News from Dan Ramsdell, National Director:
Association of Plaintiff Interstate Trucking Lawyers of America: May 2009
Putting the Brakes on Unsafe Trucking Companies®
Welcome to our website!
We hope that you will find it useful, whether you are a truck accident survivor, or an attorney who wants to help.
My name is Dan Ramsdell. I am proud and very privileged to be the founder and national director of The Association of Plaintiff Interstate Trucking Lawyers of America. It is an association that has long been needed to help Americans.
National Safety Problems
Nearly 110,000 men, women and children are killed or injured each year on our highways in crashes with big trucks. Those are just statistics, unless it’s happened to you…and it did happen to me. When I was 17 years old, my mother and I were nearly killed in a crash with a big truck.
Approximately one out of every for semi-trucks, upon inspection, have been found to be so mechanically deficient, that it is illegal for them to be operating on the roadways, and they are declared out of service. These chilling statistics of injuries, deaths and illegally operating and unsafe semi-trucks are simply unacceptable. Changes must be made in the trucking industry to protect our friends, our families, and the American motoring public.
Can you imagine what close scrutiny the airline industry would be under by our government, and multiple safety groups, if, as in the trucking industry, one in every four planes, upon inspection, were found to be so mechanically deficient, that it would be illegal for it to take off?
The Association of Plaintiff Interstate Trucking Lawyers of America is a national association of committed plaintiff lawyers who have joined together to help eliminate unsafe and illegal interstate trucking practices. Through our combined efforts in learning, litigation and legislation, we are working today to make America's highways a safer place tomorrow for our families, our clients, and all Americans who are the motoring public and must share the roads with semi-trucks.
Our Mission
Each member of this association has pledged to work aggressively within the law through learning, legislation and litigation to achieve our mission of dramatically reducing the number of traffic accidents, injuries and deaths across America that are caused by those trucking companies who are unsafe.
Our association's members across America hope to bring about change by educating the general public, other lawyers, law students, legislators, trucklines, truck drivers, judges and juries about the hard facts surrounding common unsafe or illegal trucking practices and procedures in America today. These unsafe and illegal practices each year cause the deaths and injuries of thousands of innocent men, women and children on America's highways. This is a national safety crisis. The level of deaths and injuries will continue, and may in fact worsen, unless united together, we begin working today for a safer tomorrow.
Information for Truck Accident Victims
About Your Accident
If you have been in an accident with a big truck, semi or tractor-trailer rig, we can provide you with a list of valuable resources. To begin, click on “About Your Accident” and then, simply click on the state in which your accident occurred. There, you will find many useful links to helpful information. You will also find and a listing of our member lawyers who are willing to help. If you choose, you may simply click on a membership banner listing, and you will be linked directly to the website of that particular law firm.
You may also be interested in the safety issues, news, statistics, and verdicts and settlements links on our website’s home page, under “Trucking Information.”
The information on this website is not intended to be, nor is it, legal advice. No attorney-client relationship is established by your use of this website. We are not a law firm. We suggest that if you need legal help, to contact an attorney. Each case is affected by a statute of limitations. Each case is different and even very small differences in case facts can make a huge difference in the outcomes of any case and in the legal advice appropriate for any particular case.
Our State & National Advisory Boards
The State and National Advisory Board Members of the Association of Plaintiff Interstate Trucking Lawyers of America is a voluntary group of lawyer citizens from across America who agreed to provide the association with innovative guidance and counsel in the methods of learning, litigation and legislation to help us to achieve our association's stated mission, for the benefit of public safety. Each of them deserves a great deal of recognition and credit for their contributions to this association, and to our national mission of promoting safety in the trucking industry to help to reduce the numbers of catastrophic injuries and deaths on our roads.
Click on their individual links of our State and National Advisory Board members to find out more about each of them and their credentials.
Information for Plaintiff Lawyers
“Trucking Tuesdays” West Sponsored APITLAmerica Webcasts
We are very proud to have our association be chosen as only one of 30 nationwide that West Legal Ed is sponsoring.
West, in conjunction with The Association of Plaintiff Interstate Trucking Lawyers of America, is sponsoring a series of webcasts, called “Trucking Tuesdays” that will feature nationally prominent plaintiff lawyer members of our association speaking on topics relevant to interstate trucking litigation and the problems our motoring public faces each day due to unsafe and illegally operating trucking companies.
These webcasts are for plaintiff lawyers only, and can be accessed simply by clicking the “Trucking Tuesdays” link on the home page of our website. The webcasts will be live every Tuesday in May at 11 am CST, beginning with Howard Nations, and beginning in June, they will be every other Tuesday, at 11 am CST.
About Dan Ramsdell
Dan is a past elected chairman of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America's, (now AAJ's), interstate trucking litigation group, and serves as an elected member of the Board of Governors of the Missouri Association of Trial Attorneys. He has twice been named a Missouri-Kansas Super Lawyer in Plaintiff's Personal Injury, and in 2007, was named by Law Dragon as one of the Leading Plaintiff's Lawyers in America. Mr. Ramsdell is also a contributing author to the best-selling book Truck Accident Litigation, Second Edition, published by the American Bar Association. He is also a member of the Million Dollar Advocates Forum. Dan has been a frequently invited CLE speaker for various trial lawyer associations from across America on the subject of Interstate Trucking Litigation, Ethics, Demonstrative Evidence, and Punitive Damages in Trucking Cases. Dan has a national practice, with offices in Springfield Missouri.
To Join APITLAmerica
To join our association, you must be a plaintiff lawyer. Then, simply go to our home page and click on the appropriate link. You may also call me or Lori Tepper, our Executive Coordinator, at 888-772-4852, or e-mail Lori, or Dan.