Truck accident attorney in San Antonio: every party that can be responsible for a truck crash

Truck Accident Lawyers SATX is the website of LAWBOSS – Uvalle Law Firm, PLLC. A crash with a commercial truck rarely has only one responsible party. This page goes through each party we look at after a truck crash in and around San Antonio, the Texas and federal law that ties each one to the crash, and the insurance that stands behind them.

Party	What ties it to the crash	Where the evidence usually is
Truck driver	Unsafe driving, fatigue, phone use, alcohol or drugs, an unsecured load	Engine data, logs, camera video, phone records, the crash report
Motor carrier	Responsibility for its employee driver, and its own hiring, supervision, dispatch and maintenance	Driver qualification file, logs, dispatch records, maintenance records
Owner or lessor of the equipment	The tractor or trailer it supplied, and the lease terms	The lease, the equipment’s maintenance history
Freight broker	Choosing a carrier it knew or should have known was unsafe	The broker’s carrier checks, the carrier’s safety record, the load paperwork
Shipper or loader	How the trailer was loaded and secured	Bills of lading, loading records, photographs of the load
Repair shop or inspector	Faulty repairs or a missed defect	Work orders, inspection reports
Manufacturer	A defective truck, trailer, tire or part	The failed part, recall and service records
Government entity	A government vehicle, or the condition of public property	Notice of claim, the entity’s records
Other drivers	A car that cut off the truck or caused the chain of events	Witnesses, video, the crash report

The truck driver

The driver is responsible for driving with ordinary care, and a commercial driver is held to the federal driving rules as well. Under 49 CFR 392.2, a commercial motor vehicle must be driven according to the laws of the place where it is operated, and where a federal rule is stricter, the federal rule applies. The rules most often broken in crashes are the hours limits in 49 CFR 395.3, the fatigue rule in 392.3, the alcohol and drug rules in 392.4, 392.5 and 382.201, and the phone rules in 392.80 and 392.82.

The motor carrier

The trucking company is usually the most important defendant, for two separate reasons.

Responsibility for its driver

Under the Texas doctrine of respondeat superior, an employer answers for the negligence of an employee acting within the scope of employment. The federal rules widen who counts: 49 CFR 390.5 defines an employee to include a driver of a commercial motor vehicle who is an independent contractor while operating the vehicle, and defines a motor carrier to include its agents, officers and the employees responsible for hiring, supervising, training, assigning or dispatching drivers.

Its own negligence

A carrier can also be responsible for what it did itself. The rules give each failure a name:

• Hiring. Before a driver starts, the carrier must take a written application under 49 CFR 391.21, obtain the driver’s motor vehicle record for the past 3 years and check the driver’s safety performance with employers over the past 3 years under 391.23, and query the federal Drug and Alcohol Clearinghouse under 382.701.
• Qualification. Under 49 CFR 391.11 a driver must be at least 21, hold a valid commercial license, be physically qualified with a current medical examiner’s certificate under 391.41, and have passed a road test or its equivalent.
• Supervision and dispatch. The hours rules in 49 CFR 395.3 bind the carrier as well as the driver: no carrier shall permit or require a driver to exceed them. Section 392.6 forbids scheduling a run that could only be completed by speeding.
• Maintenance. Under 49 CFR 396.3, every motor carrier must systematically inspect, repair and maintain the vehicles under its control.

How Texas trials handle these claims

Since House Bill 19 took effect in 2021, Civil Practice and Remedies Code section 72.054 says that if the carrier stipulates that the driver was its employee acting within the scope of employment, its liability for the driver’s ordinary negligence rests on respondeat superior alone. In a trial split into two phases under section 72.052, the injured person may then present only a listed set of facts on negligent entrustment in the first phase: whether the driver was licensed, disqualified or under an out-of-service order, medically certified, driving in violation of the hours rules, texting or holding a phone, and, in the driver’s first year, whether the carrier took an application and made the required background inquiries. Claims that do not depend on the driver’s negligence, such as negligent maintenance, are not limited, and claims for exemplary damages against the carrier are heard in the second phase. Our Texas truck accident laws page has the detail.

The owner or lessor of the tractor or trailer

Many carriers pull trailers they do not own, or run owner-operators’ tractors under lease. Federal leasing rules decide much of the responsibility. Under 49 CFR 376.12(c)(1), the lease must provide that the authorized carrier has exclusive possession, control and use of the equipment for the length of the lease, and assumes complete responsibility for its operation. So the carrier usually answers for leased equipment on the road. The owner can still be responsible for its own failures, for example equipment it supplied with a known defect. We ask for the lease in the preservation letter.

The freight broker

A broker is a company that, for pay, arranges for a motor carrier to move someone else’s freight (49 CFR 371.2). For years, brokers argued that a federal statute, the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act, shielded them from claims that they hired an unsafe carrier. On May 14, 2026, the Supreme Court of the United States decided otherwise. In Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC, 608 U.S. 219 (2026), a unanimous Court held that a claim that a company negligently hired another to transport goods is not preempted, because the Act preserves the safety regulatory authority of a State with respect to motor vehicles (49 U.S.C. 14501(c)(2)(A)). In that case the injured driver claimed the broker knew, or should have known, from the carrier’s federal safety rating that hiring it was likely to lead to crashes.

