Aurora truck accident lawyers

Illinois law says a lawsuit must generally be started in the county where a defendant resides or in the county where the events, or some part of them, took place (opens in a new tab).

In most cities that is one answer. Aurora is listed by the Census Bureau in DuPage, Kane, Kendall and Will counties (opens in a new tab), so two crashes a few miles apart can belong to two different courts.

A crash on the Kane County side can be filed in the Sixteenth Judicial Circuit, whose courthouse is in Geneva (opens in a new tab).

A crash on the DuPage County side can be filed in the Eighteenth Judicial Circuit, whose court is on County Farm Road in Wheaton (opens in a new tab).

The federal court is the same either way. Federal law places DuPage, Kane, Kendall and Will counties in the Eastern Division of the Northern District of Illinois and names Chicago and Wheaton (opens in a new tab) as the places that court is held.

Federal rules limit how long a truck driver may stay at the wheel. A driver hauling freight may drive a total of 11 hours (opens in a new tab) inside a 14-hour window, and only after 10 consecutive hours off duty.

A break is required as well. Driving is not permitted once 8 hours of driving time have passed without an interruption of at least 30 minutes (opens in a new tab).

Whether the driver who hit you was inside those limits is a question of record. The answer is in the driver’s logs for that day and the days before it.

Not as long as you might think. A carrier must keep each driver’s records of duty status and supporting documents for not less than 6 months (opens in a new tab), and a back-up copy of the electronic logging device records for 6 months (opens in a new tab).

Illinois gives most injury claims two years (opens in a new tab), four times as long as the logs have to survive. That gap is the reason we ask a carrier in writing, early, to preserve them.