Episode 29: Conversation with Clint Crabtree (Crash Response Team Coordinator)

Clint Crabtree:

Every time, the trucking companies, they’ve got their people out there within hours, and so if you wait two weeks, odds are they may already have that vehicle moved and being repaired or already scrapped before we even get a chance to locate it. So, it’s absolutely in your best interest to get your attorney that you trust that knows how to handle these big cases involved as soon as possible.

David Craig:

I’m Attorney Dave Craig, managing partner and one of the founders of the law firm of Craig, Kelley & 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.

Meet Clint Crabtree

I’m excited today because we have one of our own Craig, Kelley & Faultless employees, a team member. Clint Crabtree is our guest. Clint has been with our law firm for somewhere around over 14 years. Clint is our crash response team coordinator. He has a BS degree in pre-law, criminal justice and business information systems from Indiana Wesleyan University. More importantly, he coordinates and runs our crash response team and puts everything together. There’s a lot involved in that and so I thought it was a great topic for a podcast. A lot of people who have been involved in a semi tractor trailer case, an accident with a car, they know the tragedy and the devastation that is caused by those wrecks, but they often don’t know what’s involved on the front end of those cases.

The defense has a what’s called a rapid response team. And so the defense is out there investigating these cases oftentimes before even 911 called. The truck driver calls the dispatch and immediately the trucking company sends out their team. As a lawyer who represents the victims of semi-truck wrecks, we get our notice a little bit later, and as soon as we get our notice, we put a team together and that team always involves Clint Crabtree. Welcome Clint to After the Crash podcast.

Clint Crabtree:

Great to be here, Dave.

David Craig:

So Clint, I think one of the other things that I’ll mention about you, which doesn’t have anything to do with crash response or investigation, but for you folks who may have seen Clint, Clint raises French Bulldogs, and they’re adorable. He has for years, and his company is called Hoosier Bulldogs, and you can find him at www.hoosierbulldogs.com. I would encourage you, if you’re looking for a French Bulldog, this is the guy to look to because they are adorable and he has some high quality. I mean, he really works on breeding the top of the line. So, as a side, that’s what he does, and anybody who has an interest in bull French Bulldogs, check him out. So Clint, did I get it right? You’ve been with Craig, Kelley & Faultless for around 14 years?

Clint Crabtree:

That’s correct. I believe I think it’s right at 14 years.

What Is One of the First Things to Do as a Crash Response Team Coordinator After a Semi-Truck Crash?

David Craig:

So as our crash response team coordinator, there’s a lot involved that you coordinate and put together once we get hired by the victims of a semi-truck car crash, and one of the first things that we ask you to do is you have to reach out to the police. Let’s talk a little bit about that. In these cases, I mean, we represent people all over the country, and so that can be challenging in of itself. Let’s talk a little bit about that.

Clint Crabtree:

Yeah, you’re exactly right, and what you mentioned earlier is that when these accidents happen, the person that’s driving this, they’ve got a team out there within hours of when it happens. Unfortunately, we don’t sometimes hear about it until a few days later, sometimes even a week later. On these big impact trucking cases where the police are doing reconstructions, investigations, things of that nature, the police report isn’t always available right away. So, we’re tasked with getting in contact with the investigating officer, finding out where the vehicles, first and foremost, so that we can get those locked down and make sure they’re not being tampered with before we can complete inspections.

David Craig:

I think that’s one of the things that is extraordinarily important for people to know is that when these wrecks happen, we have to find the vehicles, and the trucking companies will often try to move their vehicles if there’s not a police hold, sometimes there’s a police hold, but if there’s not a police hold, oftentimes they’ll move on. I’ve chased vehicles from four or five states away from where the wreck happened by the time we got hired and we’re able to track it down. So, a big part of the front end of a job, part of our job is Clint reaches out to the police and even if the police report is not done, he starts coordinating working with them, letting them know we’re involved and trying to find out if there’s a police hold and where those vehicles are. Oftentimes because these wrecks are so bad, the vehicles may not be drivable, and so, they’re located at maybe a salvage yard or something. Those places are not always the most cooperative, are they, Clint?

Clint Crabtree:

They don’t always deal with situations like these. Some are more knowledgeable of what’s going on than others, but their main concern is getting paid, and so they have apprehension. I think both sides as to what our goal is. Obviously, our goal is just to secure the vehicles and make sure nothing’s done to them until inspections can be completed. On the other side, trucking companies, they want to get those trucks back on the road, trailers back on the road, and so they want to get those vehicles out of there as soon as possible, and so yeah, it is a challenge working with some of those tow facilities, letting them know that we’re not trying to do anything underhanded, and we’re just trying to secure the vehicles so that we can set up inspections where all parties can be present at the same time.

