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Oftentimes when I see a truck driver do something wrong, my instinct is not to go, “Oh, what a bad criminal he is.” My instinct is to look and say, well, “What did the motor carrier do to help him succeed?” Even with the so-called bad eggs in some of these big truck crashes, they’ll even admit, “Man, oh man, if someone just taught me the right thing to do, I would’ve done it. I just don’t know.”
David Craig – Host:
I’m pleased to announce that we have Adam Grill as our guest. Adam grew up in the trucking industry. He’s been driving trucks probably even before he had a CDL. He got his CDL back in 2005. He has endorsements for buses and hazardous materials, tankers, double trailers, you name it. He’s the president of The Legacy Corporation. He’s the director of motor carrier operations for the Atlantic Pacific Resource Group. He teaches other folks how to drive trucks and semis, but on top of all that, he also does forensic work for both plaintiff and defense lawyers.
David Craig – Host:
I’m attorney David Craig, managing partner and one of the founders of the law firm of Craig, Kelley and Faultless. I’ve represented people who have been seriously injured, who have had a family member killed in a semi or other big truck wreck for over 30 years. Following the wreck, their lives are chaos. Often, they don’t even know enough about the process to ask the right questions. It is my goal to empower you by providing you with the information you need to protect yourself and your family. In each and every episode, I will interview top experts and professionals that are involved in truck wreck cases. This is After the Crash.
David Craig – Host:
Adam, welcome to the podcast.
Adam Grill:
Hi. Thanks for having me, man. I really appreciate it. Great honor. I almost sound like a Game of Thrones character. You start giving me all those titles and stuff. I don’t know if I’m royalty or what the deal is.
David Craig – Host:
Well, talk a little bit about how you got, I mean, I know it’s a family kind of business. Why don’t you talk a little bit just about your background and how you got into trucking?
Getting to Know Trucking Expert Adam Grill
Adam Grill:
Yeah. Our business now is a family business, but my journey into it is also certainly very family oriented. I have a lot of family members that are not necessarily involved in this business but are still in the trucking industry too. I mean, my mom and dad met each other as over the road truck drivers and they drove over the road together for a long time. So, my mom’s always been a truck driver as well. Ever since I was a young baby, I was fortunate enough to also have now a stepmother. So ever since I was small, I tell people I have two moms, and so, both of my moms have been in the trucking industry. My biological mother is a truck driver and doing things like dump truck work and stuff which you don’t see a lot of females doing. Then eventually now, the latter part of her career working as a school bus driver which is a very noble profession in my mind.
Adam Grill:
One of my sisters is also a school bus driver. My brother is one of the most incredible drivers I’ve ever seen. He works heavy equipment. I mean, he’s a Picasso with heavy equipment. He’s truly an artist. My grandfather owned a large mining construction company. So, I think that’s how my dad kind of got started early on. So, it’s just something that our family has always been around and been exposed to. My stepmother has always been an administrator. She’s run schools and run other trucking companies to an extreme level of success. So, her and my father make a heck of a team for that. So, it was kind of natural. I mean, I’m kind of joking, but I’m kind of not, when I tell people I started to learn to drive trucks when I was about five years old, I do have some very vivid memories of things.
Adam Grill:
Things might have been a little looser back then, but I do have very vivid memories as a kid of doing things like going over the road with my dad and sitting in his lap and kind of holding the steering wheel while driving. I have very vivid memories of sitting in the back of trailers at truck stops and talking to other truck drivers as a little kid with my dad and socializing and really experiencing all of that. Even well before I had my license, I was working after school jobs even in middle school so early teen years. In younger years, I would work at their truck driving school, moving trucks around coupling and uncoupling trucks and washing trucks. So, I’ve always been exposed to it.
David Craig – Host:
So, it’s kind of in your blood.
Adam Grill:
It’s in my blood, yeah. It goes back quite a way even, like I said with my grandparents too, a lot of mining and construction work.
David Craig – Host:
Yeah. So, tell us what you’re doing nowadays. Bring us up to speed on what your roles are and I know you’re involved in a variety of different types of things but talk a little bit about that.
Adam Grill:
Yeah, so we’re still in the trucking industry and we do wear a lot of hats. We have a trucking company, so we’re a motor carrier. We still have a fleet of truck drivers that drive over the road and drive in all 48 continuous states. We haul a lot, primarily flatbed and step deck work, so not van trailers, but usually construction materials and equipment. Now we’ve branched into oversized loads as well. So, our truck drivers haul things like when you see on the road, the really, really, really big stuff that’s taking up a lot of lanes and has the yellow flashing lights and the big black and yellow signs that say oversized load. That’s kind of what we got into now, but we’re also a broker. So, we’ll broker loads, and we have a truck driver training school.
