WHY IT MATTERS: Plaintiffs target your driver manuals and policies to create standards against which your held and to then inflame the jury.
THE ATTACK: You’ve heard of the “Reptile Theory”. You can’t have trucking seminar unless you have a Reptile session. Kinda like a band in Texas requiring a fiddle player,
But there is another plaintiff attack that has gotten little attention and can be no less lethal. It’s called “The Rules of the Road.”
Like the “Reptile Theory”, it is spelled out in a book by the same title-“Rules of the Road”. Its purpose is to create a black-and-white definition of negligence for the jury.
It seeks to create rules against which your driver and your company are measured. To make it automatically negligence if you don’t follow “your rule.”
To make it like a traffic violation. If you run a stop sign, it’s a violation of a rule of the road. You see where the title comes from?
The “rules” are parsed from your manual, policies, newsletter, webpages,… Anything you write or say. This becomes the standard against which you and your driver are measured.
Moreover, these are the potential detonator of a nuclear verdict. Remember—nuclear verdicts rarely, if ever, come from the facts of the accident.
They are denotated by plaintiff’s “proof” of systemic failures. Systemic failures, they argue, by failing to live up to what is in your manual or policies.
“The trucking company doesn’t even follow its own rules. Only a big old verdict will get them to do so.”
PROACTIVE PREPARATION: Audit your manuals and policies. Is an item needed to promote/ensure safety? Or is it a platitude that is aspirational, but unmeetable?
Is it enforceable? Moreover, do you enforce it?
Reduce the “target” by stripping down your manual and policies to what is needed. What is effective. What is enforced.
MORE ON THIS: Join me fuller discussion of this and other challenges in my 2024 presentation, “Death by Dogma”. Coming to conference near you.
BOTTOM LINE: Your manuals and policies can expose you to nuclear verdicts. Review and revise to denuclearize without compromising safety.
