Plaintiff, the driver of a small truck, slammed into defendant’s tractor-trailer truck, which was stopped in traffic without working brake lights. Although plaintiff initially was unhurt, defendant’s truck, after continuing forward for 15-20 feet, rolled back into plaintiff’s truck, crushing his lower body. As a result, plaintiff sustained a traumatic leg amputation as well as severe lacerations and fractures.

The Scanlan Law Group filed suit on behalf of the plaintiff, contending that his injuries were caused by the fact that defendant’s truck had defective brakes, which prevented the driver from stopping before his truck rolled back into the plaintiff. In response, the defendant argued that plaintiff’s injuries were caused by the initial collision, and that the subsequent roll back of the truck could not have caused the serious injuries plaintiff sustained. However, Edmund J. Scanlan located two drivers whose vehicles had been struck as a result of the chain reaction caused by defendant’s truck’s roll back. Scanlan also located another witness who had overhead the defendant driver state that his brakes were not working, and he learned that the truck’s federally mandated ICC vehicle condition report been destroyed.

After placing all of these facts before the jury, Scanlan convinced it that the rollback was the cause of the injuries, not the initial collision, and he obtained a verdict of more than $3 million for the injured driver. Said Scanlan, “Although this case was complicated on the surface, in reality it was quite simple; the defendants were negligent for not having working brakes, which was the direct cause of the plaintiff’s injuries. Thus, once we were able to show that the initial collision was not the cause of the plaintiff’s injuries, the jury had little trouble in placing blame on the proper parties-the trucking company and its driver.”