Adam Grill:
In fact, this isn’t an official statistic, but most likely based on how things kind of unfolded, I think we were probably the first school in the nation to become certified this year. This may come as a scary thought to a lot of your viewers, but there was no requirement to receive training or go to school to become a truck driver prior to this year, but as of this year, there is official regulations that say you have to go to an official truck driving school. I think we’re the first one in the nation to become official with the federal government.
Adam Grill:
We have our truck driver training entity, and then we still do consulting work too. We consult for truck crashes, and we consult in other variety ways too. We work with the US government on several projects related to trucking regulations and things like that. We’ve consulted with other motor carriers. They may hire us to come in and perform safety audits or provide speeches or education and training to their drivers, that sort of thing.
David Craig – Host:
I know, certainly I think one of your goals in your company is to raise up the level of professional truck drivers and provide the highest level of training to make sure that the drivers are fully equipped to be able to handle anything and everything that they may encounter on the roadway.
Training Professional Truck Drivers
Adam Grill:
Yeah, that’s exactly it. I think in everything we do, our real mission here is a lot of public awareness and increasing the roads so that they’re safer for everybody. I’m a new dad myself. I got a two and a half year old baby, and I’ve got a five month old baby. It’s amazing how that really helps change your views too. I start to look at the roads like, “Man, oh man, I hope everyone that’s driving around me, truck or not, is paying attention and aware to the fact that I got precious cargo on board.” That’s really our mentality with everything we do. How do we make our drivers safer? How do we make others safer? How do we make others aware of the good truck drivers that are out there and that sort of thing.
Adam Grill:
I think sometimes it’s not unusual in our line of work, David, for the other side to sometimes want to paint me to be a bad guy or somebody who’s out to just hate on truck drivers or hate on the industry. It honestly couldn’t be farther from the truth. My default position is a trucker myself too. My default position is to defend the industry. I think even those in the industry would agree with me that we also need to defend it from within, against those that aren’t doing things the right way.
David Craig – Host:
I think that’s true. Obviously, I’m an attorney that represents the victims of catastrophic semi-tractor trailer wrecks or other big trucks or rigs. So, sometimes people think or they’ll say things to me that are derogatory towards truckers and that offends me, but they think they’re not offending me because that’s what I do. I said, “No.” I mean the majority of truck drivers in my personal opinion, are good professional caring people who are trying to do their job and get home to their families safely and not endanger anybody’s else lives. It’s the select few that, there are a few trucking companies, there are a few truck drivers that are, thank God, that are in the minority that don’t care about safety and put profits ahead of safety, but my experience has been, and I represent a lot of truckers who get hit by other truckers, but my experience is that thank God for truckers because they keep our country rolling and they keep our country operating, and most of them are really good people.
Adam Grill:
Yeah, I agree. I say that all the time. Same thing that most of us are just salt of the earth people. We’re just trying to make a living. Maybe I just have too much of a naive heart, but I truly believe that the majority of us, we’re not out here trying to hurt people or try to injure people. We don’t want to break the law. So, I think it’s very, like you said, a small minority of people where that’s the case. I put a lot of pressure too on the motor carrier. I feel a lot of pressure myself.
Adam Grill:
Like I said, same thing, being a new father, if my child does something wrong, I put a lot of pressure on myself in that role because it’s my responsibility to teach and guide them to make the right choices. So, oftentimes when I see a truck driver do something wrong, my instinct is not to go, “Oh, what a bad criminal he is.” My instinct is to look and say, “Well, what did the motor carrier do to help him succeed?” Because I think more often than not, I find even with the so-called bad eggs in some of these big truck crashes, they’ll even admit, “Man, oh man, if someone just taught me the right thing to do, I would’ve done it. I just don’t know.”
David Craig – Host:
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think just like lawyers, I mean there’s good lawyers and there’s bad lawyers. There’s good truckers and bad truckers, but the bad thing, the bad news is that the bad ones kind of make the rest of us look bad when in fact that’s just not the case. So, it is the same way with truckers. I mean there are good and bad. There are good motor carriers and there are bad motor carriers, but the fact that there are more good ones than bad ones doesn’t excuse the bad ones.
Adam Grill:
Right. The bad ones seem to, even though they are the minority, they do seem to steal a lot of the limelight from the industry.
