Wheel-Off Truck Accidents

A wheel-off accident, also called a wheel separation, is an accident involving a commercial vehicle where the entire wheel assembly of a truck or trailer—meaning its wheel, tire, and possibly even a portion of the axle or drivetrain—breaks free from the vehicle and hits another car or person. While not as common as many other kinds of commercial wreck, a wheel-off accident can still cause devastating damage including serious or even fatal injuries.

In this article, we will explain how wheel-off accidents occur and what legal options exist to hold the wrongdoers accountable. There's a lot of information to cover, so for your convenience we have broken it into multiple specific chapters.

Chapter 1 - Five Things You Need to Know about Wheel-Off Accident Cases

In this guide page we’ll look in great detail at how wheel-off accident cases work, but if you take nothing else away from it at least be aware of these five important points:

1. Wheel-off cases are exceptionally complex. Most personal injury attorneys are "car accident attorneys." They handle one subset of auto accidents with clear rules, and the cases they take involve a fairly limited set of facts, minimal investigation, and little commitment of resources.
   Wheel-off cases are worlds apart from car accidents and generally involve multiple intersecting areas of the law. They tend to need extensive investigation and significant resource investment, leaving many injury firms unequipped to handle them.
2. You can’t resolve a wheel-off case without a proper investigation. Unlike a car wreck where you may have a fairly good idea of who's responsible, there could be several parties that contribute to a wheel-off accident. With so much opportunity to pass the buck, those parties often try to point accusatory fingers at one another and evade blame.
   How do you stop their bickering and hold the wrongdoer accountable? In a word: Evidence. However, the needed proof isn't always apparent at first glance, so you need a thorough professional investigation to find all the facts.
3. Wheel-off investigations are resource-intensive. A proper wheel-off accident investigation requires help from knowledgeable experts, such as engineers, metallurgists, mechanics, and trucking industry specialists. There are a limited number of people with the needed expertise available at any given time, which means they're in high demand and their help is not cheap.
   What does that mean for a wheel-off accident victim? It means finding the right allies is crucial. Quite frankly, most personal injury firms don’t have the resources to fund a comprehensive investigation or consult qualified experts. That could mean they cut corners and hurt your case, or it could mean they just won't take it in the first place. It may be an awkward conversation, but before you hire an attorney for your wheel-off accident case be sure to ask whether or not they have the wherewithal to see it all the way through.
4. Starting sooner is always better than starting later in a wheel-off case. For those just trying to get back on their feet after a commercial accident, the idea of taking swift action may seem intimidating. The truth is that someone must ensure witnesses don't disappear or forget details, find and preserve evidence before it can degrade or disappear, and keep the case from exceeding the statute of limitations imposed by state law. If the right steps aren't taken in a timely manner, any potential case may be seriously damaged.
5. The vast majority of personal injury attorneys may never handle a wheel-off accident. Many will handle hundreds if not thousands of car wreck cases over the course of their practice. They may handle a few commercial truck accident cases as well, but since wheel-off cases are relatively few and far between most attorneys will never see a single one come across their desks.
   Why does this matter to you? Well, given the complexity of the law and the resources necessary to successfully resolve these cases, it’s probably best not to let an attorney who’s never handled one practice on yours. For that reason, we encourage anybody looking for help with a wheel-off case to be very blunt with any potential representative. Ask them if they’ve handled any similar cases before, and if so how they went. Most importantly, ask them “How do you plan to resolve my case?”
   If the attorney can’t answer you or just says “Trust me,” that should be a big red flag. If they say something like “It’s really complicated and you wouldn’t understand,” that should also get your Spidey sense tingling.
   Think of it this way: You’re hiring someone to explain a complex matter to a jury of regular people in such a way that they decide in your favor. If your attorney can’t even explain to you how your case will work in a way you understand, how will they do so to a jury?

Those are the most urgent takeaways of this guide, but that's far from all there is to say about wheel-off accidents. From here, we'll into more comprehensive detail.

Chapter 2 - What Exactly Is a Wheel-Off Accident?

As we mentioned before, a wheel-off accident is a specific kind of vehicular accident in which a wheel assembly comes off a passenger or commercial vehicle and strikes other vehicles or people. While comparatively rare, these accidents have the capacity to cause tremendous harm.

