On February 9, 1999, 40-year-old Karen Disidore was driving westbound on I-70 toward her home in Topeka, Kansas. As she was accelerating to pass a Mail Contractors semi tractor which was pulling two 45’ trailers, the rear trailer suddenly broke away, veered into her lane, and crushed her car underneath the back of the trailer. Karen sustained serious orthopedic injuries and a significant closed-head injury.

The cause of the trailer separation was disputed, which of course created problems under Kansas’s comparative fault law. The focus was on the coupling between the king pin on the runaway trailer andthe locking mechanism on the fifth wheel to which it was supposed to be secured. The fifth wheel was

inspected and photographed by the Kansas Highway Patrol at the scene, where the lock mechanism was found in the open and unlocked position. This evidence strongly suggested that the king pin had never been properly placed in the throat of the fifth wheel and locked before the truck started down the road. The markings in the grease on the fifth wheel plate led to the conclusion that during “coupling” the king pin “overrode” the fifth wheel, missing the lock. A proper pre-trip inspection should have detected the dangerous condition.
Vic Bergman and Steve Six filed suit against Mail Contractors of America, Inc., in federal court in Kansas City, Kansas, based on failure of the truck driver to conduct an adequate pre-trip inspection of the critical coupling, which he was required to do pursuant to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations (FMCSR).
Mail Contractors defended the case, alleging that the breakaway was not caused by a king pin override and failure to inspect, but rather was due to mechanical problems from a combination of a manufacturing defect and poor maintenance. Mail Contractors asked for a comparison of the fault of

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