Truck Accident

Truck accidents, like motor vehicle accidents, cause numerous personal injuries and deaths each year in the United States. While not as common as car accidents, truck accidents bring greater damages due to their size and weight. Trucks defined as commercial freight trucks, commonly known as 18-wheelers. Federal laws govern the trucking industry as they are part-and-parcel of interstate commerce. The federal government establishes the manufacturing standards of commercial and heavy trucks and regulates the use and operation of these trucks. States also have their own laws and regulations relating to trucks and truck accidents.

Truck accident law ensures that personal injuries sustained by occupants of a passenger vehicle as a result of a collision with an 18-wheeler is adequately compensated. Like all personal injury cases, the foremost consideration when determining liability in truck accidents is negligence. The most common party who is negligent would be the truck driver, and because truck drivers are professional drivers, multiple sources of law will apply. The truck driver, however, may not be the only party who acted negligently. Proving negligence on the part of other possible responsible parties may not be as easy as proving negligence on the part of the truck driver.

Truck accidents differ from motor vehicle accidents because the determination of who is at fault is more complicated. Because of the commercial nature of trucks, there are many parties that could be possibly liable for the damage or the death. Responsible parties could also include the truck's owner, lessee, or manufacturer. The truck's shipper or loader, when the cargo is not properly loaded, could also be responsible, while the truck's mechanics could also be responsible when it failed to check the condition of the truck prior to travel. The party responsible for the damages could be one party or all of the parties mentioned above. In addition to these responsible parties, insurance companies can also be liable for the damages as most businesses are required to get insurance coverage for these types of risks. The bulk of litigation arising from truck accidents would be the determination of who is liable, as these parties would naturally try to avoid paying damages and blame another party for the cause of the accident. When a plaintiff files a personal injury lawsuit arising from a truck accident, the plaintiff must identify all possible responsible parties because there is a statute of limitations for all personal injury claims. It is better to name all possible responsible parties at the filing of the lawsuit than add the parties after as the statute of limitations may have already ran out.

A typical truck accident litigation in the past would have the trucking company arguing against liability by pointing out that it does not own the truck and it does not employ the driver. Current federal laws, however, now state that any trucking company is responsible for all accidents involving a truck that has its name displayed on the vehicle. This means that the trucking company is liable even if the truck is leased from another company and the driver is an independent contractor.

Aside from proving liability, the plaintiff must show the extent of his damages by engaging expert witnesses such as a physician to assess the physical damage and an economist to assess damages arising from loss of income and earning capacity. On top of these experts, the plaintiff must also engage the expertise of a truck accident law attorney to skillfully navigate the complicated litigation against those who might also be responsible.

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Discrimination Law - Legal Information and Resources

Discrimination

Employment discrimination is punishable by law based on the humanistic theory that all beings are created equal and must be afforded equal rights and equal protection of the law. Employment discrimination in the United States stems from issues relating to age, disability, ethnicity, race, religion, sex, and in recent years, gender. The U.S. Constitution, through the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment prohibits federal and state governments to discriminate. While the U.S. Constitution does not extend to private businesses, a growing number of cases through the years had the U.S. Supreme Court interpreting the anti-discriminatory provisions as applicable to both the public and private sectors.

Discriminatory practices relating to employment are prohibited by both federal and state statutes. Discriminatory practices include bias in hiring, promotion, compensation and termination. Discriminatory practices also include sexual harassment. Equal protection right requires state and federal governments to treat employees, former employees, and job applicants equally, regardless of sex, race or religion. One of the most common issues arising from violation of the equal protection clause would be refusing women or members of the LGBT community the same promotion opportunities or the same pay afforded to male workers, or refusing married homosexual couples the same employment benefits afforded to married heterosexual couples. Moreover, women have also been historically victims of discriminatory employment practices that numerous nationwide class actions have been spawned as a result of these practices.

Under the right to due process, employers are required to give employees a fair process especially when there is investigation involving an employee or in cases of termination. One of the common cases arising from employers' violation of the right to due process would be terminating an employee because the employee exercised his or her right to form or join a union. In addition, there are several cases of employees who were laid off because they sued their employer.

When found to have suffered from discrimination, an employee may seek redress for damages against the employer. Under the U.S. Code, employees are guaranteed the right to a jury trial for cases seeking compensatory and punitive damages arising from discriminatory practices. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 also prohibits discriminatory practices by employers who have businesses in two or more states. While state and federal statutes are specific as what consists discriminatory practices, proving its existence is not easy and would require an attorney specializing in these matters. Filing a claim or a suit has to go through a tedious process that would often involve a review by a government agency and a race against statute of limitations. On top of that, the employee, being the plaintiff, also has to shoulder the cost in procuring evidence of the alleged discriminatory practices.

It is not easy for an employee, especially if acting alone, to battle an employer as the employer typically has a bevy of lawyers on stand-by to argue that the employment practice is not discriminatory and is in accordance with the law. Add to this another huge difficulty when that employer is a major corporation, whose power is not just limited to its business industry, but also extends to all three branches of the government.

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