By MATT CHANDLER
mchandler@bizjournals.com | 716-541-1654

After more than 30 years in the trucking industry, Mike Perley has seen a lot. It's a complex business, according to the Hurwitz & Fine PC attorney, who represents trucking companies whose drivers are involved in accidents with personal injury.

With each case potentially involving multiple defendants, and oftentimes involving a company based in a different state than where the accident occurred, cases that cross his desk raise a host of legal questions. Add to that the large number of international trucking cases he handles and Perley says there is never a dull day at the office.

He recently sat down with the Buffalo Law Journal to discuss the challenges faced by companies carrying freight across U.S. borders and how attorneys work with them to navigate the murky waters of cross-border accident liability.

Has the business of litigating these types of cases changed a lot over the years? At the root, is it still principally the same job?

MP: The industry changed dramatically in the mid-'80s when under the Reagan administration they deregulated the industry. Up until that time, rates were regulated, operating rights were very intensely regulated and the agreements between the trucking companies and the independent operators were regulated. When that changed, a fair number of trucking companies went out of business. For the ones that survived, when there was a trucking case, things were quite different. Now, without standard agreements, as the attorney you had to make sure you had all of the relevant documents because each was so varied and had set forth such varied obligations.

In your practice, do you handle a lot of cargo claims where there is an accident, or is it mostly personal-injury claims?

MP: Probably 90 percent is personal injury. Cargo claims, although they can be worth as much or more than a lot of personal-injury cases, tend not to be litigated because of the bill-of-lading controls.

When we mention personal-injury cases, people will relate it to a car accident. Are there more layers and complexities to a typical trucking accident than one might find in an auto case?

MP: Without question. Let me give you an example. Imagine, if you will, a Canadian trucker with a flatbed who is hauling crushed-car cargo. Crushed cars are secured to a flatbed primarily through the use of chains. In this circumstance, imagine that they are not. Somebody bought the crushed cars from a junkyard and they are going to transport them from, let's say, Pennsylvania to Quebec.

When they load the cars at the junkyard, there is a height restriction of 13 feet 6 inches from the bottom of the tire to the top of the cargo. The height of bridge clearance is 14 feet 6 inches, so there is that 12-inch differential allowed for safety. They secure the cars not with chains but with fiberglass strapping.

The cars are loaded and the trucker now has the obligation to stop after 50 miles and make sure the load is secure. Assume for a moment that he comes onto the thruway and the load has sprung up because the straps have come loose. A car is essentially scraped off as he passes under a bridge and is laying in the road. The driver doesn't stop. Another truck hits the car, breaks his axle, passes over the median, hits another truck and somebody dies.

The driver of the truck gets back over the border to Canada and is now charged with some criminal activity and will never come back into the United States.

Here are the potential defendants: the company that loaded the truck, the junkyard; the trucking company that transported it; and the driver.

So you first have the issue of who insures what and how much coverage is there. You then have to determine liability. There could be liability for how the truck was loaded; you have the operator's negligence for failing to maintain the load; the trucking company's negligence, which is covered under New York state law; and if you didn't have that provision, you would have a potential for negligent hiring if the driver has a history of this kind of activity.

So there are a lot of issues that center around this that you wouldn't have where two cars come together. That's before you get into the property loss and cargo damage involved in the accident.

Discuss aspects of a case that are specific to international drivers versus a driver and truck from, say, Texas?

MP: Trucks coming into the country internationally - and that can include Mexico, though it is primarily Canada for us - present more logistical difficulties than anything else. Let's start logistically. We could put the case in federal court as opposed to state court because of diversity considerations. There can also be issues that I've seen where individuals have been charged with violations in the United States and they don't ever want to cross the border again.

There are often issues with language barriers in these international cases. If the driver of the truck is from a French-speaking province, we may have to go to Canada; we may have to engage interpreters.

I've been involved in cases where both sides brought their own interpreter and the reason for that is quite interesting.

In the French Canadian language, as in America, there are jargon terms for trucking. Those are understood by us in the industry, but an interpreter unfamiliar with trucking terms in Canada may have difficulty interpreting and translating the testimony of a French Canadian witness.

How do you handle a case when it is a client you represent but the accident occurs in Canada? Are you allowed to practice in Canada?

MP: We have relationships with Canadian firms to assist, if needed, but many times, because the laws in the state of New York are more beneficial to plaintiffs than the laws in Canada, they will be sued here.