Identifying Defendants

Defendants. What you want to do is you want to identify the right defendants in a case, right? So, was the defendant driving? This is on Page 3 of the first section of the materials, whether you can listen or actually you can do both, whatever you like. So, you want to identify the defendants. It’s the defending of police report, but were they working for someone? Is their employer out there? Did the passenger own the car and has the insurance? Did the mom negligently entrust the car to a 16-year- old kid and you have a negligent entrustment claim? So part of identifying the defendants is there’s a couple of reasons. One is you want to identify the appropriate party, but you want to identify the appropriate insurance, so if the non-owner is driving, he may have insurance, but the owner of the car may have insurance, or if it’s rented from enterprise and enterprise has insurance, they’re gonna have a policy too. So, you want to make sure that you identify all the sources of recovery that you can and put all of them on notice, and it’s especially true if your damages are gonna exceed the limits of liability of the first person, and depending on the policies and how they interrelate, one policy will be primary, one is secondary, so they can stack on top of each other and you’re effectively getting excess insurance, so you want to do that.

If you have a case with a truck, a tractor-trailer, if the truck company puts the placard on the side of the truck, they’re on hook for the case. For the injuries, there’s a bunch of cases for that. So, if you have a tractor-trailer involved in an accident, you want to identify who the placard is on the side and that’s what they’re always saying on the police report, and the federal standards require that. You see these DOT numbers when you drive around. So, you want to make sure that you identify that because they have their common carriers, have to have a minimum of million dollars in insurance, and that’s gonna inform you…

Gary Burger

Founder | Injury Attorney
Gary Burger has dedicated his career to standing up against bullies. The founder and principal attorney of Burger Law | St. Louis Personal Injury Lawyer has helped hundreds of Missouri and Illinois individuals and families recover th …
Years of experience: 30 years
Location: St. Louis, MO

Chat With Us