Semi-Truck Jackknife Accident Leaves Construction Worker with Debilitating Injuries

A commercial semi-truck driver barreled down a highway near the Oregon-Washington border just after dawn. Up ahead, a bridge had slowed commuters to a halt, but the big rig driver failed to notice the jam. The inattentive truck driver hurled toward the line of cars at nearly 30 miles per hour, with no signs of slowing. By the time he noticed, there wasn’t enough time to stop. Bringing up the rear of the bottleneck, a construction worker in his F-350 pickup truck waited for lanes to move. The semi tried to veer away from the pickup but scraped the driver's side and violently shook the vehicle. The impact blew out the pickup’s tires and broke the taillight and rearview mirrors. Then, the semi's trailer jackknifed around the F-350, where it came to a complete stop. The collision thrashed the construction driver inside his cab, where he sustained multiple injuries throughout his body, most severely to his left shoulder and hip.

The construction worker immediately went back to work, knowing that his family depended on him as a provider. He tried to “power through” the pain, but his injuries were too severe. He couldn’t keep up with the work and needed to slow down. Initially, he lost 25% of his income. Over time, though, his condition worsened. Two years after the accident, he had lost almost 80% of his income and was unable to keep his insurance. He needed hip surgery, and medical bills were piling up. The trucking company denied liability, placing the blame squarely on him. Then he suffered another blow: his initial attorney dropped him as a client. The construction worker was losing hope. Injured, unable to work, denied financial recompense, and without representation for legal recourse, the worker was alone and stuck. He needed to work to get the surgery, and he needed the surgery to work.

Desperate, the construction worker reached out to attorney Jack Mkhitarian at Portland Legal Group, who reviewed the case and pictures of the accident. Jack found the driver’s account of the accident credible and compelling, and he felt the trucker’s denial of liability was wrong. Jack was previously a criminal defense attorney, and his passion for standing up for clients on their worst days shone through. He accepted the case and set to work immediately, sending out preservation of evidence letters, getting his new client treated, and preparing for trial.

There was no dashboard camera footage or other real-time recording of the accident — only a collection of photos and two conflicting stories about what happened. Jack visited the scene of the accident and noticed that the defense’s narrative, which underpinned the denial of liability, didn’t add up. The commercial truck driver claimed that Jack’s client had tried to merge lanes and collided with the big rig with such tremendous force that it caused the truck to jackknife. However, the position of the vehicles and the appearance of skid marks led Jack and his biomechanical expert to find the story physically implausible.

Though he was prepared and confident in his client’s story, Jack’s case hit some early complications. The previous attorney’s acceptance of and subsequent dropping of the case, along with the resulting six-month delay, created difficulties with the evidence. Jack could not acquire now-expired black box data from the semi-truck. Unable to work due to his injuries, Jack’s client’s reduced hours resulted in a loss of insurance and inability to seek further treatment that he couldn’t afford out-of-pocket.

Without a bill to indicate an appropriate compensation amount, Jack could only take his surgical estimate to trial. However, the defense argued that the injury was a pre-existing condition — noting a prior 2014 surgery that endured years of wear and tear from the plaintiff’s job. Jack argued that his client had been asymptomatic but required surgery after the crash. Thus, the accident had either aggravated the injury or caused a new one. Indeed, Jack’s biomechanical expert related the mechanism of the accident and resultant vehicular damage to the mechanism of injury. The defense had no comparable expert analysis of the biomechanics of the accident itself. With causation proven, Jack needed a way to show the gravity of the client’s injury. Two weeks before trial, he contacted DK Global for help.

DK Global worked with Jack’s experts to create an accurate 3D animation of the victim’s hip procedure. It began with a description of the labral tear as it appeared on MRI. Next, the presentation showed a step-by-step walkthrough of the surgery to the left hip. A device ground out the acetabulum (the hip socket) before an artificial socket was fitted in place. Meanwhile, the video showed how the femoral head had to be completely sawn off to make way for a bone rasp. The video showed how the rasp was hammered into the plaintiff’s femur, creating space inside the bone’s center in order to insert a stem for the new artificial femoral head. Finally, the femoral head was carefully inserted into the socket before they could close up the patient.

With the defense unwilling to even give an initial offer for negotiations, Jack submitted his witness and exhibit lists on a Friday in preparation for trial the following Monday. Shortly after, the defense made a settlement offer of $155,000 — which Jack and his client immediately refused. At trial, the visceral aspect of the surgery was so profound that some jurors found the animation difficult to watch. They understood that the plaintiff had exhausted the more conservative options and was forced to undergo more drastic intervention to finally heal. Ultimately, the jury awarded a verdict of $648,000 to Jack’s client. He could finally pay his medical bills and begin to rebuild his life.

Attorney Jack Mkhitarian at Portland Legal Group has been practicing since 2009. A criminal defense attorney for 15 years, he began working with personal injury cases in Oregon and Washington in 2022. Jack is a member of the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, the United States District Court for the District of New Mexico, and the United States District Court’s Criminal Justice Act Panel of Attorneys. He brought his extensive trial experience in federal and state courts to his practice at Portland Legal Group in 2022, where he continues to help clients begin to rebuild after significant adversity.