Truck Accident Verdicts and the Real Cost of Unsafe Trucking

When a serious truck crash changes a family’s life, the costs can continue for decades. Emergency treatment may be followed by surgeries, rehabilitation, lost income, and permanent disability. For families who lose a loved one, no financial award can replace that person.

Those consequences deserve a central place in the debate over truck accident lawsuits.

The U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform’s Roadblock report argues that trucking litigation and large verdicts burden the trucking industry and increase consumer costs. At  The Thomson Law Firm, we believe those claims deserve careful scrutiny—especially when they are used to support restrictions on injured people’s ability to seek compensation.

What Rising Verdicts Can and Cannot Tell Us

The response to the report supplied for this article identifies annual growth of approximately 3.7% in median truck awards and 3.6% in injury and fatal truck crashes over the periods examined.

Those figures raise questions about describing verdict growth as “runaway.” But the comparison has limits: the number of crashes and the size of an individual award measure different things. Similar growth rates alone cannot establish whether compensation is excessive or appropriate.

A meaningful assessment must look at the evidence in individual cases, including the severity of injuries, future care needs, lost earning capacity, and the conduct that caused the crash.

Large Percentage Increases Need Context

A reported 93.5% increase in claim severity sounds dramatic. Spread over nine years, however, it represents approximately 7.6% compounded annual growth. In insurance terminology, claim severity generally refers to the average cost per claim, not simply how physically severe an injury was.

Understanding that increase requires more than comparing it with general consumer inflation. Claims may include medical care, lost wages, and vehicle repairs, each with its own cost trends. Changes in the mix of claims also matter. If fewer small claims appear in a dataset, the average can rise even without an increase in the value of comparable serious claims.

An increase in average claim costs does not, by itself, establish lawsuit abuse.

Headlines Do Not Show the Whole Litigation Picture

The way researchers select and measure cases can shape their conclusions. A dataset drawn from verdict reporters and news coverage may give unusual, high-dollar outcomes more visibility than ordinary cases.

Readers should ask whether an analysis includes defense victories, distinguishes settlements from jury verdicts, and accounts for awards reduced or reversed after trial. An average of plaintiff victories answers a different question from an average across all cases.

A jury’s initial award also does not necessarily equal the amount ultimately paid. Any argument about litigation’s economic impact should make that distinction clear.

Promised Consumer Savings Deserve Scrutiny

The materials responding to Roadblock also question a separate ILR-commissioned estimate of $16.5 billion in grocery savings over ten years. Spread across U.S. households and that full period, the claimed benefit would be roughly $1 per household per month. 

Any such projection depends on assumptions about how legal changes affect claims costs and whether businesses pass savings on to consumers. Projected savings are not guaranteed reductions at the checkout counter.

Policymakers should also explain who absorbs the costs if injured people receive less compensation. Medical treatment, lost income, and long-term care needs do not disappear when recovery is restricted. Families may be left to cover more of those expenses themselves.

Accountability Can Extend Beyond the Truck Driver

Truck crash cases may involve questions about the decisions of carriers and freight brokers as well as drivers.

In May 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously held in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC that the federal statute at issue did not preempt the negligent-hiring claim against the freight broker because the claim fell within the statute’s motor vehicle safety exception. The decision allowed the claim to proceed; it did not establish that the broker was negligent.

That distinction matters. Preserving a claim gives an injured person the opportunity to prove it. Liability still depends on the applicable law and evidence.

Keeping Injured Victims in the Conversation

Trucking is essential to our economy. So are safe roads and meaningful accountability when negligence causes harm.

Before lawmakers restrict truck accident claims, they should examine the underlying data, the assumptions behind promised savings, and the consequences for people facing permanent injuries or the loss of a loved one.

At The Thomson Law Firm, we believe injured families deserve to have their cases evaluated on the facts. If you or a loved one has been injured in a truck accident in Virginia or West Virginia, contact our firm to discuss your circumstances and potential legal options. Call today 1-540-777-4900.

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