FROMTHE EXPERTS
FROMTHE EXPERTS
DEPOSING TRUCKING COMPANY SAFETY DIRECTORS:
Questions That Win Cases By A. J. Bruning
In every commercial trucking case, there is one witness whose testimony can make or break your claim for institutional negligence: the carrier’ s safety director. This individual sits at the intersection of hiring, training, compliance, maintenance, and post-accident response. They are the person who either built a culture of safety or allowed a culture of indifference to take root. Their deposition is not a formality. It is the deposition that wins— or loses— your case.
Over the past decade of handling complex trucking litigation, I have developed a framework for deposing safety directors that systematically exposes the gap between what the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations require, what the company’ s own policies promise, and what actually happened. This article lays out that framework as a practical playbook you can adapt to your next case.