David Craig – Host:
Yeah. Well, I know part of what you do is some forensic work which for those folks that are listening that don’t know what forensic work is that sometimes people that are in their field or they’re experts in their field, then they get called into litigation and end up testifying for either the victims, which is the plaintiffs, the people I represent, or sometimes on the defense, which is the trucking, the motor carrier, the trucking industry, the insurance companies, whatever. I know, Adam, you do a little bit of work on both sides, is that right?
Adam Grill:
Yeah, our firm as a whole is probably pretty close to 50-50, believe it or not. I think I do a little bit more plaintiff work and my father who has also an expert probably does a little more defense work. We have other experts here that do what we do too. They’re probably pretty close to 50-50 themselves. It’s just kind of the way the things shake out sometimes. We’re not really selective with our cases. I tell people this all the time, “If you ring my phone, I’m going to give you an objective, honest answer. Sometimes you might not like what I have to say. So, when that’s the case, why would you hire me? It only makes sense. Why would you hire me if I don’t have something that you like to hear?” I never really change or manipulate what I say depending on who I’m talking to.
Adam Grill:
I just give you an honest answer. If it’s helpful for you, then I end up getting hired. So sometimes the way things shake out, it’s just I get, especially with scheduling and everything else, I get a little bit more plaintiff work. To me, it really doesn’t matter who hires me. I feel like I’m really coming into a case to work for the jury and work for the judge. I’m really just there to help explain things the best I can. I’m not here to assign fault or decide the case for anybody. I have a very narrow window that I’m looking through with a case, and I’m hoping really just to help to educate others like the jury and the judge so everyone can make an informed decision.
David Craig – Host:
Well, and I think that the good attorneys, the good trial attorneys, that’s what they’re looking for. We don’t want to hire a guy who always gives us a yes answer or who manipulates the data or manipulates the facts. The facts are what they are. The best way to lose a trial is to try to manipulate those facts, at least from my experience. I look at my job is to make a decision. Do we have a case that has some merit? Should we go forward with it? If not, that’s fine. I’ve spent thousands of dollars to find out that we didn’t have a case. I can tell you my clients appreciated my honesty and dealing with that early on rather than dragging them through years of hell only to get the same result sometime later. On the other hand, I’ll fight until hell freezes over if I have a case that my clients are in the right and they deserve to be compensated. The best way to do that is to hire people like yourselves or your dad who are objective and who are going to just tell you this is what you got.
Adam Grill:
Right. Yeah. I’ll dispel a myth too about us as experts. I think there’s a stereotype sometimes that, and I don’t know, you can tell me this stereotype might exist in your profession too, but sometimes there’s this stereotype or this idea that if you ring my phone, the juice starts ticking. So sometimes, people feel like they don’t want to talk to us unless they absolutely have to because we’re going to charge them for our time. To an extent that’s true, we do charge for our time. Everyone has to make a living, but I tell everybody never hesitate to call me and just ask me what my initial opinion is on a thought. I’m not going to charge you for that time. I’m happy to give you my opinion if you say, hey, here’s the case. Here’s the facts. What do you think? I’m going to give you an honest answer and if you don’t hire me, my feelings aren’t hurt at all. I think we’re all better for it then.
David Craig – Host:
Yeah. Well, and I think I get frustrated with, I’m doing a project right now where we’re doing focus groups and we’re working with experts to try to see how to develop an area of the law. The thing is the expert came back and said, “Well how much money is reasonable?” I’m like, “Well, I mean really I’m paying for your time. I mean my time is worth something. Your time as an expert is worth something.” I really have problems with lawyers who aren’t willing to invest in their clients or their case until later way down the road when it may be too late.
David Craig – Host:
If I talk to you early on, you’ll tell me whether I have a case or I don’t have a case. Beyond that, if you say, “Well I think you might have a case but we don’t know yet, but here’s what you need to know,” and then you can educate me so that I can go find out the information that I need to give back to you, so you can tell me whether I have a case or not. I hate that when lawyers are stingy or they don’t want to invest their money or maybe they don’t have the money and they’re not wanting to, whether it’s you or an accident reconstructionist or a surveyor or whatever. It’s just these cases are too important to our clients to not involve people like you in the very beginning.
Adam Grill:
Yeah, there’s a big investment, especially with truck cases. It’s a huge investment on your part. I really commend plaintiff attorneys especially for the amount of emotion and time and your own hard-earned dollars that you put into a case investing in a case, but it is well worth it. You just can’t cut corners with something like this cause it’s so much more complicated than a normal car crash. That’s what it takes. You got to get experts on board and you got to get people on your team that can help you really solve the puzzle.
Why Is a Truck Accident Different Than a Car Accident?
