Meet Our Truck Litigation Team

Penobscot County trucking cases demand experience, judgment, and the ability to build a case that holds up under pressure. Our team includes attorneys with proven success in serious injury and wrongful death litigation, including trucking and commercial vehicle claims:

• Charles P. “Chuck” Hehmeyer: Lead trial counsel in the record $25M federal trucking verdict involving a tractor-trailer crash, an award that garnered national recognition.  
• Travis M. Brennan: Shareholder with a record of notable results in trucking and commercial vehicle crashes across Maine, including cases where pedestrians have been catastrophically injured by distracted truck drivers. 
• Elizabeth A. Kayatta: A shareholder with notable commercial vehicle and trucking outcomes, including a record-setting $23,500,000 settlement in a fatal trucking crash case—the largest trucking accident settlement in Maine’s history.

Types of Truck Accident Cases We Handle

Commercial truck and bus crashes are a real issue in Penobscot County. MaineDOT reports 1,094 truck/bus crashes in Penobscot County from 2019–2023, including 2 fatal crashes. 

At Berman & Simmons, we represent people and families in serious injury and wrongful death claims involving many kinds of commercial vehicles and crash scenarios, including:

• Tractor-trailers / 18-wheelers and interstate carriers
• Logging trucks and heavy-haul trucks tied to forestry and industrial work
• Delivery vehicles, box trucks, and fleet vehicles (including last-mile operations)
• Dump trucks, cement trucks, and construction vehicles
• Work trucks and commercial pickups used by contractors and service companies
• Rollover and jackknife crashes
• Rear-end and chain-reaction collisions (often in congestion, merges, and work zones)
• Underride / override crashes
• Load shift, cargo securement failures, and roadway debris events
• Brake failure, tire blowouts, and maintenance-related wrecks
• Winter-condition trucking crashes (ice, reduced visibility, longer stopping distances)
• Rural roadway collisions, including situations where visibility, speed, and roadway geometry combine with heavy vehicles to create extreme danger

Who Can Be Held Responsible After a Truck Crash?

Trucking companies and insurers often try to reduce a case to a single narrative: “the driver made a mistake.” Sometimes driver negligence is central, but many truck crashes stem from broader operational decisions that created the risk in the first place.

Depending on the facts, liability may involve:

• The truck driver — speeding, distraction, fatigue, impairment, unsafe lane changes, following too closely, or failure to adjust to conditions
• The motor carrier / trucking company — negligent hiring, inadequate training, poor supervision, hours-of-service pressure, unrealistic scheduling, or a safety culture that rewards delivery times over safe operation
• The owner of the tractor or trailer — when ownership and operations are split across entities (which can matter for maintenance and insurance)
• The shipper, loader, or cargo handler — overweight loads, improper securement, unbalanced cargo configurations, or unsafe loading practices that increase rollover/jackknife risk
• Maintenance or inspection providers — skipped inspections, ignored defects, inadequate repairs, or failures tied to brakes, tires, lights, and coupling systems
• Manufacturers — defective tires, brakes, underride guards, steering components, or other systems that cause a crash or worsen injuries

How Truck Accident Cases Are Proven

In a trucking claim, the most persuasive evidence is often not the police report. The “truth” of what happened frequently lives in commercial records and electronic systems and some of that information can be overwritten or lost if it isn’t preserved early.

A thorough truck-crash investigation may involve:

• Electronic vehicle data (crash-event data, speed/braking inputs, engine and control-module information)
• Hours-of-service documentation and electronic logging data that may show fatigue, skipped breaks, or log irregularities
• Dispatch and routing records that can reveal schedule pressure, delivery windows, or operational choices that incentivized unsafe driving
• Maintenance and inspection history (what was inspected, what was deferred, and whether known problems were allowed back on the road)
• Driver qualification and safety history (training, prior incidents, licensing or certification issues)
• Cargo and weight documentation (bills of lading, weight tickets, securement records)
• Scene and vehicle evidence used by reconstruction experts (impact points, damage profiles, skid/yaw marks, visibility issues, and timing)

The point isn’t to collect documents for the sake of collecting them. It’s to connect the evidence into a clear story about preventability, fault, and accountability—one that holds up when the defense tries to shift blame or minimize harm.

Compensation After a Serious Truck Accident

A trucking claim should reflect the full impact of the crash—especially when injuries change the course of someone’s life. While every case is unique, compensation in serious truck accident litigation commonly falls into a few clear categories:

Economic Losses (Financial Harm)

• Past and future medical expenses (hospital care, surgery, rehab, specialists, medications)
• Future care needs (therapy, assistive services, home modifications, in-home support)
• Lost income and loss of earning capacity (including long-term work restrictions)
• Out-of-pocket costs tied to limitations (travel for care, household help, replacement services)

Non-Economic Losses (Human Harm)

• Pain and suffering
• Emotional distress / trauma
• Loss of enjoyment of life and loss of function
• Scarring, disfigurement, and disability-related impact on daily living and relationships

When the Crash Is Fatal

Wrongful death and estate-related claims can involve recoverable losses such as:

• Economic: funeral/burial expenses; medical bills related to the final injury; lost income/support; and the value of services the person would have provided
• Non-economic: the family’s loss tied to the relationship, such as loss of companionship and guidance (as permitted under Maine’s wrongful death framework)

Because truck cases often involve substantial insurance coverage and sophisticated defense tactics, fair valuation typically requires careful documentation and expert support, especially when future losses are the biggest part of what the crash has taken.

Timeline of a Trucking Accident Case

Most serious truck cases move in phases. The timeline depends on injury severity, clarity of fault, and how aggressively the defense fights, but a typical sequence looks like this:

1. Early investigation and preservation — steps to secure electronic data, commercial records, and physical evidence while it still exists
2. Medical stabilization and long-term assessment — building an accurate picture of treatment needs, permanence, and work impact
3. Liability mapping — identifying all responsible entities and all applicable insurance coverage
4. Claim presentation and negotiations — often where blame-shifting and undervaluation tactics appear
5. Litigation and discovery (when needed) — formal process to obtain internal records and sworn testimony
6. Mediation, settlement, or trial — resolution may come once the defense confronts the evidence; trial remains the path when it doesn’t

FAQ: Penobscot County Truck Accident Claims