$6,450,000.00 recovery -- Montgomery County, PA
Estate of Jeffrey Shober

Our client burned to death when his car was struck by a tractor-trailer on I-76 near King of Prussia, PA. The trucking company contended the accident was not its fault because another car supposedly cut off its truck driver. The police agreed, and their initial report exonerated the trucking company of any responsibility for the accident. A case which many attorneys would have declined under the circumstances, when we reviewed it we found the police did not include significant information in the accident reconstruction calculations they used to arrive at their conclusions. When confronted at deposition, the investigating officer conceded that his conclusions were wrong, thereby clearly implicating the trucking company as the responsible party for the accident.

Despite consistent efforts by the national trucking company, Werner Enterprises, to thwart our investigation and prosecution of the case, through our unrelenting efforts on behalf of the family we secured from the Court many Orders compelling the company to turn over important documents, and further obtained Orders requiring the company to pay fines totaling more than $10,000.00 for its various litigation abuses in the case. Among the key theories we advanced on behalf of our client was that the truck driver was distracted from the road ahead because he was using an email system the company required for dispatching purposes. Though the company and driver vehemently tried to deny this, after obtaining their “secret” documents we proved that the company knew the danger of allowing its truckers to use email systems while driving yet chose to allow them to do so anyhow. Furthermore, via analysis of complex satellite telemetry and global positioning systems, we were able to prove that the driver of the tractor-trailer was actually using the email system immediately before the collision, which obviously distracted his attention from the traffic ahead.

Important to our firm was not just the tremendous result secured on behalf of Mr. Shober’s wife and two children, but also the social benefit that came from our efforts. Namely, after the case concluded, the company changed its policies and disabled the communication system from operating when their trucks are in operation.

Key to the result we secured on behalf of our client was our persistent ability to force the trucking company to turn over key documents, our proven ability to closely analyze thousands of pages of complex data and information, and proving through nationally renowned experts that Mr. Shober was alive at the time he burned to death.