For Plaintiff Lawyers Handling Truck and Transportation Cases
You're not the first lawyer to take this carrier on.
Trucking cases are complex, but you don't have to handle them alone.
The Trucking Litigation Group at the American Association for Justice® (AAJ) is a national community of plaintiff lawyers who try truck and transportation cases, working together to hold carriers accountable and make roads safer. Members share a plaintiff-only list server, a library of 600+ documents, help finding the right experts, and case strategy built up since 1990.
Join AAJDues are based on your bar date.
No single lawyer carries all of this. The group does.
Depending on the case, you can be up against any of these, and none of them is meant to be faced alone:
A thicket of shifting regulations
Commercial trucking runs on layers of state and federal regulation, and they change constantly. Proving a carrier broke a rule, and that the violation caused the crash, starts with knowing which rules apply.
Evidence that disappears before discovery
ECM data, driver logs, hours-of-service records, driver qualification files, maintenance history. Much of it sits on retention schedules you don't control, and some can be gone before you're even retained. Knowing what to demand, and how fast, is much of the case.
Experts you're meeting for the first time
The same reconstructionists and human-factors experts turn up case after case. Somewhere in the group, a plaintiff lawyer has already deposed the one you're about to face, and shared how it went.
No one lawyer has every resource, every answer, or every connection needed to handle these cases. That's what a national community of trucking lawyers is for.
Membership is the door. The Trucking Litigation Group is what's behind it.
Joining AAJ gets you everything in the membership below. The Trucking Litigation Group is the specialist layer for any lawyer who takes on a truck case, not just full-time trucking specialists. Here's both, so you know exactly what you're getting.
Primary Path
AAJ Membership
- One free practice-area Section in your first year. The Motor Vehicle Section is the natural home for truck work.
- Over 70 hours of complimentary on-demand CLE, including trucking and traumatic brain injury programming.
- Access to member-exclusive litigation packets, available to purchase, including Interstate Trucking (Regulations, Discovery, and Damages); Traumatic Brain Injury; Interstate Trucking (Opening Statements and Closing Arguments); Crash Reconstruction Experts; Human Factors Experts; Interstate Trucking (Using 30(b)(6) and Other Deposition Strategies); and Road Rage: Taking on the Aggressive Commercial Driver.
- TRIAL® magazine, the national member directory, and a federal advocacy operation tracking the legislation aimed at your cases.
Specialist Layer
Trucking Litigation Group
A member add-on. $200/year, once you've joined.
- A plaintiff-only list server. The question you're stuck on has probably already been asked and answered.
- A shared library of 600+ documents, including pleadings, motions, transcripts, discovery, and the group's own journals.
- Assistance identifying the right expert.
- Meetings at AAJ's Annual and Winter Conventions.
Open to AAJ Regular, Sustaining, Life, and President's Club members. The Trucking Litigation Group list server is plaintiff-only, and all applicants are verified before being approved.
What this costs, plainly.
AAJ dues are based on your bar date and range from $52 to $750 a year. The Trucking Litigation Group is an additional $200 a year.
For most lawyers in their first fifteen years of practice, the full trucking stack costs less than a single afternoon of an accident reconstructionist's time. One transcript you didn't have to take, one expert you didn't have to find cold, and it's paid for itself.
| Category | Annual Dues |
|---|---|
| Less than 1 year | $52 |
| 1–5 years | $130 |
| 6–10 years | $235 |
| 11–15 years | $400 |
| 16–20 years | $580 |
| 21–25 years | $660 |
| 25+ years | $750 |
| Trucking Litigation Group (member add-on) | $200 / year |
Trucking Litigation Group Leadership.
- Chair: JJ Burns, Dollar Burns Becker & Hershewe, Kansas City, MO
- Chair-Elect: Jordan Jones, Los Angeles Truck Accident Lawyers, Los Angeles, CA
- Vice Chair: Allan Siegel, Chaikin Sherman Cammarata & Siegel, Washington, DC
- Secretary: Tim Whiting, Whiting Law Group, Chicago, IL
- Treasurer: Bridget Long, Allen Allen Allen & Allen, Mechanicsville, VA
- Parliamentarian: Bryan Roberts, Stark & Stark, Princeton, NJ
- Immediate Past Chair: Matt Wright, The Law Firm for Truck Safety, Franklin, TN