Joliet Truck Accident Lawyers

South of the city, rail lines and interstates meet at one of the largest freight complexes in the Midwest. The Federal Highway Administration describes CenterPoint Intermodal Center–Joliet as a logistics center and inland port on 3,600 acres, joined to the Elwood site that is home to BNSF Logistics Park.

Its developer calls the combined park North America's largest master-planned inland port, beside the I-55 and I-80 interchange. An intermodal terminal exists to move containers between trains and trucks, so the roads around it carry a steady flow of container trucks.

If you drive I-80, I-55 or the county roads near Elwood, you share them with that traffic. A crash with one of those trucks is rarely a one-company case.

A container truck is really three pieces of equipment, and they often belong to different companies: the tractor, the steel box, and the wheeled frame the box rides on. When a failed brake or a blown tire at the rear of the rig played a part in the crash, the chassis deserves as much attention as the driver.

Federal rules call the company that supplies a chassis to a motor carrier an intermodal equipment provider. It has to keep that chassis systematically inspected and maintained, and give drivers the space and procedures to inspect it before they pull out.

Those duties leave a paper trail. The inspection reports and repair history for one specific chassis can show whether a defect was reported before your crash, and who was told.

Will County is its own judicial circuit, and a truck case from Joliet usually begins in the Circuit Court of the Twelfth Judicial Circuit. A carrier from another state may move the case to federal court when more than $75,000 is at stake.

Federal law places Will County in the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division, which holds court in Chicago and Wheaton. Once a case is there, the federal rules of evidence and procedure govern how it is proved.

Crashes near the yards often involve several vehicles and more than one insurer, and each insurer will argue that someone else was more to blame. Illinois settles that argument with a modified comparative fault rule.

Under 735 ILCS 5/2-1116, your damages are reduced by your own share of the fault, and you are barred only when that share is more than half of what caused the injury. A driver found 20 percent at fault recovers 80 percent of the damages the jury finds.

If the crash took the life of someone you love, Illinois requires the wrongful death action to be filed within two years after the death.

Our Joliet office takes truck cases from across Will County and the corridors around the intermodal yards. Call at any hour; the consultation is free, and there is no fee unless we win.

If a container truck was involved, tell us what you remember about the back of the rig as well as the cab. A shipping line's name, a chassis number or a logo on the frame helps us find every company that had a hand in that equipment.

Our pages on owner-operators and freight brokers cover two more ways responsibility for a load can be divided.