The Impact of Nuclear Verdicts on the Trucking Industry
Large legal verdicts have been on the rise in the United States. To identify how different factors impact the size of verdicts in the trucking industry, the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) compiled a database of 600 truck-involved crash verdicts. Using this data, relationships between verdict size and various crash-related factors were estimated and analyzed. These statistical methods indicate that the size and frequency of large verdicts has been rising over time, and different crash-related factors play a statistically relevant role in the size of the verdict. These findings document that, on average, large verdicts are increasing at a rate of 51.7 percent per year. Life-altering injuries, like traumatic brain injuries, increase the size of verdicts by approximately $770,000. When children are either injured or killed in the crash, the verdict size increases by $27 million per child. These findings suggest that the size of large verdicts are increasing, and that certain litigation-related factors impact the respective size of these verdicts.
- Record URL:
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Supplemental Notes:
- This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AT060 Standing Committee on Trucking Industry Research.
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Corporate Authors:
Transportation Research Board
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Authors:
- Williams, Nathan J
- Murray, Daniel C
- Speltz, Erin M
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Conference:
- Transportation Research Board 100th Annual Meeting
- Location: Washington DC, United States
- Date: 2021-1-5 to 2021-1-29
- Date: 2021
Language
- English
Media Info
- Media Type: Digital/other
- Features: Figures; References; Tables;
- Pagination: 21p
Subject/Index Terms
- TRT Terms: Court decisions; Crash characteristics; Crash injuries; Fatalities; Insurance rates; Liability; Litigation; Truck crashes; Trucking
- Geographic Terms: United States
- Subject Areas: Economics; Highways; Law; Motor Carriers; Safety and Human Factors;
Filing Info
- Accession Number: 01763615
- Record Type: Publication
- Report/Paper Numbers: TRBAM-21-00867
- Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
- Created Date: Feb 4 2021 10:57AM