David Craig:

I know we’re working on a case right now out in Missouri and we’re just not getting any cooperation at all. When that happens, sometimes, we have to file a suit and actually get a Court Order, but that’s something that Clint works on and coordinates. He’s giving us daily or sometimes hourly feedback on, okay, here’s what the issue is, we’re not getting any cooperation. Then, the lawyers on the team have to make a decision, do we file a lawsuit and get a temporary restraining order, or what do we do? Because we have to preserve the evidence because if the trucking company downloads that ECM, they may mess it up.

ECM is an electronic control module that will track the speed and the braking of that semi before the impact. We need that data and we don’t want that data to be messed with unless our team of experts is there with their team of experts, the trucking companies experts. Some trucking companies will try to, early on, do that or alter that or change that and the same way with video security, safety devices, a lot of other computer data that’s in there. So, we have to try to coordinate that. When we have a tow yard that does not cooperate with the trucking company or our side, that can make it really challenging. So when you locate the vehicles, are the semi tractor trailers usually at the same place as our client’s vehicles, or can they be all over?

When the Vehicles of the Crash Are Located, Are the Semi-Tractor Trailers in the Same Place as the Clients’ Cars?

Clint Crabtree:

Sometimes they are. If it happens where there’s a big tow facility that can facilitate several vehicles, trailers, tractors, but a lot of times they will take them to the same place, but oftentimes too, if it’s catastrophic injuries and damages, there may be two or three different tow facilities involved on the same crash and that just makes it even more challenging because there’s different locations you’re dealing with, different point of contacts at tow facilities, things of that nature.

David Craig:

On top of all that, you have to work with the whole team of our team and oftentimes the defense team to try to coordinate and make sure that everybody is, like I said, there’s no gamesmanship, there’s just preserving of evidence. So that takes work with salvage yards, the insurance companies, the trucking company, our law firm, our team. I mean, you work with our investigator and get him out there to be there. We have a videographer. We never go do a truck inspection without a videographer. So you’re coordinating with a professional videographer, you’re coordinating with our private investigator, and our investigator goes out there and looks through the vehicles, gets inside the vehicles and does an inventory of what’s in there.

I mean, we’ve seen all kinds of stuff in trucking cases. Yeah, we’ve seen big containers full of urine where clearly, the truck drivers are not taking breaks, they’re not stopping, they’re just driving non-stop. We’ve seen pornography, drugs, alcohol containers, you name it, we’ve seen it over the 35 plus years that I’ve been doing this. You also have to work with accident reconstructionists, mechanics, and like I said, lawyers from the defense side sometimes coordinating all that. I think maybe you can talk a little bit about what the challenges are on trying to do all that.

What Are the Challenges of Talking to All the Parties Involved After a Crash?

Clint Crabtree:

Yeah, certainly. One of the big challenges is a lot of times when we’re calling to set up these cases, you’re dealing with a call center that’s just taking all the information that you’re basically giving them from the police report. That all gets put into their system, that gets sent to someone else to review, then an adjuster gets assigned. It’s often not uncommon for once an adjuster is assigned, realizes that, hey, this is a big case, catastrophic injuries, this has got to be transferred to a different adjuster and all that takes time. So, we can’t do these inspections that we need to do until all parties are basically on the same page, a lot of times out of state, out of town, certainly, and so, getting to where you get the right people that’s going to be handling the case and then to that tow facility or salvage yard, it does take some time, but obviously the important thing is to get that done sooner than later because again, these tow facilities, they want pay and they want the vehicles out of there, so it’s got to be done quickly.

David Craig:

I think one of the other things that our firm does that not everybody does, is we deal with our own client’s vehicle a little bit differently. Maybe you can talk a little bit about that.

How Do We Deal with Our Clients’ Vehicles?

