Reviewed by Scott Blair
Originally published in the December 2024 issue of Trial News, a monthly publication from the Washington State Association of Justice.
Michael Cowen’s book “Big Rig Justice” is a must read for anyone handling a trucking case. I thought I knew quite a bit about handling these cases, but Cowen’s book opened my eyes to dozens of new innovative ideas and tactics on prosecuting trucking cases that we all need to use in these cases to get the best result possible.
Big Rig Justice is a very complete and well thought out book on handling every aspect of trucking cases from the very start of the case through the eventual trial of the case. All this comes from a very seasoned trial lawyer who fully understands the art of the trial story, and getting the jury to understand just how dangerous an 80,000-pound rig can be to the general public when trucking companies and their drivers try to do things on the cheap.
He does a great job at the start of the book talking about what to do when a trucking case first comes into your office and provides a great checklist of things that need to be done right away to preserve evidence for trial that will quickly vanish if these steps aren’t taken. I found this checklist to be a great reminder for me because I will sometimes not address some points right up front, and having this front and center makes sure that everything important gets done early in the investigation.
In later chapters, he does a masterful job of discussing how to frame the story and where to place the black hat. He correctly discusses the need to find a villain not in the driver, but in the company employing the driver. Cowan does a great job of describing what a miserable job being a truck driver is, and how beaten down these drivers typically are by the trucking companies they work for or brokerages who hire them. He is spot on in the manner in which he describes going up the corporate chain of command to get to the top and place the black hat on the company heads who are squeezing the drivers for everything they can. The methods he lays out for this approach are worth the price of the book alone. More importantly, he goes into great detail in subsequent chapters walking you through the thicket of federal regulations that control trucking companies and how to use them to your advantage in your case. He provides an excellent overview of how to use your state’s CDL manual in conjunction with the federal regulations governing trucking cases. Another area that is invaluable is how to use the trucker’s annual medical check or driving history to your advantage to leverage your claim against the company since companies will frequently fail to follow federal regulations and check on drivers medical information or driving history before hiring them.
More importantly, he then walks you through how you can use these regulations to get the company officers to admit that they have not abided by these regulations or properly trained their drivers as required by these regulations-a great tool for establishing liability under a negligent training and supervision claim and getting the jury upset with the company.
In subsequent chapters, he covers all manner of issues that come up in trucking cases that might not be obvious but can be critical to liability in the case. He gives invaluable insights into dealing with distracted driving (a very common occurrence with truckers), fatigue, liability in lane change cases, proving liability in cases where trucks are backing up, maintenance issues, drugs and alcohol, bad weather, and several other critical issues in trucking cases.
More importantly, the book contains an exhaustive chapter on dealing with finding other defendants when a company only has $1,000,000 in coverage, and the claim far exceeds that. Cowen does an excellent job setting forth numerous ways to find other defendants (eg. The trailer owner may have additional coverage, the brokerage that hired the trucker may also be liable, etc.), but to get to these defendants, you need to understand the transportation cycle that potentially opens the door to these additional defendants. This is a critical chapter for those who may not handle many trucking cases but have a high damages case. Once again, this chapter is well worth the price of the book many times over.
Finally, Cowen does an excellent job discussing how to overcome the last minute liability stipulation after you have worked hard to present the perfect case. Afterall, having the anger factor is important to a larger verdict, and you want to be rewarded for working a case up very carefully rather than having the rug pulled out from underneath you. Cowen goes through a number of ways to avoid this scenario to keep the facts in the case that will upset a jury and lead to a larger verdict.
In summary, anyone who handles trucking cases needs to have this book on their desk. Why learn on the fly when you have everything you need right here in Cowan’s book “Big Rig Justice”?
