Practice of Joseph Younes
·
Trial Attorney · Los Angeles · California
Est. 2019
HOME PRACTICE TRUCK ACCIDENTS
PRACTICE  01  — COMMERCIAL VEHICLE

Truck & commercial vehicle collisions.

When the trucking company’s lawyers are already at the scene, you need yours there too. You need a trial-ready advocate prepared to fight for you from day one.

RECENT VERDICT $1.575M · CALIFORNIA STATE & U.S. FEDERAL COURT · NO FEE UNLESS WE RECOVER
The Problem

Evidence in trucking cases can disappear quickly.

A commercial truck collision differs from a typical car accident. It involves litigation against a company, one that often has insurers, defense counsel, and investigators responding soon after an incident to begin building its own record of what happened.

The records that determine liability in these cases don’t stay available indefinitely. Electronic logging data, the engine control module, dispatch and hours-of-service logs, maintenance histories, and driver qualification files are all subject to retention windows, and some are routinely overwritten unless a preservation demand is filed in time.

First Moves

What happens while the evidence still exists.

Hour One
Preserve before it cycles out.
A spoliation letter goes out immediately, putting the carrier on notice to preserve the ELD data, engine module, and logs before they are routinely overwritten.
First 48 Hours
Demand the federal records.
Driver qualification files, hours-of-service logs, maintenance and inspection records, and dispatch history are demanded under the FMCSA framework before they age out.
First Weeks
Reconstruct and retain experts.
Accident-reconstruction and trucking-industry-standards experts are retained early, so liability is built to a trial standard rather than argued from a thin file later.
The Work

What actually wins a trucking case.

Liability
FMCSA & safety-regulation violations

Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations govern hours of service, driver qualification, inspection, and maintenance. A violation is often the clearest route to liability, and to holding the carrier, not just the driver, responsible.

Evidence
Electronic data & log-book preservation

ELD records, engine-control-module data, dispatch logs, and GPS history tell the truth about speed, hours, and fatigue when the driver’s account doesn’t, provided they’re preserved in time.

Defendants
Corporate-defendant strategy

These defendants are typically well-resourced and litigate hard from the first call. The case is documented to a standard built to hold up under aggressive motion practice and trial, since that is where it may end up.

Venue
Federal-jurisdiction discovery

Interstate carriers frequently place these cases in U.S. federal court. Discovery there has its own rules and deadlines, and benefits from counsel who has tried cases to verdict in that venue, not only settled them.

The Proof

A commercial-vehicle verdict, against the odds.

A spinal-injury recovery in a commercial vehicle collision — obtained for a Proposition 213 plaintiff, where the law limited what could be claimed.
$1,575,000
Spinal injury · commercial vehicle
A commercial vehicle collision tried for a Proposition 213 plaintiff — a category many lawyers decline because the statute caps non-economic damages. The recovery came from building liability and economic loss to a trial standard.
CA Superior Court · Jury Verdict
Injured by a commercial truck?
Related
Practice 02
The Difference
No Fees Unless We Recover

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