Trucking Litigation: Reckless “Chameleon Carriers” Wreak Havoc on our Highways

While the majority of freight carriers make great effort to comply with demanding federal regulations aimed at keeping our highways safe, a small number of rogue carriers choose to ignore these laws and regulations. The worst of these corporate bad actors attempt to hide their dangerous practices from federal oversight by creating a new company to avoid accountability and keep their tractor-trailers on the road generating profit.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) has coined the phrase “Chameleon Carrier” to describe motor carriers that deliberately close up shop and reopen under a new name and DOT number to avoid facing penalties and paying fines that are generally incurred as the result of an adverse safety history.  If this behavior goes undetected, it subverts the entire purpose of FMCSA safety oversight, allowing a dangerous motor carrier to wipe the slate clean and continue operating while making no attempt to correct their adverse safety history.

FMCSA has long acknowledged that chameleon carriers place the motoring public at extreme risk and has made continuous efforts to identify and regulate companies that engage in this practice. In a 2013 study on this issue, the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that carriers engaging in chameleon practices were three times more likely to be involved in a severe crash than carriers that don’t engage in this type of behavior. The study further noted a significant increase in new applicant carriers that demonstrated chameleon attributes with over 1,100 new applicant carriers demonstrating such attributes in 2010 alone. In an effort to curb this concerning trend, GAO proposed an expansion of the new applicant review process with the goal of distinguishing chameleon carriers from legitimate carriers and flagging carriers with chameleon attributes for further investigation and/or enforcement action.

Despite FMCSA’s focus on detecting carriers with chameleon attributes and deterring this type of behavior, the unfortunate reality is that there are still countless dangerous chameleon carriers operating across our nation’s highways. In recent years, I have come across multiple such carriers in cases that I have handled. As trial attorneys, we must learn to identify chameleon carriers when we come across them in our trucking cases. During discovery, we should look to determine whether the owner of the motor carrier operates under multiple DOT numbers. In my experience, carriers that demonstrate chameleon attributes tend to be smaller outfits that are struggling for economic survival.  They often start the new company in the name of a spouse, or family member in an effort to avoid detection. Many times, these carriers will produce a corporate designee for deposition that will readily admit to starting a new company in response to increased insurance premiums following a series of crashes and violations.

In the right scenario, establishing a carrier’s chameleon attributes can provide extremely compelling evidence in support of punitive damages. After all, it is difficult to imagine a defendant that demonstrates more reckless disregard for public safety than a registered motor carrier that, in the face of an adverse safety rating, opts to ignore safety concerns and instead applies for a new DOT number. Such companies epitomize the profits over safety themes that so many of us have effectively leveraged to hold corporate bad actors accountable though the years.