One of the best ways to understand what a wheel-off accident is to know what it is not. When we refer to these accidents, we aren’t referring to situations where a vehicle loses a wheel during or after a collision. We're also not talking about a vehicle losing a wheel during maintenance, like a car slipping off the jack during a tire change. We are talking about a scenario where a wheel and tire, and sometimes other pieces of the suspension system, separate from a vehicle while it’s in motion—effectively turning the loose wheel into a rolling missile.

Most times a major wheel-off accident results from a commercial vehicle, like an 18-wheeler, losing a wheel. Why? Because passenger cars typically have wheels ranging from 15 to 25 pounds, with a tire of similar weight. Fifty pounds of rolling steel and rubber can certainly cause serious or even fatal injuries if it hits someone, but most often it just causes some property damage before stopping.

With commercial vehicles, however, the wheel and tire combination can weigh 200 pounds or more. Here's the real kicker, though: Many trucks have dual wheels attached together, which means anywhere from 400-500 pounds could be barreling down a highway during one of these incidents. Between the increased weight and the tires' high air pressure, those loose truck wheels are capable of inflicting far more damage than a car wheel.

The amount of force involved in a crash with a separated truck wheel is truly staggering; an imperfect analogy might be the difference in damage between a car hitting a dog versus one slamming into a cow. We've seen cases where detached wheels have so much mass and forward momentum that they literally roll for miles down the highway after detaching—and demolish almost anything unlucky enough to enter their path.

In short, you can certainly pursue a wheel-off accident claim against the driver of a passenger vehicle. Indeed, some pickup trucks and SUVs have large enough wheels and tires that their separation incidents sometimes have abnormally dire results. For the most part, though, wheel-off accident cases involve commercial vehicles due simply to the fact that a wheel coming off such a vehicle causes far more damage on average.

Chapter 3: What Kind of Case Is a Wheel-Off Case?

The way the general public talks about legal cases is very different than how attorneys and courts talk about them. For example, what a regular person would call a car wreck case a lawyer would generally call a negligence case. Similarly, what someone might call a defective products case, a lawyer might refer to as a strict liability case.

Those distinctions may seem like mere semantics at first, but there’s actually a good reason for them: Lawyers typically think of and define cases in terms of what they must prove to win them. For instance, what they have to prove in a negligence case would be quite different from what they'd have to prove in a strict liability case.

In this chapter we will talk about the different legal theories that typically apply to the wheel-off fact pattern, using legally-significant terms rather than broader colloquial ones. In legal parlance, a wheel separation case most often takes the form of either a negligence case, a negligence per se case, a strict liability products liability case, a negligence products liability case, or a breach of warranty products liability case. Let's look more closely at each of those.

Negligence

In a negligence case an attorney must prove the following elements:

1. Someone had a duty not to do harm;
2. Their action or inaction violated or breached that duty;
3. That breach was the cause of the victim's injuries; and
4. The injured party suffered clear and quantifiable damages.

That's just a quick overview, though. We encourage anyone interested in learning more in-depth about the elements of negligence to read our comprehensive guide on the subject. The bottom line, however, is this: The owner of a vehicle has a clear obligation to keep that vehicle safe for its operator and everyone else.

A trucking company is certainly not exempt from that expectation, and as such it has a duty to keep the vehicles in its fleet roadworthy. That's supposed to be achieved by regular checks and maintenance, yet in some cases those don't happen. If the company ignores its duty and its truck's wheel hurts someone after detaching, the victim may have a viable negligence case. These cases are generally directed toward the trucks' owners and operators and are often referred to as negligent maintenance or negligent inspection claims.

Negligence Per Se

Negligence per se typically involves a lawyer taking a statute (typically a criminal law) and showing that its purpose was to protect a particular group of people their client belongs to. If the defendant violated that statute, the lawyer can effectively take a "shortcut" toward proving the defendant was negligent.

Example: A city ordinance clearly says "Any vacant lot must have a fence around it to keep children out." A landlord in that city owns a vacant lot but doesn’t fence it, and one day a boy wanders onto the property and gets injured when he falls into a big hole.

Rather than proving the four elements of negligence we mentioned before, we would just say that the clear purpose of the city ordinance is to protect children and the client is a child. By violating that ordinance the landlord exhibited negligence per se, which allows us to establish duty and breach with less effort.

