Our Fleet Defense Team serves as national counsel for three Fortune 500 companies that operate nationwide commercial vehicle fleets. In this role, our team has handled hundreds of motor vehicle accident cases in more than 35 states. These cases range in potential exposure from minor soft tissue injuries to catastrophic injuries and death.

At our clients’ request, we are actively involved at all stages of litigation, from claims handling through trial. Upon request, we also coordinate expert witnesses’ immediate response to accident scenes to document evidence while it is still fresh. Managing this litigation is a collaborative effort between our attorneys and our clients’ in-house teams. Together, we develop project management processes at all stages of litigation that provide efficient and consistent defense strategies in every case. In addition to our litigation activities, we work with our clients’ fleet operations personnel to develop and implement policies to improve fleet safety. We also regularly work with third-party claims administrators on early case assessment and strategy for handling claims to avoid litigation.

Our approach has resulted in the following benefits for our clients:

• A decrease in overall costs of defense.
• A consistent strategy applied to cases across the country.
• A shorter lifespan for cases.
• A better ability to track, predict, and budget cost data.
• Less company time spent tracking the status of cases.
• Improved and efficient case reports, including quarterly case assessments and monthly financial summaries.
• The ability to identify trends in the types of claims and plaintiffs’ theories, which can be used to adjust litigation strategies and implement better safety policies.

The success of our Fleet Defense Team stems from Tucker Ellis’s long history of successfully managing voluminous litigation dockets in federal and state courts across the United States. Our clients call on us to help them manage some of their largest and most challenging dockets. These engagements involve not only working closely with these clients to develop the overall litigation strategy, but also executing the strategy case by case and state by state.

In addition to executing our strategies through all phases of discovery, we have experience presenting our defenses in the courtroom. Our Fleet Defense Team has tried cases to verdict in California, Missouri, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Texas. Between 2021 and 2025, our Fleet Defense team tried six cases to verdict resulting in three defense verdicts (in cases seeking a total of more than $70 million in damages) and three verdicts where the awards were significantly lower than the plaintiff’s last settlement demand. In addition to the members of our Fleet Defense Team, Tucker Ellis’s nationally recognized trial lawyers, including several members of The American College of Trial Lawyers, tried more than 35 cases to verdict between 2021 and 2025.