The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) is tasked by federal law with regulating trucking companies. The regulator literally has the power to shut down a company. Its investigations can be intensive and feel borderline intrusive. However, trucking companies also have legal rights. Regulators can overstep their bounds and harm the business. Even when your company is closely following the rules, it needs an attorney to stand up for its legal rights. You should seek legal assistance as soon as you learn your company is being investigated by the FMCSA.
Government Investigations Can Impact the Future of Your Company’s Business
FMCSA investigations are a big deal for a trucking company. The agency gives trucking companies a safety rating that affects their ability to bring in new customers. If a trucking company fails an audit or has its safety score reduced, it could mean a drop in business. A trucking company’s reputation for safety is a vital part of its business, and it cannot have it compromised if and when the agency makes a mistake or overreaches.
FMCSA investigations could result from a number of things. Oftentimes, the regulator chooses to investigate a trucking company after a serious accident. It may see one accident and believe it is part of a pattern of suspected wrongdoing across the company. Although the FMCSA typically starts investigations with the least intrusive method, there could be times when its agents simply “shows up at your door” to launch an investigation.
Potential Steps in an FMCSA Investigation
The FMCSA has a number of tools at its disposal with which to conduct investigations. Here are some potential steps in FMCSA investigations:
- The FMCSA could send a trucking company a warning letter regarding certain alleged unlawful practices
- The regulator could conduct surprise inspections of a company’s trucks on the roadway after communicating with inspection stations
- The FMCSA could conduct an on or off-site safety investigation
- The agency could initiate a full-scale investigation of a trucking company
Your Company May Need to Work with the FMCSA for an Extended Period of Time
An FMCSA investigation may only be the beginning of a trucking company’s potential legal issues. The FMCSA could take action against the company that could include shutting the company down for good or taking trucks off the road for an extended period of time. Trucking companies may need to work with the FMCSA on a safety plan that they must implement over time.
One key part of an investigation is when the FMCSA accesses the trucking company’s books and records. The trucking company must maintain these records for a certain period of time and make them available for inspection. An investigation can go from bad to worse when the FMCSA discovers something in the trucking company’s records that leads it to believe there have been widespread violations of trucking regulations.
FMCSA investigations unfold over time. The regulator may widen the scope of the investigation based on what it has found in the early stages. Its investigators may speak with trucking company managers and employees during the investigation and learn additional information that can point them in other directions, including seemingly unrelated ones that weren’t on the investigators’ radar when they began their work.
How Your Company Deals with Regulators Is Crucial to Its Future
How trucking companies manage the investigation process could help determine its end result. Although trucking companies should aim to be transparent with the FMCSA, they must also be conscious of the possibility that the regulator could overstep.
The regulatory investigation process also has some informal elements to it. Many things could happen “between the lines” that could impact the result of an investigation. The FMCSA may ask numerous questions and have conversations with representatives from the trucking company before making its final findings and taking any action.
There may be ongoing communication between the regulator and the regulated entity. In some cases, your company may even get the chance to explain its point of view or side of the story. What its representatives say could determine whether the company faces penalties or not based on how satisfied investigators and their superiors are with the company’s explanation. An experienced transportation attorney knows how to speak with investigators and other representatives of regulators and help a company’s owners and executives understand what is happening in the investigation and what they must do to protect the company’s rights during it.
Your Company is Legally Entitled to Some Measure of Due Process
The FMCSA is like any other government agency in that it must afford a trucking company due process throughout an investigation. A trucking company has the right to be heard through its owners and executives. It also has the right to challenge the FMCSA’s findings in a safety investigation.
FMCSA regulations specify the due process to which a trucking company is entitled during an investigation. When the FMCSA is seeking fines or taking other action, the company can request a hearing in front of an administrative law judge (ALJ). In other words, the FMCSA does not get to make the final decision.
If the agency’s conclusions are inaccurate, a company can and should fight them. However, the company would only get a hearing in front of an ALJ when the regulator is trying to take some type of civil action. When a trucking company has an experienced lawyer representing it, there is a better chance that it can successfully fight civil actions when the agency is incorrect or the penalty is too harsh.
Some actions do not require getting a hearing in front of an ALJ. Instead, if a company disagrees with the agency’s conclusions, it must submit a request for review to the agency itself. In that event, the company’s options for obtaining evidence and arguing against the FMCSA action are more limited.
Thus, how a trucking company prepares for an investigation and how it communicates with the FMCSA during the course of an audit is even more critical. The company simply cannot afford any mistakes that can compromise its business.
It is always better when you have an experienced attorney advocating for you who knows the regulator and how it works. In an FMCSA compliance investigation, there is simply too much at stake to go it alone.
A transportation attorney knowledgeable about how the FMCSA runs its compliance investigations and the best practices for defending against/responding to one will advise your company on what to do and what not to do to resolve the investigation as quickly as possible and at the smallest expense to the company, while also minimizing its legal exposure. Contact MehaffyWeber for more information.