Real Truck Accident Cases. Real Results.
$775,000
Commercial Vehicle Collision
Jefferson County, MO
Our client was hit when a driver merged into his lane without looking. He suffered multiple orthopedic injuries and missed months of work.
$680,000
Rear-End Truck Crash
St. Louis City, MO
Our client was stopped at a light when he was rear-ended by a distracted driver. The case settled before trial.
$950,000
Highway Semi-Truck Crash
St. Clair County, IL
A commercial vehicle clipped our client at high speed on I-64. He required spinal surgery and extensive rehab.
“I talked to three other firms before calling Sotiriou Wilmowski. They were the first to actually listen. They took my case seriously from day one.”
Why Choose Sotiriou Wilmowski for Your Truck Accident Case?
The Sotiriou Wilmowski Insider Advantage™
Our attorneys defended commercial trucking claims for years. We know how carriers and their insurers operate, and how to hold them accountable. We know every delay tactic and how to counter it.
Real Legal Experience
You won’t be handed off to a junior associate. You’ll work directly with trial-tested lawyers who’ve handled complex truck crash cases from both sides of the aisle.
Personalized Support
We keep you informed, explain your options clearly, and stay in touch throughout the case. You’ll never feel like just another file number.
No Fee Unless We Win
You pay nothing out of pocket. We front all costs and only get paid if we recover compensation for you.
We Know the Trucking Industry
Commercial carriers move fast to protect themselves after a crash. We move faster, preserving evidence, pulling black box data, and securing witness statements before they disappear.
What Our Clients Say
The Sotiriou Wilmowski Insider Advantage™
We know how insurance companies think, because we used to work for them.
Deme Sotiriou spent years on the other side of these claims, representing insurance companies and the commercial carriers and drivers they covered. She understands how insurers evaluate a truck crash and what it takes to get them to pay up.
Tom Wilmowski is a skilled trial lawyer who’s taken on complex accident cases throughout Missouri and Illinois. He knows how to investigate truck crashes, prove fault, and fight lowball offers.
Why Our Experience Gives You the Edge
Before representing injury victims, we spent years defending at-fault drivers, trucking companies, and the insurance carriers that paid their claims. We were the ones evaluating commercial vehicle claims, issuing denials, and limiting payouts. Now we use that insider knowledge to fight for the people those trucks hit.
We’ve handled cases involving truck crashes on I-70, I-64/Highway 40, I-44, I-55, I-270, and other dangerous roads throughout Missouri and Illinois, including rural highways where injured victims often get overlooked.
We understand how law enforcement agencies like the Missouri State Highway Patrol and Illinois State Police investigate commercial vehicle crashes, and we know how to challenge incomplete or carrier-influenced reports.
We work regularly with clients treated at Level I trauma centers across Missouri and Illinois, including Barnes-Jewish, Mercy, and SSM Health.
We’ve Been in Their War Room. Now We’re in Yours
Our background gives you an unmatched advantage at every stage of your truck accident case.
Put Our Experience to Work for You
This isn’t guesswork. It’s strategic legal advocacy built on insider knowledge.
If a commercial truck hit you, don’t face the carrier’s insurance company alone. Get a team that knows exactly how they operate, and how to beat them.
That’s the Sotiriou Wilmowski Insider Advantage™
Injured in a truck accident?
Talk to former insurance lawyers who now fight for victims.
What Truck Crash Victims Ask Us Most
Types of Truck Accident Cases We Handle
We don’t just handle truck accident cases. We understand them from the inside.
Before representing injury victims, Tom and Deme defended trucking companies, at-fault drivers, and the insurance carriers behind them. We know how insurers evaluate commercial vehicle claims, where they push back, and how to build a case that breaks through their defenses.
Blind spot and wide-turn crashes
A tractor-trailer has blind spots along both sides, directly in front of the cab, and for roughly 30 feet behind the trailer. When a driver changes lanes or swings wide to make a right turn without clearing those zones, the vehicle beside him gets squeezed, sideswiped, or pinned against a curb or barrier. Carriers defend these cases by arguing the car was lingering where it did not belong. We pull the truck’s camera footage, its mirror and sensor configuration, the driver’s training records on blind spot procedure, and the physical damage pattern to establish who actually moved into whom.
Rear-end and underride collisions
A loaded semi needs the length of a football field to stop, so a driver following too closely or looking at a phone strikes the traffic ahead of him at nearly full speed. The reverse is just as deadly. When a car hits the back or side of a trailer that is stopped, turning, or crossing a roadway, it can slide underneath, and underride crashes are frequently fatal. We examine the trailer’s rear guard and reflective tape, the truck’s braking and speed data, the driver’s hours of service, and whether a trailer was left in a travel lane without adequate warning.