David Craig – Host:
I want to talk about that. I mean I think there is a misconception in the public because I mean this podcast is designed for ordinary folks that have never gone through this type of situation before and all of a sudden now, they’re faced with a loss of a loved one or a catastrophic injury from a semi-tractor trailer case. They’re looking at it saying, “Well gosh, this is just another case. I’ll just pick up the phone and call or Google or whatever and just call whoever,” but you know as well as I do that a truck wreck is not a car wreck.
Adam Grill:
Yeah, it’s a lot different. I mean just a truck, I truly believe this and I hope it doesn’t sound like I’m exaggerating, but I really believe that a truck is as different from a car as a boat is from an airplane. So just because you’re a sailor doesn’t mean you can fly a plane. I truly believe that these are that significantly different. Even something that seems so simple. If we tried to make the two types of vehicles a large commercial truck and a car sound the same, I would probably say something like, “Well they both have tires and a steering wheel and they both have a gas pedal and a brake pedal and they stop and go and they have taillights,” but that sort of thing is about as far as the similarities extend. Even those simple tools, the way our brakes work are completely different.
Adam Grill:
In cars, brakes are hydraulic. In other words, there are lines with liquid running through them when you hit the brake pedal. It squishes that liquid through the line and causes the brakes to apply. In trucks, our brakes are operated with air. So, when you hit the brake pedal, it squishes air through a line to apply the brakes. There are a lot of differences there. There’s something called brake lag time which really practically doesn’t exist in normal cars. So, when I hit my brake pedal, there’s a delay between when I hit the brake pedal and when the brakes start to apply. That can kind of throw you off. So now, you have to kind of predict. You got to become Ms. Cleo and kind of predict when you’re going to stop before you even start hitting the brake pedal. It’s really squishy. So, in a car, you know can almost feel when you’re applying the brakes and, in a truck, that feeling isn’t really there without a lot of experience and training because it’s squishy, you’re squishing air around. It’d be like grabbing a balloon and squishing it.
Adam Grill:
The air moves around, it doesn’t really push back as hard. So, even something as simple as the brakes are just so, so, so different. There are different regulations that apply to us. There are different standards that apply to us generally. In many ways the standards are the same. We all have to drive our vehicle without crashing into things or having others crash into us. We all have to operate reasonably, but there are performance objectives for us as truck drivers that are totally different. I have to be in a random drug and alcohol pool. I have to be physically qualified. I have to go to a certain type of registered medical professional.
Adam Grill:
For me, right now it’s every two years. Some people it’s even less. I have to take a physical and I have to have my background checked by my employer in ways that other occupations just don’t. There are a lot of really unique rules and qualifications that apply to truck drivers that don’t apply to car drivers. I have to inspect my vehicle in ways that you don’t. Nothing saying that you as a car driver have to inspect your vehicle before you get in it in the morning. There’s nothing that says you as a normal car driver has to inspect your vehicle and prepare a report at the end of the day and submit that to someone. You’re not exposed to the same kind of scrutiny and auditing process that the federal government puts us under. All that’s for very good reason because it can be a dangerous job.
Adam Grill:
But dangerous is kind of a subjective word too. I don’t feel it’s dangerous. My father likes to use the example of the Wallenda brothers and the Wallenda family, I don’t know if you’re familiar with them. They’re some of those famous tight rope walkers and you see someone like Nick Wallenda tight rope walk across a couple of skyscrapers on a piece of wire as thick as a nickel. That might look pretty dangerous and it probably is dangerous to the rest of us. But to someone like him that’s been doing it since he was two years old, and it’s not dangerous at all. He’s trained. He’s a professional, and he’s meant to do that. For good truck drivers, it’s the same thing. It’s not necessarily dangerous for us because we’re meant to do it assuming that we’re trained and educated properly and have the right attitude.
David Craig – Host:
I would agree with that. Obviously, the number of hours you can drive are regulated for you. They’re not for me. I can drive as many days as I want, as many hours as I want in the car. You don’t have that same thing, but I see lawyers and I get cases referred to me by other lawyers that don’t know trucking and they just assume that it’s similar. It’s negligence law, it’s tort law so that’s good enough.
David Craig – Host:
What I find is that there’s a certain level of knowledge, certain level of experience, and you have to have the resources to invest in these cases to be a successful truck wreck lawyer. When you see lawyers who aren’t, it’s pretty clear and pretty obvious, and that’s both on the plaintiff side and the defense side. I just ran up against a defense lawyer the other day who has no idea what the CDL manual says. They have no idea what the Federal Motor Carrier Safety regulations say. They don’t know the industry standards. They have no clue about any of that. So, when they prepare their truck driver for a deposition, they’re at a huge disadvantage. I see that on both sides and I assume you probably see that. How important is it for them, the average person listening to this, how important is it to have a lawyer that is familiar, that has that level of knowledge, experience and resources?
