$5 Million Settlement – Unsafe Left Turn By Big Rig Truck

We represented a 12-year-old boy who was a seat-belted passenger in a Ford F-150 pick up truck operated by his father that was in the process of passing a slow moving peterbilt tractor pulling an empty box van trailer on a city street in Stockton, California.  The big rig truck driver suddenly turned left to enter a driveway and collided with our client’s vehicle causing it to ricochet over a curb and overturn crushing the roof over the boy.  The truck driver and his co-worker claimed a left turn signal had been made and the pick up had not started to pass when they started their turn.  The truck driver claimed the pick up truck was speeding and caused the accident.  The Stockton police believed the big rig truck driver and concluded that our client’s father was the cause of the collision.  We undertook an extensive investigation, cross examined the police officers in deposition and our experts reconstructed the accident.  We proved that the truck driver was inexperienced, had not signaled a left turn and never looked to see if a vehicle was passing.  We proved that the truck driver failed to connect one of the brake air lines and therefore could not activate the trailer brakes which caused the big rig to jack knife.  Our client received a traumatic brain injury that has left him with cognitive impairment, although the defendants claimed he was minimally impaired.