Applying the concept to a wheel-off accident, we typically look to laws regarding mandatory inspections of commercial vehicles. For instance, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Act requires over-the-road drivers to evaluate their trucks' condition—including that of their wheels—before and after every trip. If we can show the lug nuts were slowly working their way out of a trailer wheel over the course of 3 weeks and nobody noticed or fixed them, that’d be a pretty strong indication that the regulations weren't followed. The argument could then be made that we don’t have to prove duty and breach the standard way, but instead simply show the driver violated a statute meant to protect the public.

Products Liability: Strict Liability

Products liability cases are typically based on the idea that the manufacturer of a product is in the best possible position to make sure it is safe before it's released into the stream of commerce. With that in mind, under a theory of strict liability the manufacturer would be considered liable for the harm their product causes to end-users—even if the company was careful in designing and making it.

Strict liability applies once you show that a finished product is unreasonably dangerous. For instance, let's say a trailer manufacturer releases a model of trailer where several in every thousand off the line have wheels that randomly fall off. One could easily argue that's unreasonably dangerous: Millions and millions of wheeled vehicles are put on the market every year and their wheels don’t fall off, so one whose wheels do that clearly has something wrong with it.

Once it’s demonstrated that the product is unreasonably dangerous, the manufacturer is strictly liable even if they tried to make it safe. In other words, the buck stops with them. Wheel-off cases often involve suing the manufacturer of a truck tractor or a trailer because the vehicle left the facility in an unreasonably dangerous state, ultimately leading to a detached wheel and a serious accident.

Products Liability: Negligence

Under a negligence products liability theory, a manufacturer is thought to have been careless in one or more phases of a product's development such as designing, building, and/or testing the item.

If an assembly line worker put the wrong-sized lug nuts into a wheel, or someone programmed the welding robot incorrectly and the welds didn't go deep enough, or too many impurities made it into the metal when casting the lugs, any of those serious and costly mistakes could arguably be called negligence.

Even if a manufacturer buys components from overseas, failure to confirm they were as advertised might be construed as negligent. More than one company has been promised stainless steel parts, only to receive zinc-alloy components made of pot metal. It falls to the company to properly test and verify anything they create or use in the construction of their product.

Products Liability: Breach of Warranty

When most people think of the term "warranty" they think of a literal promise by a manufacturer that they'll replace a product if it doesn't live up to expectations. While that is one kind, the legal concept of warranty is actually much broader. It effectively refers to a claim made by the manufacturer, and the law holds manufacturers responsible for those claims.

The most typical form of those is express warranties, which are specific claims or promises made by the manufacturer. A warranty may also be what’s called an implied warranty, which means it's actually imposed by law. Let's consider a couple of examples.

Example 1: The manufacturer of a commercial trailer tells prospective buyers that the lug nuts on its wheels are properly torqued straight from the factory. There's no mistaking their claim, as it's even specified in their literature. If it then turned out not to be true and customers had to tighten the lug nuts themselves (or else risk wheel detachment), that would mean the manufacturer was in breach of an express warranty. Anyone hurt by that breach would likely have grounds for a lawsuit.

Example 2: Rather than expressly promising their lug nuts are tightened right off the line, the manufacturer simply lets that be taken for granted by customers. At that point the product is still under the implied warranty of merchantability, which is the basic premise that a merchant's product should work as it's supposed to without malfunctioning or being unreasonably dangerous. This is not an express warranty but rather an understood obligation imposed on companies by the law.

In conclusion, there are various different legal theories that our attorneys could use to hold a manufacturer responsible after a wheel-off accident. It’s all case-specific and involves choosing the appropriate tool for the case.

Chapter 4 - Who Might be Liable for a Wheel-Off Accident?

Before looking at those who might be responsible for a wheel-off accident, it's important to reiterate how complicated those situations really are.

Realistically, they should never even occur. Humanity has been driving around in motor vehicles for almost a century and a half by now, and that's more than enough time to adequately solve a problem as important as ensuring a wheel stays attached. If it doesn't at this point, that's almost inevitably because someone responsible for putting or keeping it there screwed up.