How Important Is It to Have a Knowledgeable and Experienced Truck Accident Lawyer?
Adam Grill:
Yeah, I really feel like, and maybe no fault of their own sometimes, but I really feel like if you’re an attorney that doesn’t specialize in this sort of thing or you don’t surround yourself with the type of people that can help educate you on this subject, you’re really doing a disservice to your clients.
Adam Grill:
Like you said, that is on both sides of the field. I have a defense attorney that hires me pretty regularly. The one thing, and I mean don’t mean this as any offense to him, but he doesn’t know a lot about trucking, but the one thing that I’ll give him a lot of credit for is he does have the wherewithal to find people like me and let me help educate him. He’s always willing to learn and he continues to get better and better and better because he takes the advice and he at least recognizes that, “Holy cow, this is another universe and I need to find people to know what they’re talking about.” He does a great job with it, I think., but yeah, on both sides of the fence you got to educate yourself and you got to surround yourself with people who really know the trucking industry.
David Craig – Host:
Yeah, there are so many issues on just determining who might be responsible for a semi-tractor trailer wreck that you don’t have in an auto case. I mean you’ve got all these different players. You’ve got the motor carrier, the driver, the broker, and the shipper. Sometimes it’s in a construction zone, you may have a construction zone issues, you may have other parties that are in there and then the insurance and who’s insuring the trailer and the tractor who’s legally responsible for that load is even if you know it, it’s complicated for lawyers who deal with it day in and day out and that we have to rely on experts to help us sort through all that.
Adam Grill:
It’s even complicated to us working in the industry. I mean all the way back to my grandparents living in the industry and even I’ll tell you, we work hundreds, we receive hundreds of new cases every year, which is a lot. I don’t know, I mean your average attorney might just have just a hand, four or five, just a few cases, some of them every year. So, we work hundreds and hundreds of new cases every year and still sometimes these issues are extremely convoluted and complicated to us to try and hash out and we have to work pretty hard with one another. Even as being experts, sometimes it can get very confusing how these relationships work. So yeah, it takes a village.
David Craig – Host:
I had an attorney recently, that didn’t understand what the MCS90 was because again, in auto cases you don’t have that. Trying to explain that to them was trying to teach them Spanish or a foreign language that they didn’t know already, but there is a lot of areas and I think that and then bringing in the right team, again we know if you’ve been handling truck cases, I’ve been handling semi cases for over 30 years, so you kind of know, okay, who should I turn to on what kind of case. Most truck wreck lawyers handle them all over the country, so you know people all over the country with who should we bring into this case and who can help educate us. More importantly at the end of the day, who can educate a jury. Like you said earlier, basically you’re doing this for the jury, and how do I teach the jury these complicated issues.
Adam Grill:
Yeah, that’s exactly right. Honestly, that’s probably the most fun part about my job too. I think that the least fun part about my job is probably depositions because there’s strategies involved there. No one’s really there to just learn necessarily. So, that’s not necessarily the most fun part about my job, but being in the courtroom certainly is because there, I mean, it’s really the purpose of the jury to an extent is there to learn. They’re there to gather information and facts. So as an educator myself, someone that still runs a trucking school, naturally, that would also be the most fun part about consulting, going to a courtroom and speaking to the jury and helping them learn.
David Craig – Host:
Kind of give us an example or idea. So, obviously, we know your background now and you do testify and you help both sides. So, what type of cases are you typically brought in on to help the lawyers figure out what happened, who’s responsible and then maybe educate a jury if it goes that far?
Adam Grill:
Usually, I would say at this point in my career it’s mostly high, what I’ll call high profile cases too. So, it’s usually real catastrophic injuries or fatalities simply because there’s a lot more invested in those. There’s a lot more at stake. So, I’ve been blessed to establish myself as someone who needs to come in on those types of issues. So usually if, I hate to use the word minor, but if it’s a less severe truck crash where the responsibility on the truck driver directly is pretty clear, you might not necessarily need me as much. So, usually the issues I see are there are other parties at play here. Are there other people that we need to be considering as the jury when we assign responsibility to this issue? It all starts with the motor carrier. So, my job is really to come in. and to give you an example, what I see in the cases or a pretty common issue in terms of truck crashes is like a rear end accident.