Clint Crabtree:

Yeah. On our client’s vehicle, we try to get the property damage portion of the claim. Once the inspections have been completed and everybody’s done what they needed to do with the vehicle, if we need to keep the vehicle for preservation purposes for trial later on, a lot of times we’ll have that vehicle moved to a storage facility that we pay for where it’s under lock and key, it’s separated, where it’s secured, nobody else is going to have access to it. That way if we do need to do further inspections or do anything with that vehicle at trial, we’ve still got it. It’s not been disposed of or moved to one of the insurance companies storage facilities to be sold. Sometimes, we can have it moved to one of the salvage vendors and they’ll put a legal hold on it where it won’t be tampered with. They’ll wrap it and secure it and things of that nature, but obviously we try to get our clients’ property damage paid sooner than later so that they can get another vehicle and move on with their life if they’re fortunate enough to be able to drive again.

David Craig:

Yeah, and I think that’s something that people don’t know they don’t even think about. If you don’t hire a lawyer quickly and you negotiate with your own insurance company for your vehicle, the fair market value, when it’s totaled, then the insurance company takes that vehicle and disposes of it and they may crush it or send it out for parts, but usually a lot of times there’s no parts left in these crashes, so they’ll just crush it. Well, the problem with that is that early on, you don’t know what the defense is going to be. You do not know what the truck driver is going to say and what the truck driver told the police at the scene is not always the same thing the truck driver says months or years later. So what we do, and unfortunately not everybody does this, but what we do, like you mentioned in a catastrophic case, serious injuries, wrongful deaths, we will often then take that vehicle and secure it and hold it.

Let’s say that someone says there’s a product case later, that something is wrong with a car that our clients were in and that problem with the vehicle caused or contributed to their death or their serious injuries. Well, if you’ve crushed that vehicle, if the insurance company has disposed of that vehicle, you have no way of going back and finding out whether in fact that product effect caused or contributed to the injuries or death, and so, what Clint does is he coordinates to talk. I mean, I guess talk a little bit about what we actually do. I mean, how does that happen? What do you do, and where do you put these vehicles?

Clint Crabtree:

Yeah. The insurance companies and the adjusters that I deal with, they don’t often understand when I’m telling them that, hey, we’re going to keep the vehicle, we’re going to move it to our storage facility, they clearly don’t experience that often with other firms that they’re dealing with because they don’t really understand why do you want to keep this vehicle that’s just mangled and clearly a total loss. So we explain to them that, hey, we just want to preserve it in case anything comes up between where we are at today and whenever we get to trial, whenever that may be. A lot of times we’ll get our own storage facility, we’ll secure it there, and then once we are done with it, then we can move it. We do find local storage facilities close to where the accident happened and get it under lock and key. It’s not sitting outside under the weather. It’s in a facility where it’s locked and being preserved.

David Craig:

We do that and so we have vehicles stored all over the place. I think in other state and different states, and I think that we have had cases where there has been a product liability claim that’s come out of a wreck, and we’ve gotten money from the manufacturer of vehicles because of a safety defect. Also, like you mentioned, sometimes if you actually have to take the case to trial, then sometimes it’s nice for the jury, it’s not nice, but it’s something that’s helpful for a jury to actually see the devastation that was caused by the semi-truck and trailer or the other commercial motor vehicle that caused the wreck. So, we maintain those for that reason as well. We don’t move them, I mean the vehicles usually, again, they can’t be driven. So, Clint has to arrange for a flatbed or those vehicles to be moved from the storage facility to wherever we’re going to place them.

We only do that after Clint has already coordinated in our office, has already coordinated the inspection and the download. So, the defense gets to go look at it and the cars that people drive, there’s an airbag module that will go off and that airbag module, assuming the airbag goes off, we’ll lock in usually five seconds worth of data on speed and were the seat belts were on, those type of things, and so, we want to make sure that everybody has access to that. Then, once everybody is done, everybody said, okay, we’ve got everything we need, only then do we move the vehicle.

Same way with the trucking company. Trucking companies, preferably we do it by agreement, and Clint works with everybody. We get everybody out there, and we do the inspection all at the same time. If they won’t work with us when we file suit, the lawyers get involved, and file restraining orders. Clint then has people go out and place these orders on the windows of the car, usually our investigator. Then, once the inspection’s done, the download’s done, then they reach out to you about disposing the vehicle. Correct?

Clint Crabtree:

Yes.

David Craig:

So, at that point, then the vehicles can be moved after everything’s done, but when all this happens, I mean, everything’s expedited on the front end, right?

Clint Crabtree:

Yes, it is. I mean, obviously the goal is, I don’t know that there’s a specific say, two week timeframe, but we try to get this all done quickly because a lot of times these trucks and vehicles, client vehicles, they’re taken to tow facilities, they are still out in the weather, things of that nature. So, I think it’s in everybody’s best interest to get these inspections and downloads on all the equipment done sooner than later so that weather and things of that nature don’t become an issue.

