Police Officer’s Widow Files Wrongful Death in Auto Accident with Semi
A Savannah police officer was responding to an accident call on I-16 at about 3 am on May 25th, 2018. En route he was struck by a semi and killed. His widow is now seeking justice in a wrongful death claim against the driver of the truck and the trucking company he worked for, HSI Logistics, LLC.
According to reports, it is the kind of accident that happens to a lot of police officers. The officer pulled over to the side of the road to help with the accident, and while he was in his police cruiser he was struck by the semi-truck. The officer had his emergency lights activated so he should have been plainly visible. Weather was not a factor and the truck driver’s view was not obstructed according to the accident report.
In addition, the truck driver, at no point, attempted to apply the breaks. He kept barreling through even as he struck the officer’s police cruiser. He never made an attempt to avoid the cruiser before striking the front passenger side at full speed.
The lawsuit is alleging that the tractor-trailer was not equipped with a collision avoidance system and that the truck’s lights were not turned on. These collision avoidance systems help large trucks detect smaller vehicles. The plaintiff is alleging that had the system been in place, the accident would have never happened.
More troubling is the allegation that the truck’s headlights were not turned on. That alone shows that the driver was negligent.
Records Disclosure
The suit has just been filed in Georgia courts, so the first thing that the plaintiff’s attorney will do is file a motion for records disclosure on the driver. If the driver is found to have caused other accidents or was written up for poor performance, inebriation, or driving without a valid commercial license, the company can be held liable for negligence and perhaps even gross negligence.
Cases like these are generally filed against the trucking company’s insurance policy. The insurance policy pays out in the event that one of their drivers causes an accident. More to the point, however, is the fact that the trucking company may have been negligent by not furnishing their trucks with the necessary technology. Further, they may have employed either overworked or ill-equipped drivers.
In this case, the company’s driver hit an easily visible police cruiser in plain sight. The evidence suggests that the trucker never even saw the cruiser until well after he had struck it. Since the widow is filing a wrongful death lawsuit against the trucking company, she is entitled to collect both for emotional pain and suffering and the loss of her husband’s income for the remainder of his life among other things.
The officer was only 37 at the time of his death. He was a veteran of the U.S. Navy and joined the Savannah PD in 2015.
Contact a Georgia Personal Injury Attorney
If you’ve been injured in a traffic accident, give the Georgia legal team at Gillette Law a call at (912) 289-4205 or contact us online. We can help you recover damages for your injuries.
Resource:
wtoc.com/story/38635936/wtoc-investigates-spd-officers-wife-files-wrongful-death-lawsuit
