Drew Gilliland

Our client crashed into the rear of a fully loaded tractor-trailer that was stopped on a two-lane highway in Atlanta, Georgia. Our client was an undocumented immigrant who did not speak English. The defense was claiming that the truck lost power, implying the accident was out of their control, but we used under-appreciated trucking regulations to show that this crash was waiting to happen and was entirely foreseeable. These overlooked trucking regulations can, and should, be applied in almost any trucking case, and I will share how we did it. I also want to share how we proved our client’s traumatic brain injury without using any experts. The plaintiff’s medical bills were $502,000, and he had stopped getting medical treatment more than 3 years before the trial. We had a conservative jury, which included an accountant and three medical professionals, but they returned a $22 million verdict, assigning 5% fault to the plaintiff.