Yes. In North Dakota, you can often sue the trucking company itself, not just the driver, when it hired, kept, or entrusted a truck to a driver it should have known was dangerous. That is a separate claim from the one against the driver, and it can reach the larger insurance policies that carriers carry. In the days after a commercial truck crash, you are facing medical bills, a wrecked vehicle, and an insurer that is already building its defense. A Grand Forks truck accident attorney can investigate how the driver was hired and whether the company ignored warning signs it was required to catch.
What Counts as Negligent Hiring, Retention, or Entrustment?
These are three related ways to hold a carrier responsible for its own decisions, not just the driver’s:
- Negligent hiring means the company brought on a driver it should have known was unfit, often by skipping or ignoring a background check.
- Negligent retention means the company learned about a driver’s dangerous habits after hiring and kept that driver on the road anyway.
- Negligent entrustment means the company handed the keys to a specific driver it had reason to know was a risk for the job at hand.
All three focus on what the company knew or could have found out. We build these claims by comparing what a careful carrier would have done with what this company actually did before putting the driver behind the wheel of an 80,000-pound truck.
What Does Federal Law Require Trucking Companies to Check?
Federal safety rules set a clear floor for who belongs behind the wheel. Interstate carriers must investigate each driver’s background and keep a qualification file for every driver they employ. That file has to include the driver’s employment application, a copy of the motor vehicle record from each state that licensed the driver, a road test certificate, and a current medical examiner’s certificate. The carrier also has to request the driver’s motor vehicle record every year and review it for new problems.
When a company skips these steps, hires a driver with a troubling history, or looks past obvious red flags, that failure can become strong evidence that it was negligent in putting the driver on the road. These records also help show who at the company made the call.
What Evidence Shows the Company Should Have Known?
These cases turn on what the carrier could have found before the crash. We often uncover information that a routine check would have flagged, such as:
- Prior moving violations
- Past at-fault collisions
- A suspended or revoked commercial license
- Failed drug or alcohol tests
- Falsified logbooks
- Gaps in the safety record
The driver qualification file, the hiring application, dispatch records, and electronic logs all help show what the company knew and when it knew it. If the carrier had this information and used the driver anyway, that decision can support a direct claim against the company. We move quickly to request and preserve these documents, because federal law only requires a carrier to hold onto most of this paperwork for three years after a driver leaves the company, and certain records inside the file can be removed even sooner.
How Is a Claim Against the Company Different From One Against the Driver?
Blaming the driver and blaming the company are two separate paths, and you can often take both at once. A claim against the driver looks at the moments before the crash. A claim against the company looks at a decision made long before it, the choice to hire or keep a driver who never should have been trusted with a commercial vehicle. This difference matters for your recovery.
Under North Dakota law, each at-fault party is responsible only for its own share of the blame, and a carrier usually holds a much larger insurance policy than an individual driver. Naming the company can be the difference between a partial recovery and one that actually covers your losses.
How Long Do You Have to File in North Dakota?
For most personal injury claims, North Dakota gives you six years from the date you were hurt to file a lawsuit. That is more generous than many states allow, but the evidence in a trucking case does not wait that long.
Qualification files, dispatch logs, and electronic data can be lost, overwritten, or routinely destroyed. Once a driver leaves the company, a carrier is only required to keep the bulk of that driver’s file for three more years, and some individual records inside it can legally be discarded even before that. Claims that involve a death follow a shorter timeline. The sooner we get involved, the more of that proof we can secure before it disappears, and the stronger your case becomes.
What If You Were Partly at Fault?
Being partly at fault does not automatically end your case. North Dakota follows a modified comparative fault rule, which means you can still recover as long as your share of the blame is not as great as the combined fault of everyone else who caused the crash. Your damages are then reduced by your own percentage of fault, and each at-fault party pays only for its share.
Insurers know this rule well and often try to pin extra blame on you so they can pay less. We come prepared with evidence, accident reconstruction, and the carrier’s own records to protect what you are owed.
Timing Is Crucial After a Truck Accident in North Dakota
Trucking companies and their insurers move fast after a crash to protect themselves. You deserve someone moving just as fast for you. For more than a century, Pringle & Herigstad, P.C. has stood up for injured North Dakotans across Grand Forks, Minot, and the rest of the state. Contact us for a free consultation. We work on contingency, which means you owe nothing unless we recover for you.