Brake failure and poor maintenance
Federal rules require carriers to inspect, repair, and document the condition of every truck they put on the road. Out-of-adjustment brakes, worn linings, dead lights, and cracked frames turn up constantly in roadside inspections, and when a carrier defers that work to keep a truck earning, the failure eventually shows up as a crash. The company’s own paperwork usually tells the story. We obtain the maintenance and repair files, driver vehicle inspection reports, roadside inspection history, and the carrier’s federal safety rating, then use an expert to tie the neglected defect to how the crash happened.
Unsafe lane changes and merges
On I-270, I-70, and I-64 through the metro, a truck that drifts out of its lane or merges without signaling can set off a chain reaction involving several vehicles. Because every insurer involved has a reason to point at someone else, these cases turn into a fight over who moved first. Physical evidence settles it. We map the damage across each vehicle, pull dashcam and traffic camera footage before it is overwritten, download the electronic control module data from the truck, and lock in independent witness accounts while memories are still fresh.
Distracted driving crashes
Long hauls invite distraction. Drivers text, watch video, scroll through dispatch messages, eat behind the wheel, and manage two or three devices mounted to the dash. At 65 miles an hour, a few seconds of inattention covers the length of several city blocks with nobody watching the road. Carriers rarely volunteer this evidence. We move fast to preserve cell phone records, fleet messaging and dispatch logs, in-cab camera footage, and infotainment data, then use reconstruction to show there was no braking or steering input before the impact.
Fatigued driving and hours-of-service violations
Federal hours-of-service rules cap driving time and require rest breaks precisely because a fatigued driver behind 80,000 pounds is a lethal risk. Delivery schedules and pay structures still push drivers past those limits, and some falsify their logs to cover it. Electronic logging devices made that harder to hide, but the data has to be demanded before it cycles out of the system. We obtain the ELD records, dispatch instructions, bills of lading, fuel and toll receipts, and GPS or hotel history to reconstruct where the truck actually was, and we hold the carrier accountable for the schedule it set.
Jackknife and rollover crashes
A jackknife happens when the trailer swings out of line with the cab, usually after hard braking, speed that was excessive for the curve or the conditions, or an unbalanced load. A rollover has the same causes and can sweep across every lane, striking vehicles that had no chance to react. Carriers like to blame the weather or a phantom vehicle that nobody else saw. We look at the speed and braking data from the truck, the load’s weight distribution, the driver’s experience and training for those conditions, and whether the company dispatched the run into weather it should have delayed.
Improperly loaded or unsecured cargo
Cargo has to be distributed and secured to federal standards, and when it is not, the load itself causes the crash. Freight that shifts in transit can make a trailer impossible to control, and steel, pipe, lumber, or equipment that comes loose becomes a projectile on the highway. Liability here often reaches past the carrier to the shipper or the third-party company that loaded the trailer. We identify every party that touched that load, obtain the securement records and bills of lading, and photograph and preserve the tie-downs and the cargo before the scene is cleared.
Tire blowouts and defective truck parts
Some truck crashes come down to the equipment rather than the driver. Tread separations on retreaded steer or drive tires, brake components that fail under load, defective steering and coupling parts, and trailers built without adequate underride protection can turn a manageable situation into a catastrophe. A product claim runs against the manufacturer and requires the truck, the trailer, and the failed part to be preserved as evidence before anything goes to salvage or gets quietly repaired. We send preservation demands immediately, retain engineering experts to examine the failure, and pursue the carrier and the manufacturer together where the evidence supports both.
DUI and impaired driving crashes
A commercial driver who drinks or uses drugs on duty is violating both state law and the federal regulations that require testing after a serious crash. Those results, along with the carrier’s own testing and supervision records, often reveal a history the company knew about and tolerated. Impaired driving crashes tend to involve high speeds and no braking at all, which is why the injuries are so severe. We obtain the post-accident testing, the driver’s qualification file and prior violations, and any bar or employer that shares responsibility, and we pursue punitive damages where the conduct justifies them.
What Compensation Can You Recover?
Every truck accident is different, but here’s what you may be able to recover:
Where We Handle Truck Accident Cases
We’re based in St. Louis but take serious truck accident cases throughout Missouri and Illinois, including urban, suburban, and rural communities.