Our job is to investigate wheel-off accidents and see where that screw-up occurred. In a nutshell, that means every individual or business who had a hand in the creation, operation, or maintenance of the tire, wheel, truck, or trailer could be responsible for a wheel falling off. The "usual suspects" to investigate include, but are not limited to:

• The wheel's manufacturer - If the wheel malfunctions, one of the first places to look is at who made it. In almost any item's manufacturing process, errors or cut corners could lead to an inferior or dangerously-defective product. Was the wheel formed correctly? Was it made of sturdy metals or alloys, free of impurities? Were its lug nut holes machined to the right specifications? These and many other minute details must be accounted for.
• The truck/trailer manufacturer - As the wheel must be made to proper specifications, so too must the truck or trailer it attaches to. There are many ways that a vehicle might roll off the line with one or more serious production flaws, and axle/wheel attachment points are no exception. If those points are defective or made of inadequate materials, there's a far greater chance of a wheel breaking loose.
• The manufacturer of the lug nuts - You may be sensing a theme in all this mention of manufacturers, but even something as seemingly simple as lug nuts can be defective. Flaws in their metal alloys, poor machining leading to improper threading, or even shipping the wrong-sized nuts to clients could lead to faulty wheel attachments and greater chances of detachment in motion.
• The company that loaded or lent out the trailer - Whoever owns a trailer assumes some responsibility for maintaining it, particularly if it's lent out or leased to other parties. Trailer leasing firms are obligated to keep their fleets in roadworthy shape, including regular inspections and testing. If they fail to maintain their trailers and one fails during use, the owners may be partly responsible for any damages that follow.
  Similar obligations exist for whomever loads the trailers. If a company puts too much freight into a trailer and excessively strains it, the weight may stress its suspension and wheels beyond what they can accommodate. Every mile that overloaded trailer travels increases the risk that disaster—including wheel detachment—could occur.
• The company that operated the truck or made the delivery - Whether they own the vehicle or not, those operating it to make deliveries and haul freight have an obligation to do so in as safe a manner as possible. Commercial drivers are required to inspect the vehicles pre- and post-trip in search of potential issues; if they do a bad job or don't do it at all, those hazards may get worse until they cause a serious accident.

Each of these possible defendants must be taken into consideration and carefully investigated. Learning whether one, several, or even all of them played a part in a wheel-off accident may help determine which legal tools are available to hold them accountable, as well as how difficult that endeavor might be.

Chapter 5: How Do You Determine Who Was Responsible?

In many aspects of the legal field there are competing theories. For example, some personal injury lawyers think you should file suit right away while others prefer to wait and use the suit as a strategic weapon during negotiations. There are smart people on both sides of that debate and just about every other in the legal profession.

As far as we’re concerned, though, there's no room for debate about the following proposition: The only right way to handle a wheel-off accident case is to start with a thorough independent investigation. Period, end of story. We occasionally hear about wheel-off accidents that other firms handled, and in several cases we were horrified to learn that they simply followed the determination of the police report. Frankly, that's never acceptable. A good lawyer who knows how to properly handle these cases will always do an independent investigation. But what does that mean?

First and foremost is locating and preserving every bit of available evidence. On day one of a wheel-off case, our attorneys will contact all interested parties including police departments, tow companies, salvage yards, and the defendants themselves. We then impose upon them an obligation to not touch, damage, or destroy anything before we examine it.

Next, we arrange as quickly as possible to go to the involved vehicles and inspect them thoroughly. Lawyers usually aren't engineers or scientists too, though, so what do we do? We bring those with us. Believe it or not, there are experts in accident reconstruction whose sole focus is wheel-off accidents. We’ve worked with such experts in these cases before, and they understand how highly we prioritize them. When we say “We need you on the other side of the country tomorrow at 8 a.m.,” they’ll be there and ready to work as hard as we do.

Naturally a lot of wheel-off accidents involve lug nut issues (improper torque, wrong type or shape, cross-threaded, etc) so a lot of attention is focused on those during investigations. It’s fascinating to watch engineers work on that, as they have specific ways to analyze the lug nuts’ threads, precise shape, and other details that would escape anyone else’s attention.

We also pull engine control module data from the vehicles involved, inspect their brake lines, and conduct thorough inspections of any and every part that might have contributed. Why go to such lengths? Because we know the lawyer representing the other side will actively try to blame someone or something else, so we have to be ready to refute those claims. If they might say “The wheel was forced off by debris on the road,” then we look for that debris or signs of its impact. If they could blame the tire shop that last worked on the truck, we have to find out if the shop did anything to that wheel—and if so, exactly what that entailed.

