ATTORNEY JANE LEGER – LEAVING NO STONE UNTURNED

 

The Ferguson Law Firm leaves no stone unturned for our clients. Attorney Jane Leger recalls a case where a deceased client was accused of causing an accident when he was not at fault. Jane Leger and the Ferguson Law legal team started an investigation and filed a lawsuit to determine who was really at fault. The evidence that was collected determined that a witness lied to try to put the fault on Jane’s deceased client.

We were hired by the family of a UPS driver who was involved in an 18 Wheeler collision. So the UPS 18 Wheeler rear-ended another 18 Wheeler and the collision was so bad that the 18 Wheeler caught on fire. The UPS truck caught on fire and the driver and his co-driver burned to death.

By the time DPS got to the scene, they were dead and the only remaining witness was the driver of the 18 Wheeler that had been rear ended by the UPS 18 Wheeler. That driver made up a story about what had happened that shifted responsibility away from him and onto the deceased UPS driver. When DPS wrote up their crash report, they put all the fault on the UPS driver.

We were hired by the family of the UPS driver because they were just certain that this wreck was not his fault. And when I asked them and why they were so certain, given the evidence that was contained in the wreck report, they told me that he was a driver for UPS for over 30 years. He had a clean safety record. He was very proud of that. And he was a responsible driver and proud of his safety record.

So we filed a lawsuit to investigate – essentially, to find out what had happened. When we filed the suit, there was a question about who owned the other 18 Wheeler. And the company that had hired the driver that was driving it, did not actually own the tractor trailer, it was leased. And some firms would have just sued the company that hired the driver that was driving the 18 Wheeler. We sued not only that company, but also the company that owned the tractor trailer that had leased it to the company that employed the driver.

And that was the key that really unlocked the case because the driver of the truck and the company that employed him, they were unaware that the company that they had leased the truck from had it monitored by GPS. And so had we not sued that company we would have never known that the truck was actually being tracked at all times.

We took an approach that made sure that all evidence that could possibly be collected on that truck was collected. And when we learned in discovery that the owner of the tractor trailer had it tracked by GPS, we knew that we would have some objective data that would tell us the truth about what had really happened. And that was the evidence that proved that the defendant driver had lied to DPS about how the crash had occurred.

Our expert witness reconstructed the wreck, and determined that, just a few seconds before the crash, the other 18 Wheeler had pulled in front of the UPS tractor trailer. The approach is about finding the truth. No matter what we have to do to get there, no matter the resources we have to devote, the work, the experts we have to bring, we’re going to find the truth.

And that’s not always easy and actually it’s really never easy. Because when you’ve got people that like the New Mexico case, you’ve got people that are killed, that will never ever be able to tell their side of what happened, it’s easy for a company to blame that person. And we have to come in knowing that our client, our client’s loved one is not going to be able to defend their conduct or tell their side of the story. We have to bring the resources to recreate the facts and show the truth.
It’s something I’ll never forget. When I called and said, you know, you were right, your loved one didn’t cause the wreck… the outpouring of emails, motion, the tears that were shed that’s what makes doing this job worth it to me.