Non Preventable Incident

Hi, I hope you all don't mind my asking for any input from people who are experienced with this stuff. Son drives at night for an LTL company and he should be sleeping now. I don't want to bug him as he is a bit stressed out about this. He was involved in an incident a year ago where a lady was merging onto a highway in the NYC area (really congested) and she cut into my son's lane at an angle and bounced her father's mercedes off my son's right front (passenger side) wheel hub. No damage to his truck and the mercedes was drivable but very badly damaged (needless to say). If I'm remembering correctly, that lady messed up her father's 1 year old mercedes pretty badly (wow, I wouldn't want to be her). There was a driver behind the mercedes that was also slighly affected. The mercedes driver tried to claim that my son was in the wrong, but the other witness backed him my son up (he was just safely driving straight ahead in the center lane when the accident occurred) as did the police investigation and police report. My son says he thinks she got a warning of some kind (not sure). Anyway, son's company investigated at the time and it was ruled non preventable.

Terminal manager told him today that the mercedes driver has filed a lawsuit against the company and my son. Company is defending and asked son to call their lawyer, and he may wind up needing to appear in court on behalf of the company. Any insight into what is likely to happen at this point and if it's likely to affect my son's career? He hasn't had any other preventable traffic incidents in the past year (just another nonpreventable where he was at a dead stop not far from a serious accident and a fire truck moving fast took off the side mirror of his truck) and there have been the normal ups and downs but things have been going well for him overall, I would hate for this to create a problem. Thanks in advance for any insight about what is likely to happen.

 

Yes, thank you, this is the diagram from the police report which was emailed to us electronically. The mercedes was vehicle 2:

Hopefully this will just go away like everyone says. I will have to ask my son if he is officially named in the lawsuit or if he is just being asked to show up (if necessary) on behalf of the company. He did say they will pay him to show up if he is asked to, he's not too happy about that prospect because he doubts they'll pay what he would normally make driving. I seem to remember that he signed up for that legal defense service option as part of his benefits, hoping it doesn't come to that, though. Have to say I'm a little surprised that the mercedes driver would even sue, although this was NYC, I'm sure there's a lot of sue-crazy stuff going on in that neck of the woods.

 

My understanding is that vehicle 3 was merging onto the highway and when the mercedes bounced off the truck its right rear end hit the front of vehicle 3 where indicated. Son said that was relatively minor damage to vehicle 3. That was the driver that backed my son up (as well as the physical evidence, son says the mercedes driver told the police a story that was contradicted by the physical evidence).

 

Thanks a million, that's very reassuring. The LTL definitely has more money than daddy. IDK, maybe that's why they are suing. Honestly, if I was the LTL, no way would I settle a BS claim, I would think that would just encourage more BS claims. But I'm sure they have done the math on this and if the suit is not a huge one you are right, they may just settle to make it go away as not worth spending the time and money to defend.

And thanks to all you truck drivers out there. Like most civilians I was completely clueless about this industry before son got involved around a year and a half ago. It's hard and really extremely skilled work, and dangerous. And our country would be crippled without it.