New York Injury Attorneys Blog

Today, White Plains personal injury lawyer Michael Joseph won a major victory against the city of White Plains. Our client was in a pick up truck stopped on the bottom of a hill when a municipal garbage truck came flying down and hill and rear ended our client.

The driver of the garbage truck and the City tried to avoid their responsibility by claiming that there was a sudden and unforeseen emergency because their brakes suddenly failed. Our Westchester personal injury lawyers consulted with an expert diesel brake mechanic and gained the technical expertise to reveal the City of White Plains defense for the sham that it was.

Our Westchester truck accident lawyer, Michael Joseph, took several depositions of the mechanics from the City's garage, all of whom were highly experienced diesel mechanics. Through these depositions, our injury attorneys were able to prove that the brakes were in good condition shortly before the accident an upon the post inspection repair, all of the brakes were in good working order. Additionally, our Westchester car accident lawyer got the mechanics to admit that a sudden failure which the garbage truck driver claimed was a mechanical impossibility because the rear and front brakes work independently and if there is a failure in one part the other can stop the truck. Additionally, the braking system on these types of trucks have a dual braking system with a service side and an emergency system. These systems work independent of each other and therefore a failure on one side will not effect the other. Therefore, the City's own brake mechanics conceded that the garbage truck driver's story was a mechanical impossibility.

Today, the Westchester Supreme Court agreed and found the City and its driver one hundred percent negligent for the accident. Our Westchester truck accident attorneys will continue to protect victims of car accidents and truck accidents including those in the towns of Yonkers, Harrison, Ossining, Briarcliff Manor, Peekskill, Port Chester, Pelham, Scarsdale, Tarrytown, Greenburgh, Elmsford and Rye.

Often truck drivers who are involved in serious accidents with cars or trucks, blame their brakes in a feigned attempt to shift the blame from themselves to a so called emergency situation. Our New York truck accident lawyers work closely with deisel mechanic experts and have extensive expertise in proving that these claims are largely bogus and driver error is usually the cause.

Accidents truly caused by a sudden and unforseeable brake failure in commercial trucks are rare. For one thing, department of transportation regulations require routine inspections of the braking systems for trucks and most trucking companies have established preventative maintenance programs which prevents mechanical components of the truck's braking systems from getting to the point of failure.

New York personal injury lawyers who handle cases involving serious personal injuries or wrongful death as a result of a truck accident need to familiarize themselves with the mechanical components of the braking system.

Most trucks have two independent braking systems known as the service side and the emergency side. The two systems operate independently, such that a failure of the braking system on the service side will not effect the operation of the emergency braking system and vice versa. Generally, the foot brake operates the service brake and there is also an independent emergency brake. On most trucks, each wheel has its own brake, therefore these trucks have ten individual service and emergency brakes. These trucks also has a fail safe system, to prevent a brake failure as a result of an air leak, whereby if the pressure in the air brake system drops below 60 pounds per square inch, the brakes will automatically activate and stop the truck.

Air leaks are also apparent to the operator before they begin their route, if they a brake press test, by which they stepped on the brake and if there was any leak in the air brake system, the gauges would go down. If a driver steps on a truck brake and there is no decrease in the gauge reading, there is no air leak.

Even problems with an isolated component such as the relief break valve or the QR1 valve, are insufficient to cause a total brake failure. Both of which are valves connected to the rear brakes of the truck, however, a defect with the relay valve will not affect the ability of an operator to stop a truck because the relay valve is only involved with the rear brakes and the front brakes which are controlled by a different valve, are in and of themselves sufficient to stop the vehicle. The QR1 valve is located on the emergency brake, which is part of the rear brake system and does not affect the service side brakes or even the emergency part of the front brakes. the quick release valve cannot possibly cause a brake failure because the quick release valve is involved in releasing air from the brakes, which allows the driver to resume motion, however, it is not involved in the function of stopping the vehicleTherefore, even a problem with an isolated valve is not a sufficient mechanical explanation for a failure of the truck's braking system.

Experienced New York truck accident lawyers, must be familiar with the braking systems of diesel trucks. Our New York truck accident lawyers have handled numerous personal injury car accident cases involving accidents with municipal trucks including garbage trucks or buses.

Many of these cases involve violations of the New York vehicle and traffic law. Our New York personal injury lawyers several years ago won a major Appellate decision which established that City trucks are subject or ordinary negligence standards, not the heightened recklessness standard found in Vehicle and Traffic Law 1104, which requires recklessness to recover for a vehicle working on the road. Our New York accident lawyers successfully established that these exemptions apply only to road construction and maintenance, not all municipal trucks which are on the road while working.

Lately our New York truck accident lawyers have encountered a new defense being advanced by some of the Westchester municipalities to justify clear violations of the vehicle and traffic law by their municipal trucks. An example is that a violation of the vehicle and traffic law generally establishes negligence, however, these towns are now trying to show a non-negligent explanation, i.e., a sudden and unexpected mechanical failure.

In this situation, our New York and Westchester truck accident lawyers utilize a dual strategy of claiming both negligence in maintenance and impossibility of the defense. For example, we depose the diesel mechanics and hire our own diesel mechanic experts as consultants.

Our New York truck accident attorneys have successfully dispelled this defense through depositions of the mechanics by establishing that every diesel truck has two independent braking systems, a service side and an emergency side. These braking systems operate independently, as such, even if there is a mechanical defect on one system, such as an air leak, it does not affect the other braking system. Additionally, on diesel trucks with air braking systems, where there is a leak in the air brake, if the pressure drops below a certain P.S.I., the system will automatically stop the truck from moving at all. Additionally, a small leak such as a problem with a relay valve will only affect the rear wheels, but not the front wheels, which are independently sufficient to stop a diesel truck. Therefore, top notch truck accident personal injury lawyers should not allow a jury to be fooled by these defenses.

This week our New York truck accident attorneys won a decisive battle in Brooklyn Supreme Court. We successfully convinced the Court in Brooklyn that that the defendant truck driver was 100 percent at fault for hitting our client who was a pedestrian crossing the street.

Our New York personal injury lawyers proved that the defendant had a stop sign and since he did not see the pedestrian until after the accident, he violated New York's vehicle and traffic law by failing to yield at the stop sign until the intersection was free of pedestrian traffic. The Court also agreed that there was no excuse for the truck driver's failure to see the pedestrian and the only excuse was that the driver failed to keep a proper lookout and see what there was to be seen.

The defendants attempted to argue that the Plaintiff was partially at fault because she did not avoid the accident but the Court held that the defendant failed to demonstrate that the pedestrian did anything wrong.