Adam Grill:
A truck for whatever reason rear ends another car. Well, you don’t need me to come in and evaluate a bunch of stuff and go, “Yep, truck driver definitely rear-ended somebody.” I mean that’s pretty obvious, but usually where you’ll need me to come in is to look at it and go, “Yep, there’s some very specific regulations in terms of hours of service and fatigue rules, and here’s how the driver violated those rules. Here’s how a motor carrier is responsible for managing the driver. Here’s some responsibilities they have in the ways they hire the driver and they fail to do that. Here’s some things that they have to do in terms of training. Some requirements to make to the federal government. Here’s some standards that we have on what it takes to train a driver and what the results of that usually are.”
Adam Grill:
So, there’s really cool information in the industry about if you have the proper safety culture, you manage drivers properly, and you train them properly, then there’s absolutely a reduction in crash risk. So, I come in and kind of assign some or help direct where to look for the jury when they’re kind of assigning some responsibility to those parties. Sometimes, it gets even more complicated too when you start, like you said, including brokers and stuff like that, but usually the place where I become most helpful, I think, is in determining how other parties helped contribute to the actions of the driver because, like I said, the actions of the driver, most of the time if it’s not obvious, it’s at least spelled out pretty well in facts. We know it’s a rear end collision. We know the driver did x, y, or z, but for me the movie really starts before you get to that frame. It starts well before the plaintiff and the defendant meet in contact. That’s kind of what I do is I come in and help look at how those other parties are responsible.
David Craig – Host:
I think one of the cool things about what we do on the plaintiff’s side is that we can through what we do, we can educate jurors, we can educate insurance carriers, we can educate motor carriers as to what is right and what is a proper way of doing things. We can actually have an impact on the industry. Recently, I had a case where the semi driver had sleep apnea but was undiagnosed and he drove nights and he was overweight, his neck was big. I mean he had all the typical signs that you would have that you would look for if you’re a motor carrier to say, “Hey, this driver’s gained a lot of weight. He has high blood pressure, he’s older, he fits the profile of somebody that we ought to be watching. We got him driving nights, and unfortunately, we allege that he fell asleep and he kills a bunch of people in a construction zone when he’s driving, and all of a sudden has to slow down or stop. He misses every sign. He has his truck on cruise control and he plows into the back of our car.”
David Craig – Host:
Unfortunately, the motor carrier didn’t have very good education tools in place to help this driver know that you can have sleep apnea and still drive. You can just get treated, and here are the things you should do. The cool thing about that case was we were right on the edge of trial and my client gave me authority and said, “Look, and this was a large motor carrier who, I can’t say their name, but they gave me permission to say, we’ll take X number of dollars or we’ll take significant less if you’ll agree to change your policies and put in writing these things so that you can educate other drivers so this never happens again.”
David Craig – Host:
This carrier said, “Well, we would rather pay less and make the changes as long as you don’t tell everybody who we are so that it can’t be used in other lawsuits”. We’re not trying to use it for other lawsuits. We were using it to make it safer because these semis for this company are driving all over the country but using people and saying what and people like yourself that say, “Here’s what the standard is, here’s what you should be doing.” That helps us then change the policies of a company.
Adam Grill:
Yeah, I really commend you for doing that. I know there’s a lot of plaintiff attorneys that do that too. I think it’s such a beautiful strategy because to me it really, you’re proverbially putting your money where your mouth is and really trying to take action. I think it probably helps your industry too, David, because in my mind it changes the stereotypical perception that people can have of lawyers sometimes. We all know what those perceptions are, but I think when you step forward and go, “Look, I’m not here to bankrupt you. I’m here to make a change for the country, for the world, make everybody safer.” I think it really speaks volumes to you as an individual, but also your line of work and other attorneys like you that are trying to do the same thing. Honestly, I feel like that’s probably the most effective way to make changes in the trucking industry is what you’re doing.
Adam Grill:
To anybody that needs historical examples of that, just look at other things in the automotive industry like seat belts and airbags. I mean usually you don’t have automotive manufacturers coming forward and going, “You know what? We should do this. It’s going to cost us a lot of money and a lot of heartache, but we should do it for the safety.” That doesn’t usually happen. You have to wait until there’s lawsuits and then they go, “All right, we need to have seat belts in all of our cars. All right, airbags need to become a standard.” I think the same thing is true for the trucking industry. Either by fault or by no fault of anyone necessarily sometimes things are slow to change in the trucking industry or they’ll never change in the trucking industry, but when you have people like you come forward and there are lawsuits and the public demands change, then that’s when we start to really see things improve, I think.