David Craig:

The other thing that is important for us to know in the very beginning is who are the players involved? Who are our clients, and who is on the other side? Talk a little bit about what you do on the front end of cases to help us determine all that.

Determine the Players Involved in a Case

Clint Crabtree:

Yeah, so like I said, typically I’ll reach out to initially the police department because most of the time on these big trucking cases, the police report is not yet available. If it is available, there’s information on there usually that would tell us where to start, who the insurance company is for both parties, things of that nature. So, I would reach out to insurance companies if a claim has not been completed yet or set up, then I would give them all the information from the police report and so that they can set a claim up. Once an adjuster is assigned, I typically work with the adjuster, a lot of times the adjuster on these big cases, they will go ahead and forward to their counsel and have attorneys involved on their side, as well as us.

Then, like I say, if you got to deal with the tow facility, a lot of times we got to wait until the police holds are lifted before we can do the inspection. So, we’re dealing with back to the police officer and again, and so adjusters, attorneys, tow facility owners, that’s who we’re dealing with early on.

David Craig:

Once you identify, once they give you the name of a company, or they give you the name of the driver, then talk about what you do as far as background work so that we know when we start gathering information. I mean the day we get hired, Clint begins this work on coordinating all what we talked about as far as locking down the vehicles, finding the vehicles, getting all the information from the vehicle, preserving all the evidence, but you also start working on background checks on these people. Talk a little bit about that.

Doing Background Checks on the People Involved in the Case

Clint Crabtree:

Yeah. We live in a world of social media, which is great, and we can learn a lot of stuff about the driver, and even our client just from simple social media searches. We try to secure all that data because oftentimes they’re going to be coached, hey, if you’ve got something on social media, get it off of there. So, we try to get that secured early on before they have a chance to do that. Then, these trucking companies, they most of the time have pretty big websites with a lot of data on it in terms of what they hang their hat on in terms of safety or how quickly they can get your load from point A to point B and efficiently.

We try to download their websites, get a snapshot of that, and see what their goal is, what they’re proud about, things of that nature. We also look on the Safer CIS websites to see how many trucks they have, how many drivers they have, what their percentage of out of service is, and how many wrecks they’ve been involved in. There’s just a lot of information that you can get on trucking companies and your clients over the internet.

David Craig:

Yeah. We always advise clients that once they hire us not to put out any information about their injuries or the wreck, not that we’re trying to hide anything, but it just can be misconstrued. We tell them not to get rid of anything that’s already there because whatever there is there. Unfortunately, sometimes the truck drivers either don’t heed the advice of the defense counsel or they get rid of it before they get defense counsel involved. So the sooner we can get hired, the sooner you can look at that and see if the truck driver has got anything potentially even leading up to the wreck, so you can see where someone’s been, what they were doing, what they posted, what they posted during the day of the wreck, anything they posted after the wreck. I mean, most truck drivers are caring people and these wrecks are horrible to them and to my clients, but there are some that are not, and there’s some that don’t care.

There are some companies that put profits ahead of safety, and you sometimes can see that by what they’re saying on their Facebook or their LinkedIn or whatever, you can tell that. So Clint goes in and as soon as we get hired, we look at our clients, we look at the truck driver, we look at the trucking company, and we look at any other people that are involved in the wreck itself. Clint, there’s software out there that he’s just talked about which is where you can actually download and record and keep forever the trucking companies information and all this other social media information, and anything that’s public you can download. Like Clint says, some of these trucking companies websites are huge and some of them brag about their safety and what they do differently than maybe other trucking companies, and sometimes that’s not accurate.

Preserving Evidence

I’ve actually seen trucking companies take down their website after a really horrific loss involving a lot of people, and so, the quicker we get hired, Clint can get there and get that hopefully before that information is lost. Then, Clint keeps that information and then pass it on to us, the attorneys that are involved in the case, and then we use that when we’re taken a deposition of a truck driver or a safety director of the trucking company. We have all this information that Clint’s downloaded which can be extraordinarily helpful in doing those depositions. Again, it’s something that people don’t think about. When you’re in a wreck, you’re just thinking about your family members or your own wellbeing, not, gosh, what do I need to do to preserve the evidence? With respect to, I would assume most trucking companies and now in this day and age, especially our law firm is well known in this area. So I would assume most companies and lawyers work with us, cooperate and work together.