The search for clear and abundant evidence is crucial to a successful case. Once it's all gathered, then we analyze it to determine who’s responsible. In other words, we let the facts do the talking.

Chapter 6 - Litigating a Wheel-Off Case

The steps of litigating a wheel-off case are much like those of other personal injury cases. Below is a basic walkthrough of what to expect.

Before Court

First things first, the plaintiff's attorney files a Plaintiff's Original Petition, which is a fancy (and court-appropriate) way to say "lawsuit." The petition outlines the basics of the case, who is being sued, the grounds for suing, and what evidence supports the victim's claim. For a wheel-off case the defendant is often the wheel or vehicle's manufacturer.

The company's attorney will then file a Defendant's Answer, which is their reply to the allegations and evidence in the Original Petition. In virtually every case the Defendant's Answer will deny any suggestion of wrongdoing and demand proof of the plaintiff's allegations. The defense may also file a Motion for Summary Judgment, which is an official request for the judge to throw your case out because it has no merit. That rarely succeeds, but the attorneys often give it a shot anyway since they lose nothing if it's denied.

Discovery

Assuming summary judgment fails, the case moves on to discovery. During discovery both sides subpoena witnesses for testimony and request whatever information the other side has. In wheel-off cases that might involve component manufacturing records, maintenance and inspection logs, dashcam footage from the truck, and depositions (formal interviews under oath) with the trucker, his company supervisors, factory workers, and eyewitnesses to the accident, just to name a few sources of data.

A thorough discovery process can often uncover crucial evidence that helps attorneys build strong cases. During discovery we've found truck drivers with histories of alcohol and drug abuse or driving records that should certainly have prevented them from getting behind the wheel. We've also run across more than a few trucking companies with atrocious safety records and poorly-maintained fleets hanging together with glue and prayer.

During wheel-off case discovery, we've learned some manufacturers ignored proper assembly-line care for greater unit production, allowing wheels to be improperly attached or their components to be made incorrectly. Many such lawsuits are the result of those negligent practices.

In some cases discovery uncovers so much dirt that the defendants don't feel good about their chances of winning the case. When that happens they may reach out to begin settlement negotiations and the case never sees the inside of a courtroom. If however the defense still prefers taking a chance with a jury, litigation will proceed.

Mediation

In many jurisdictions, mediation—a neutral third party acting as an arbiter to get both sides to come to an agreement—is required before litigation can even proceed to a trial.

The plaintiffs, the defendants, and their attorneys attend mediation with the neutral mediator. After brief introductions and generalities, the parties usually go to separate rooms and the mediator passes back and forth between them, offering advice or suggestions and conveying offers and counteroffers. The process could last all day, though it may reach an impasse and end if the parties can't agree or make concessions. However, many times an agreement can be reached and the litigation proceeds no further.

Trial

If the defense won't settle and mediation doesn't bear fruit, the case will go to trial. Television would have people believe almost every case ends up before a jury, but in reality fewer than 10% of legal actions go that far. However, some insurance companies have a policy of taking almost every case to trial, which drives up costs for the victims and deters future lawsuits. In some cases this also exacts a heavy financial toll on law firms that don't have the resources to actually see a case through trial.

After a jury is impaneled, meaning they are selected and assigned, the trial begins. The attorneys for both sides make their arguments, witnesses are called and cross-examined, and evidence is presented. This could take anywhere from hours to days, or even longer. After both sides close their arguments, the jury deliberates and then delivers their verdict for either the plaintiff or the defendant. The trial then concludes.

How long that process takes varies from case to case. Some settle pretty quickly and might last only a few months, while others that take a jury verdict to resolve might take significantly longer. No two cases are identical, and each must be treated with care and wisdom to ensure the people who need help get it.

That's just a short overview of how wheel-off case litigation might go. For a more comprehensive look at the causes, parts, and steps of Texas truck accident litigation, please feel free to visit our guide page.

Chapter 7 - Frequently Asked Questions

What Is My Wheel-Off Accident Lawsuit Worth?

