How We Prepare Your Case
Most cases settle. The number they settle at depends on whether the other side believes your case is ready for a courtroom. Ours always are.
Your lawyer leads your case
The lawyer you hire is the lawyer who leads your case — an experienced trial lawyer, supported by a Board Certified partner — and you can talk to your lawyer directly. Not a case manager. Not an associate you’ve never met.
We find the evidence
App trip data, onboard video, flight data, telematics, dispatch and maintenance records. We dig until the other side’s own documents tell the story.
We build it for court
Experts retained early. Depositions taken to lock in testimony. Every claim traced to the defendant’s own witnesses and records.
You decide
When the offer comes — and it usually does — you’ll know exactly what your case is worth and exactly what going to court means. We give you our best advice; the decision to accept a settlement or go to trial is always, and only, yours.
David Kelly · 18-Wheeler Crash
Commercial Transportation Accidents We Handle
Heavy transit wrecks · Logistics and mass transit negligence · Commercial fleet vehicle failures
School, transit, and charter carriers. Same federal duties as trucking.
Bus & Motorcoach AccidentsUber and Lyft crashes, and the insurance tier the app data proves.
Rideshare AccidentsPlane and helicopter crashes, federal investigations, flight data.
Aviation DisastersRig and platform logistics, where aviation law meets maritime law.
Offshore Helicopter CrashesSerious rider injuries, built on physics, not juror bias.
Motorcycle AccidentsSoftware logs and sensor data, read by a computer scientist.
Self-Driving & Autonomous Vehicle CrashesEvery mode of modern transportation runs on data. The bus carrier logs its drivers’ hours. The rideshare app records the trip, the route, and the insurance tier active at the moment of impact. The airliner and the offshore helicopter carry flight data. The self-driving car logs every decision its software made. When a crash kills or maims, the truth is almost always in that data, and the company that owns it is rarely eager to share.
These cases are not car wrecks with bigger vehicles. A charter bus carrier answers to the same federal safety regulations as a trucking company. An aviation disaster triggers a federal investigation whose record becomes the backbone of the civil case. A rideshare crash turns on which insurance tier was active at the moment of impact, a question worth hundreds of thousands of dollars and answered only by app data. Each mode has its own law, its own regulators, and its own places where evidence hides.
We treat every one of these cases the way we treat a trucking case: lock down the data immediately, trace responsibility to every company in the chain, and prepare for a jury from day one. One of our founding partners is a trained computer scientist. In cases decided by software logs and sensor data, that is not a biographical detail.
The Commercial Transportation Supply Chain: Mapping Liability
Winning a serious mass transit or fleet vehicle case requires looking past the individual driver to hold the entire corporate operational network accountable for systemic safety breakdowns.
| Operational Segment | The Systemic Corporate Failure | Key Evidence We Immediately Lock Down |
|---|---|---|
| Shippers & Terminal Operations | Cargo Loading Violations: Freight left completely unsecured or heavily overloaded, causing lethal load shifts or highway cargo drops. | Bills of lading, weigh-station tickets, intermodal dock video footage, and post-incident scene forensics. |
| Fleet Logistical Brokers | Negligent Third-Party Selection: Handing commercial loads or mass transit contracts to sub-standard operators with extensive histories of safety violations. | Logistics load logs, contractor safety screening data, FMCSA SMS safety profiles, and internal dispatch records. |
| Fleet Motor Carriers | FMCSR Broken Promises: Failing to satisfy mandatory background screenings or maintaining vehicle safety rules, deploying unsafe rigs into service. | Driver Qualification Files (DQF), commercial pre-trip inspection logs, and fleet maintenance work orders. |
| Commercial Operators | Fatigue & Inattention Blindness: Forcing drivers past strict shift limitations or overwhelming operators with phone and dispatch pressure behind the wheel. | ECM data, active application trip records, inward/forward-facing dashcam footage, and mobile network carrier logs. |
Transportation Accident Law, in Plain English
Bus and motorcoach crashes
School buses, transit buses, and charter motorcoaches are commercial carriers with the same federal duties as trucking companies: driver qualification, hours of service, maintenance, drug and alcohol testing. When the bus belongs to a school district or a city, governmental immunity rules change the case. Damages caps apply, and formal notice deadlines can run in months or even weeks, far shorter than the two-year statute. The single most important thing a family can do after a bus crash is start early.
Rideshare: the insurance tier is the case
An Uber or Lyft crash is decided by a question most lawyers ask too late: which insurance tier was active at the moment of impact? When a ride is in progress, seven-figure commercial coverage is typically in play. When the app is on but no ride has been accepted, far less. When the app is off, only the driver’s personal policy. The answer lives in the company’s trip data, and we move immediately to preserve it.
Aviation disasters
Plane and helicopter crashes layer a federal investigation on top of everything else. The investigation record, the flight data, the maintenance history, and the operator’s training file become the backbone of the civil case. But the federal probe answers the government’s questions, not the family’s. Offshore helicopter transport adds another layer: crashes ferrying workers to rigs, platforms, and vessels can move into maritime and federal law, where this firm led the Maersk Alabama crew litigation — the most complex maritime and Jones Act case in modern history.
Motorcycle crashes: physics, not bias
Jurors walk in believing the rider was reckless. We have never won a motorcycle case by asking for sympathy. We win them with physics: reconstruction, sight lines, vehicle data, and road evidence that shows what actually happened. The bias is real. The answer is proof.
Self-driving and driver-assist crashes
Crashes involving autonomous and driver-assist systems are decided in software logs and sensor data: what the system saw, what it decided, and what the manufacturer knew about its limits. These cases blend product liability with negligence, and the evidence is born digital. One of our founding partners is a trained computer scientist. This is home territory.
Transportation Accident Questions, Answered
Go Deeper
Each mode has its own law, its own regulators, and its own evidence. Go straight to yours.
School, transit, and charter carriers. Same federal duties as trucking.
Bus & Motorcoach AccidentsUber and Lyft crashes, and the insurance tier the app data proves.
Rideshare AccidentsPlane and helicopter crashes, federal investigations, flight data.
Aviation DisastersWhere aviation meets maritime law. Our deepest crossover.
Offshore Helicopter CrashesSerious rider injuries, built on physics, not juror bias.
Motorcycle AccidentsSoftware logs and sensor data, read by a computer scientist.
Self-Driving & Autonomous Vehicle Crashes
