The lawsuit after a serious commercial vehicle crash arrives months later. The decisions that shape it are made in the first hours, in the scene inspection, the vehicle preservation, the driver interviews, and what gets said to investigators and to the other side. By the time suit is filed, most of the physical and electronic evidence either exists or does not.
Topkin Law defends motor carriers, trucking companies, fleet and delivery operators, commercial drivers, and the insurers and third-party administrators behind them. Partner Carl C. Schreck leads this work, with thirty years in insurance defense litigation, roughly eighty jury trials, and a practice concentrated in commercial motor vehicle and trucking defense.
We deploy on serious losses to document the scene, preserve the vehicle and cargo, download and preserve electronic control module and telematics data, take driver and witness statements, and coordinate with the carrier’s safety department and its insurer. Spoliation exposure is created in this window as often as it is avoided, and the decisions are easier to make with counsel involved.
Multi-vehicle crashes, fatality cases, and matters carrying punitive damages exposure. The defense is built on liability, causation, and apportionment among the drivers, vehicle owners, shippers, brokers, maintenance providers, and road conditions that contributed, with accident reconstruction and biomechanical work retained early enough to matter.
Plaintiffs routinely plead negligent hiring, training, retention, supervision, and entrustment alongside vicarious liability, because those counts open the carrier’s files to discovery and support a punitive claim. We defend them on the merits and litigate the scope of the resulting discovery into driver qualification files, hours of service records, safety scores, and prior incidents.
Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations issues surface in nearly every commercial vehicle case, from driver qualification and hours of service records to electronic logging data, drug and alcohol testing, vehicle inspection and maintenance records, and load securement. We work through the compliance record with the carrier and address the violations plaintiffs will attempt to convert into liability or punitive exposure.
Beyond long-haul trucking, the practice covers delivery fleets, service vehicles, passenger transport, and the growing volume of claims involving vehicles operated by contractors and franchisees, where the question of who employed the driver and whose policy responds is frequently the case.
Commercial transportation losses usually sit under layered primary, umbrella, and excess coverage, and often involve indemnity obligations running between carriers, brokers, shippers, and lessors. We handle that analysis alongside the defense. The firm also has extensive experience with Medicare Secondary Payer compliance, which routinely affects how these claims are documented and closed.
Motor carriers and trucking companies, delivery and logistics operators, fleet owners, commercial drivers, vehicle lessors, and the insurers, third-party administrators, and self-insured companies responsible for the exposure.
Our clients include physician practices across specialties, PIP clinics, surgery centers, diagnostic providers, and the management companies that support them. The firm represents providers in clawback and recoupment matters arising from the full range of carriers operating in Florida, including major P&C carriers such as Allstate, State Farm, Progressive, GEICO, USAA, Liberty Mutual, and Travelers, and commercial health and managed care payers such as UnitedHealthcare, Aetna, Cigna, Humana, and Florida Blue. The firm also handles matters involving Medicare administrative contractors, Medicare Advantage plans, Medicaid managed care organizations, and AHCA.
Physical evidence disappears quickly in these cases. Vehicles get repaired or sold, and electronic data overwrites on its own schedule. When the firm is reached early, the first work is preservation and evaluation rather than pleading.
The second priority is keeping the case about the collision. Plaintiffs’ counsel would generally rather try the carrier’s safety record than the accident, and much of the defense is holding that line while addressing the compliance record candidly where it has to be addressed.
