An insurance adjuster assigning a driver a share of blame after a serious truck crash is not free to simply guess. Iowa law specifically prohibits this practice, and understanding that protection matters when a trucking company’s insurer starts pushing an aggressive fault argument.
Iowa’s Rule Against Baseless Fault Assignments
Under Iowa Code Section 668.9, it is an unfair trade practice for an insurer to assign a percentage of fault to a claimant for the purpose of reducing a settlement when there is no reasonable evidence to support that assigned percentage.
How This Rule Interacts With Iowa’s Comparative Fault System
Under Iowa Code Section 668.3, an injured person can recover damages as long as their own fault does not exceed the combined fault of the parties they are suing. Because a fault finding above 50 percent eliminates recovery entirely, insurers have a strong incentive to push that number as high as possible, which is exactly the pressure this unfair trade practice statute is designed to check.
Why Truck Accident Cases Attract Especially Aggressive Fault Arguments
Trucking companies and their insurers often have significant resources and a strong motivation to shift blame toward the other driver, particularly given how much a serious truck crash claim can be worth. Law Group of Iowa sees this pressure applied in nearly every serious trucking case it handles. This creates real pressure to assign fault percentages that are not genuinely supported by the evidence.
What Counts As Reasonable Evidence Behind A Fault Assignment
Reasonable evidence generally includes police reports, witness statements, physical evidence from the scene, and technical analysis connecting specific conduct to the cause of the crash. An insurer relying on speculation or an unsupported assumption about what likely happened falls short of this standard.
How Joint And Several Liability Interacts With Multiple Trucking Defendants
Iowa’s comparative fault framework also addresses situations involving multiple defendants, such as a driver and a trucking company facing independent negligence claims, allocating a specific percentage of fault to each party found responsible for the crash.
What Evidence Helps Counter An Unsupported Fault Assignment
Because pushing back on an inflated fault percentage requires solid evidence of what actually happened, gathering the right documentation matters considerably:
- Police reports and any citations issued at the scene
- Witness statements describing the sequence of events
- Physical evidence such as skid marks, vehicle damage, or debris patterns
- Data from the truck’s electronic logging device or event data recorder
Applying This Protection To A Sioux City Truck Accident
Because insurers cannot lawfully assign fault without reasonable evidentiary support, an aggressive fault argument in a truck crash claim deserves careful scrutiny rather than automatic acceptance. A Sioux City truck accident lawyer can evaluate whether an insurer’s fault assignment is actually supported by the evidence.
What To Do When An Insurer Cannot Support Its Fault Assignment
When an insurer cannot point to genuine evidence behind an assigned fault percentage, that assignment may itself violate this unfair trade practice statute. A Sioux City truck accident lawyer can challenge an unsupported fault determination and push for a more accurate assessment based on the actual evidence.
This statute gives injured people real protection against an insurer simply asserting a fault percentage without backing it up. If a trucking company’s insurer is pushing an aggressive fault argument after a crash in Sioux City, reach out to our office to go over the evidence in your case.