Clint Crabtree:

Yeah, absolutely. Most are aware, and the people that we hire, the experts and stuff to go out and do these downloads and stuff, they certainly know who we are. They may do these things for defense as well, but it’s important for us. Another thing of urgency is to, once we know that we’ve been hired for a case, we’ve got to get these experts lined up to do the downloads sometimes before they’re hired by defense counsel.

David Craig:

Absolutely, this is such a specialty area, specialized in where they’re downloading the trucking information, there’s only a handful of experts out there, and a lot of them work, like you said, on both sides, so we’re trying to get these experts hired before the defense does it as well. Well, and then one of the things I want to make sure people don’t know too, is when you talk about we preserve the client’s car, and you mentioned it, but I want to highlight it, it doesn’t mean we’re not going to settle the car, so the clients are going to get their money, and then sometimes there may be a little bit of a salvage value or a trade-off, but you’re going to go ahead and negotiate and help our clients, and we don’t charge anything for property damage, but typically unless it goes to trial, but talk a little bit how people don’t have to wait for a year or hour long to get their money for their car, right?

How Long Does a Victim Have to Wait to Get Their Money for Their Car?

Clint Crabtree:

No, not at all. No, it’s my goal to get the property damage portion of it in terms of payments to our clients for their vehicle done as soon as possible. So, if we can get the inspections all scheduled and completed, once those are done and nobody else needs access to the vehicle, we try to get the property damage settlement for our client’s vehicle within weeks, not months, weeks usually, sometimes even days. So that way they can start looking for another vehicle and be able to get to their medical appointments, therapy, all that kind of stuff, and not have that burden of how am I going to get from here to there. We try to get that resolved quickly, upfront early on, and not have to wait for the resolution of the whole case.

David Craig:

So Clint, as a crash response team coordinator, what do you think the most challenging part of that role is for you?

What Are the Challenges of a Crash Response Team Coordinator?

Clint Crabtree:

Certainly the most challenging part is the two weeks early on of getting all the players that are going to be involved together and on the same calendar so that we can get these investigation inspections, downloads, all that, coordinated and completed. The settlement of the vehicle, that’s typically just between me and an insurance adjuster, working out the value of what we feel is the actual cash value of the vehicle. So that’s a lot easier to handle when you’ve got six to ten parties that you got to get all at the same place, same tow yard, to do the inspection and the download that, that’s the challenging part.

David Craig:

I think you should realize that if you or your family have been involved in a serious truck wreck, with a commercial motor vehicle, whether it’s a gravel truck, a bus, a dump truck, a tractor trailer or semi, you need to move quickly and you need to ask the lawyers, if you’re interviewing lawyers, do they have somebody that runs their crash response team and talk to them and we’ve now heard Clint and Clint’s done this now, and he’s been doing this for 14 years for our law firm, Craig, Kelley & Faultless, and it’s a challenging job, and you have to be able to handle insurance companies, you got to be able to handle salvage yards. You got to be able to handle reconstructionists and experts and mechanics and police officers. So, there’s a lot involved in what Clint does daily for our law firm.

You want to make sure that the law firm that you hire has somebody like Clint that does that same thing because you want to preserve that evidence, otherwise you get one shot. Once that evidence is gone, it’s gone. And we’ve seen cases where evidence has been taken across state lines. We’ve seen cases where evidence has been altered. We’ve seen cases where trucking companies got to the scene first and started affecting what the witnesses say. So while Clint is doing his job, I also usually have a private investigator out getting statements of all the witnesses. We have somebody at the scene photographing the scene, coordinating all that. So there’s a lot going on with the front end of these cases, and if you and your family are the ones that are the victims, then hopefully you have a friend or another family member outside whose looking after your interests. So Clint, anything else you want to add to our podcast today?

Clint Crabtree:

No, I think you’re exactly right. If you’re in an accident with a big semi or gravel truck or anything, it’s a catastrophic injury, it’s absolutely in your best interest to get us or a law firm involved that knows how to handle these cases because we’ve seen every time the trucking companies, they’ve got their people out there within hours, and so if you wait two weeks, odds are they may already have that vehicle moved and being repaired or already scrapped before we even get a chance to locate it. So, it’s absolutely in your best interest to get your attorney that you trust that knows how to handle these big cases involved as soon as possible.

David Craig:

This is David Craig, and you’ve been listening to After the Crash. If you want 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.