrier and also don't forget that if you also move oversized anything unique stuff things that you have to have unloading and loading instructions um make sure that you rewind and listen to that part um and focus in because i want you guys to be extra careful because these cases aren't a rise i will tell you that in my limited experience with the flatbed brokers i do know um and one of them actually so chandler has been on here from next exit logistics he does some really cool stuff anybody want to check out his website um he's not sponsoring this but he does some really cool freight but um and then amanda miller is our flatbed broker in alabama but they have a lot of knowledge about loading and unloading a ton so at least the ones the brokers i know they are pretty good i think it's the dabblers or the ones trying to get a shipment don't know what they're doing the you call we haul brokers are the ones who are getting into these situations mostly i'm betting um we have i'm going to wrap i'm going to wrap this up so that i can at least talk to ted before we start our next session again i'm going to put the links in the comments here on youtube if you want to join us for the post discussion where we're going to go more into broker liability and some of the other things um i want you guys to look up michael leiserman in every post i've ever had look up ted and michael and research these two lawyers these are my two experts that i look to joe freed has been on the show before too he's an amazing trucking uh plaintiff attorney and i think joe and michael i think you guys are really good friends right well we're we're uh partners in the in the florida firm and um he has a firm in georgia and i'm um i have the law firm for truck safety um so so yeah um check it out my website's truck accidents.com um but let me if we can while we wrap down is to say thank you for what you do cassandra and i hope i really mean this i hope someday that i'm out of business not that that's my goal but because there's no more truck accidents truck drivers are going to be out of business because of technology one day sooner or later but i hope what we did today that somebody has listened that because of that some family isn't going through when i have to sit down with them so thank you for being a part of that um i think we're all part of that and all want to keep the roads safer when i handle a case i you know this could be literally my family next whose life i'm saving so thanks for being open-minded let's keep the road safer ted what do you do you have uh do you want to give us your website and um and and listen to me insurance people because i know i've solicited a lot of insurance people who watch this show please listen to me um be careful when you have a broker liability case make sure you hire the right attorney yeah it's just roberts-perryman.com and uh so but i i do appreciate it it's been fun being on the show and i've had a case with michael's partner before and he's a great lawyer and so it's always good to have cases with great lawyers and uh i appreciate the opportunity very much thank you both i feel very honored to have you both here and ted you stay on with me and we're going to hop on over to the member only michael you're the best you're amazing please keep in touch thank