Most would probably agree that whoever caused injuries or death should pay for what they did, but the specific monetary value to be paid can depend on many factors, including:

• Severity of injuries - A settlement's valuation may depend on the gravity of the injuries the victim sustained in the accident. For instance, if they received life-threatening brain damage that cost millions in surgeries and heavily affected the quality of their remaining life, they might be awarded tens of millions of dollars in damages. If they instead just broke a few bones and spent some time in a hospital, but were expected to fully recover in time, the same jury might award them a smaller sum.
• Where the accident happened - Geography can play a role in a jury's attitude toward what a victim may be entitled to. For example, certain parts of Texas often see juries awarding far less in damages than they would for a similar accident elsewhere.
• Nature of the defendant - Not all defendants are created equal, and the nature of the alleged at-fault party could make a difference in a jury award. If the wheel-off accident was the fault of a single owner-operator who failed to maintain his truck, his lack of assets could mean that most or all of the settlement would be from his commercial insurance policy. However, a larger trucking concern with a whole fleet of trucks and trailers might be penalized more severely for neglecting to keep the trucks roadworthy. Additionally, if the wheel broke loose due to manufacturing defects, the company who made the defective part might also be on the hook for significant damages.

That's just a handful of the many considerations involved in a truck accident case, which is why a careful and thorough investigation must be conducted so all the variables are known.

How Long Does it Take to Litigate a Wheel-Off Accident Case?

Many commercial truck accident cases in Texas take 1-2 years to resolve, depending on whether the defendants choose to settle or go before a jury. However, given their complexity many wheel-off cases take longer to conclude. As we mentioned earlier, there may be multiple potential defendants involved, and carefully investigating everyone's role takes time.

The nature of the injuries sustained in the accident might also affect the timeframe. For example, cases involving brain injuries sometimes slow a case down as it may take months for the full extent of such an injury to become apparent. Part of filing a lawsuit is providing the court with a clear depiction of the injuries involved, as well as an estimate of treatment expenses and long-term financial impact, so when those cannot be accurately gauged things get more complicated.

In sum, resolving a wheel-off case may take considerable time. That's why it's always best to get the process started as soon as possible.

Can I Resolve My Wheel-Off Truck Accident Case Without an Attorney?

The short answer is that we have never seen—or even heard of—an unrepresented client successfully litigating a wheel-off truck accident.

We don't say that to scare anyone into hiring a lawyer, but litigation of such a complicated type of case takes a lot of specific skills an accident victim is unlikely to possess. Among those would be:

• Knowing and hiring the right experts to present complex topics to a jury of ordinary citizens;
• A clear grasp of court procedure and the rules of evidence;
• The ability to persuade a jury; and
• Knowing what strategies and tools defense attorneys may employ.

Those and dozens of other skills are needed to pursue a wheel-off accident case. An average person is unlikely to possess all of them, but people may not realize that even an average car accident attorney likely couldn't make this kind of case work without any major missteps.

So while in theory it's possible for someone to represent themselves in a wheel-off case, the deck is stacked heavily against them. Having an attorney on your team greatly improves your chances of successfully resolving any legal matter, and commercial accidents are certainly no exception.

How Do I Hire a Wheel-Off Truck Accident Attorney?

We can't speak for every law firm, but at Grossman Law Offices you hire us with your signature. We send our one-page agreement to you using whatever method you find most convenient: Fax, mail, email, or you can even come down to the office and sign in person. Once hired, we hit the ground running to investigate and build your case.

What Does It Cost to Hire a Wheel-Off Truck Accident Attorney?

Grossman Law Offices never asks for a dime out of clients' pockets—our fees are collected only after winning your case. If we successfully resolve it without filing suit, the fee is 33% of the collected winnings. If the case goes to court, the fee is 40%. This fee structure aligns our interests with yours, as the better we do on our clients' behalf the better we do as a firm.

Any expenses incurred while investigating and building your case (hiring experts, paying for forensic scene and vehicle analysis, etc) are paid by the firm on the understanding that they will be recouped from case winnings. If the case is not successfully resolved, the firm will cover those expenses and will not seek reimbursement.

Where is Grossman Law Offices Located?

Grossman Law Offices' principal office is located in Dallas, Texas, but the firm handles wheel-off and other truck accidents all over Texas and across the United States.