David Craig – Host:
Yeah. Well one of the cool things that you guys also do, which is that my firm participated in here recently was through Legacy. You guys actually educate legal professionals on trucking. I took a bunch of my lawyers, most of my lawyers out to Montana where you’re at, so that you could educate us on that. I think that’s really cool. Again, you know, you look at the number of lawyers. I think there’s less than a hundred lawyers that are board certified in truck accident law.
David Craig – Host:
My partner Scott Faultless and I are both board certified, but you think about how many lawyers are in the country, how many personal injury lawyers there are, and there are very few of us that are board certified. Then, you look at the number of lawyers, here’s the number of lawyers who actually have an interest in this, but then how many of us invest in our other lawyers in our office and have them educated? I think what you guys are doing is fantastic. I know my lawyers came back with a new appreciation, number one about how hard it is to be a truck driver. By you having truck drivers there that my people can interact with, they have a whole new respect for what is a good truck driver and how tough is this job. So, I commend you and your dad on your company for doing that. Maybe you can talk a little bit about your program.
Trucking Learning Program
Adam Grill:
Yeah, sure. It’s a lot of fun. Sometimes people call it the lawyers course. I feel like that’s kind of an unfair name because there are legal and administrative professionals that go. We had a class last month, I think that 18 of them were just paralegals or case managers. So it’s not just lawyers, but the whole point of that particular course is kind of speaking to legal and administrative professionals, how to investigate crashes better, how to look at your cases a little differently, make sure you’re gathering the right facts and the right information and putting the right people in your camp when you’re litigating these cases. So, that’s kind of the whole point of it. I do think it is a lot of fun too, because a large majority of the time that you’re here, we’re teaching you to drive trucks too. Probably my favorite part about the course is to see everyone’s perception of the trucking industry at the end of the course. It’s amazing to me how much more empathetic everyone is towards the trucking industry.
Adam Grill:
That’s probably the best takeaway. That’s probably the best thing that I can do, especially in my mind, especially for plaintiff attorneys. Because most of the time as a plaintiff attorney, your client is not, sometimes they’re truck drivers, but most of the time they’re not. So, I think the default position sometimes of attorneys and truck crashes can be attack mode. We’re attacking this truck driver, this trucking company.
Adam Grill:
When I can help people like that feel a little more empathetic towards trucking companies and truck drivers, I feel like I’ve really done a great service to our industry and probably really helped them to fight the case better. Maybe I shouldn’t put so much emphasis on this one issue because, truly, it didn’t matter or this wasn’t where the focus of the crash was. It’s over here. I always love at the end of the course seeing all these attorneys go, “Holy cow, I didn’t realize how difficult this really is. I didn’t realize how tired I would be just from driving just for five hours, let alone 11 hours,” which is what we’re allowed to do as truck drivers or work a 14 hour day which the large majority of us don’t work 14 hour days yet somehow, we’re allowed to do it all day long.
Adam Grill:
So, it’s really fun to be able to teach you guys how to drive trucks and also show you a lot of the ins and outs of what motor carriers do and what truck drivers have to go through every day. Just slowly watch your eyes open and change your perspective of things. I wish I had time to do the class every week and I wish a lot more lawyers would certainly come through and do it themselves. I think last year my dad and I were recently talking about some statistics with truck crashes.
Adam Grill:
I think last year, we’re creeping towards 6,000 fatal truck crashes in 2021, for example. So, we’re creeping towards the 6,000 mark, which, I’d like to see it at zero. I tell people all the time, I almost have two types of the work that I do. Cause one, I’m attacking bad truck drivers, and the other side of my work as a school, I’m teaching truck drivers how to be safe. So, my whole mission in life is to put one half of my business out of business. Hopefully, eventually everyone’s taught to drive so well that there’s no more deaths, but yeah, we’re creeping towards 6,000 deaths. I mean, you could probably consider all those in some form or fashion to be a law suitable situation. Even catastrophic injuries, you’re starting to talk well up into the six figures every year hundreds of thousands of times where there’s potentially a lawsuit situation.
Adam Grill:
That’s a lot of cases. It’s more than just a hundred of you board certified lawyers that are speaking to those. So where are all those lawyers and how do we continue to branch out, both myself and organizations that you’re part of too, I’m sure. How do we continue to branch out and educate those other lawyers and let them know you’re not alone and this is a lot bigger than you think, and we need to continue to learn and grow together on both sides of the fence too.