There is a limit. A separate part of the Act, 49 U.S.C. 14501(b), covers brokers arranging intrastate transportation and has no safety exception, and the concurring opinion notes that all parties agreed state tort suits against brokers for intrastate loads are not permitted. So after a truck crash we ask who arranged the load, whether it crossed state lines, what the broker checked about the carrier before giving it the load, and what the carrier’s federal safety record showed at the time. Our article on freight broker negligent hiring claims goes through the decision.

The shipper or loader

Federal rules define a shipper as a person who tenders property to a motor carrier or driver for transportation (49 CFR 390.5). When the shipper’s own workers loaded and sealed the trailer, a load that was badly distributed or poorly secured can make the shipper share responsibility for a rollover or a spill. The cargo securement rules in 49 CFR 393.100 to 393.136 set the standard the load is measured against, and the bill of lading and loading records show who did the work.

Repair shops and inspectors

Carriers often send trucks to outside shops for repairs and for the annual inspection. Under 49 CFR 396.17(e), a carrier may have a commercial garage, fleet leasing company, truck stop or similar business perform the inspection as its agent. A shop that adjusted brakes wrongly, mounted the wrong tire or passed a truck with a defect it should have found can be responsible alongside the carrier. Work orders and inspection reports show what was done and when.

Manufacturers of trucks, trailers and parts

When a part fails without warning, such as a tire, a brake component, a steering part, a coupling or a rear impact guard that collapses, the claim may be against the company that designed or made it. These claims depend on keeping the failed part itself, so it goes into the preservation letter, and on engineering analysis of why it failed.

Government entities

A government vehicle, such as a city refuse truck or a county dump truck, can cause a crash, and so can the condition of public property. The Texas Tort Claims Act makes a governmental unit liable for injury caused by an employee’s negligent use of a motor vehicle, and for injury caused by a condition or use of tangible property, in the circumstances set out in Civil Practice and Remedies Code section 101.021. Written notice of the claim is due within six months under section 101.101, and a city charter can set a shorter period. Damages are capped by section 101.023: 250,000 dollars per person and 500,000 dollars per occurrence for the state and for cities, and 100,000 dollars per person and 300,000 dollars per occurrence for other local government units. Construction zones, such as TxDOT’s I-35 NEX project, can also bring in contractors and their traffic control plans.

Other drivers, and how Texas divides fault

A car that cut in front of the truck, or a pickup that stopped suddenly, can share the fault. Texas divides responsibility by percentage. Under Civil Practice and Remedies Code section 33.003, the jury assigns a percentage to each claimant, each defendant, each settling person and each responsible third party. Under section 33.004, a defendant can ask to designate a person who is not sued as a responsible third party, by a motion filed at least 60 days before trial. That is one more reason to find every party early.

• Your own share. Under section 33.001 you cannot recover if you were more than 50 percent responsible. Under 33.012 your damages are reduced by your percentage.
• Joint and several liability. Under section 33.013, a defendant found more than 50 percent responsible is liable for all of the damages, not only its share. Below that, each defendant pays its own percentage.

The insurance behind each party

• Interstate motor carriers. 49 CFR 387.9 sets minimum public liability coverage: 750,000 dollars for for-hire carriers of ordinary freight in vehicles rated 10,001 pounds or more, 1,000,000 dollars for oil and many hazardous materials, and 5,000,000 dollars for certain hazardous substances in bulk. Section 387.7 names the federal MCS-90 endorsement that carriers’ policies carry.
• Carriers that stay inside Texas. The Texas Department of Motor Vehicles sets intrastate minimums by vehicle and cargo type in a table under 43 Texas Administrative Code 218.16.
• Other drivers. Texas requires at least 30,000 dollars per person, 60,000 dollars per crash for bodily injury and 25,000 dollars for property damage (Transportation Code 601.072).
• Your own policy. Texas insurers must include uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage and personal injury protection unless the named insured rejected them in writing (Insurance Code 1952.101 and 1952.152). They can matter when a truck’s policy is not enough or the truck left the scene.

Exemplary damages

Beyond compensation for losses, Texas allows exemplary damages only if the injured person proves by clear and convincing evidence that the harm resulted from fraud, malice or gross negligence, and only if the jury is unanimous (Civil Practice and Remedies Code section 41.003). Section 41.008 caps them, in most cases, at the greater of two times the economic damages plus noneconomic damages up to 750,000 dollars, or 200,000 dollars. Claims like these arise when a carrier knew of a danger, such as a driver with a history of violations or a truck with an unrepaired defect, and sent it out anyway.

How we find every party

The names on the truck door and in the crash report are a start. The preservation letter, the carrier’s federal registration, the lease, the bills of lading and the broker’s paperwork usually show the rest. Our truck accident lawyer San Antonio page explains the first days of a case, and our trucking accident lawyer San Antonio page lists the federal records that show what each party did. For crash types, see our 18 wheeler accident lawyer San Antonio page.

If there is no recovery, you owe no attorney’s fee and no case costs; the written fee agreement sets the percentage and how advanced costs are handled when there is a recovery.

Questions people ask