Adam Grill:
I do really appreciate when I see plaintiff and defense attorneys that are both honest and straightforward and both kind of want the same thing. I don’t want to give defense attorneys a bad name either. There are a lot of them out there that are really good folks. They want change in the industry too. They want the roads safer too, but yeah, it’s a lot of fun. It’s a three day course. There’s a little bit of classroom training. Other than that, we’re out in the trucks. We’re driving trucks. We’re teaching you how to secure loads. We’re teaching you how to do inspections on trucks. We do some accident reconstruction stuff. We go out to our proving grounds and I take the trucks up to highway speed and slam on the brakes and we leave tire tracks, tire marks, sometimes almost jackknife the truck. We’re able to see that in action and measure things. I think it’s a lot of fun. Yeah, I hope more come to it for sure.
David Craig – Host:
I mean, just like we were talking about the difference in the brakes that you have between a car and a semi. So, prior to coming out to Montana with you, I never had driven a semi. So, I certainly knew that. I’ve read that. I’ve had experts testify to that, but there’s something about feeling the brakes, braking the tractor and the trailer for yourself. There’s something about backing it that you can have experts tell you about it, but until you’ve backed a trailer, that’s a completely different issue. So, I thought, and then looking at the stopping distances, you went out and you stopped an SUV. Then you took a tractor with a trailer, and then you took a tractor and you stopped them. To actually see it, at least for me, I’m the type of learner that I learn better when I see things. I appreciate things better when I see them rather than just reading them.
David Craig – Host:
I thought that was really cool. You also taught things about conspicuity, which again, I can read everything I want to read. I’ve had a lot of cases involving conspicuity. I’ve hired a lot of experts on conspicuity over the last 35 years. But to actually go out with you and your people and actually see it firsthand is a completely different situation. I commend you guys for that.
David Craig – Host:
I hope more lawyers go through it. If any lawyers happen to be listening to this, I don’t care if you’re on the plaintiff or the defense side, I think you ought to go out there because you get so much more knowledge from that and experience. I’d say the thing I probably learned the most, or the thing that had the most impact on me was when I actually rode with you to the proving grounds and we’re out on the highway and we’re actually out in traffic and oh my goodness, I would be on pins and needles trying to drive a semi in traffic because there’s cars zipping in, cutting in, cutting out. That’s what everybody talked about was how wore out you are from just for a short period of time that we drove the truck.
Adam Grill:
Yeah, yeah. It’s extremely fatiguing. I tell people that all the time that for better or worse when you go on a road trip in your car, maybe you listen to the radio or listen to a book on tape or you’re kind of enjoying the sites as you’re driving. I ask people, “How much of that are you really doing at your job?” I mean, you can’t go listen to a book on tape or listen to your favorite music while you’re in the courtroom can you, David.
David Craig – Host:
Nope.
Adam Grill:
For me, the truck, the driver’s seat is my office. It’s my courtroom. I have a job to do. It’s not just holding a steering wheel. But it’s oftentimes less physical and a lot more mental. It’s extremely fatiguing because I’m constantly having to think and plan and prepare and visually search my environment. I’m having to do a lot because it might take me four, five, six hundred feet or more to maneuver the truck, that might take you eighty feet in a car. So, I really have to be thinking ahead and having a lot of plans and backup plans is extremely complicated. So, at the end of the day, you’re beat, man. You’re exhausted. It’s very, very fatiguing.
David Craig – Host:
Well, Adam, I really appreciate you taking the time to spend with us on this podcast. I think for folks that aren’t in the industry and even those people who are in the industry, I know that they’ve learned something from today. Is there anything else you want to add that you think’s important for victims or people out there who are dealing with a catastrophic semi-tractor, 18 wheeler, big truck, dump truck, whatever, that you think is important that they should know?
Adam Grill:
Yeah. I think that probably the most important thing I could think of is that let’s all remember that we’re all humans. I don’t think, for the most part, any of us really want to hurt one another. I hope that we can continue to learn and grow from one another, both people in the trucking industry and people outside of the trucking industry. I would really encourage folks that don’t work in the trucking industry to try and educate yourself more the same way that you did with your firm coming to my class and try to learn more about trucks so that we can work together to share the road safely.
David Craig – Host:
Well, thanks again.
Adam Grill:
Yep. Absolutely. Thanks for having me. I enjoyed talking to you.
David Craig – Host:
This is David Craig, and you’ve been listening to After the Crash. If you’d more information about me or my law firm, please go to our website, ckflaw.com, or if you’d like to talk to me, you can call 1-800-Ask-David. If you would like a guide on what to do after a truck wreck, then pick up my book, Semitruck Wreck, A Guide for Victims and Their Families, which is available on Amazon, or you can download it for free on our website, ckflaw.com.
