When a tire blows apart on Interstate 40 or a set of brakes fails on a loaded tractor-trailer, the driver behind the wheel is not always the only one at fault.
If a truck part was defective, the company that designed or made that part can sometimes be held responsible for the crash it caused. In Arkansas, this is a legal avenue, but it is one of the less common ones.
Most truck crashes studied for cause trace back to driver-related reasons, while worn or faulty components show up far more often as inspection problems and contributing factors than as the root cause.
This page explains when a defective parts claim is worth pursuing in Arkansas, how often part defects truly drive injury claims, and when this route is not realistic.
Can a Truck Parts Manufacturer Be Held Liable for an Arkansas Crash?
Yes, a company that makes a defective truck part can be held liable in Arkansas if that defect caused your injuries.
Arkansas law treats this as a product liability claim, which is separate from a negligence claim against the driver or the trucking company.
Under Arkansas Code Section 16-116-101, a supplier of a product can be liable for harm if three things are true.
The supplier was in the business of making, assembling, selling, or distributing the product. The product was supplied in a defective condition that made it unreasonably dangerous. And that defective condition was a proximate cause of the harm.
The same statute makes clear that you do not need to have bought the part yourself or have any contract with the maker.
That matters in a truck crash, because the injured person is almost never the one who purchased the brake drum or the tire.
Arkansas law also defines a manufacturer broadly to include the designer, producer, or assembler of any product or its parts.
So the maker of a single failed part, such as a wheel rim or a steering component, can be a defendant even if a different company built the truck.
This is a powerful tool, but it only helps when the facts genuinely point to a flaw in the part rather than how the truck was used or maintained.
How Often Do Defective Parts Actually Cause Truck Accidents?
Part defects are the direct cause of only a small share of truck crashes, even though worn and faulty components are common on the road.
The honest answer requires separating two very different kinds of data, because mixing them paints a misleading picture.
The table below compares what three federal data sources actually measure when it comes to truck part defects.
| Source and year | What it measures | Key finding |
| FMCSA Large Truck Crash Causation Study | The single critical reason a crash happened | Vehicle factors were the critical reason for about 10 percent of trucks assigned a critical reason, concentrated in brakes and tires |
| FMCSA Large Truck and Bus Crash Facts (2022) | Vehicle-related factors coded in fatal crashes | Vehicle factors were coded for about 4 percent of large trucks in fatal crashes, with tires among the most common at roughly 1 percent |
| CVSA International Roadcheck (2024) | Roadside inspection conditions, not crash cause | About 23 percent of inspected trucks were placed out of service, and defective brakes were the top vehicle violation |
These three rows measure different things, and treating them as interchangeable is where people go wrong.
The Large Truck Crash Causation Study addresses the critical reason a crash happened, and it found that a wide range of vehicle factors were the critical reason for only about 10 percent of the trucks assigned a critical reason, concentrated in braking capacity and tire problems.
In that same study, driver-related reasons made up about 87 percent of the critical reasons assigned to large trucks, which is why driver conduct, not part defects, drives most cases.
The second row comes from descriptive federal crash data, which records vehicle-related factors coded in fatal crashes but does not assign legal fault or definitive cause.
The third row is different again, because it measures how many trucks are riding around with problems, not how many caused a crash.
The 2024 International Roadcheck placed about 23 percent of inspected commercial vehicles out of service, with defective brakes leading all vehicle violations.
That gap is the whole story. Plenty of trucks have worn or out-of-adjustment parts, but a worn part is usually a maintenance failure, not a manufacturing defect.
A true defective parts claim targets a part that was flawed when it left the factory, which is a much narrower group of cases.
Which Defective Truck Parts Create the Most Serious Risks?
When a part defect does cause a crash, it tends to involve a handful of safety-critical systems.
These are the components where a sudden failure gives the driver little chance to recover control.
The parts that pose the greatest danger when they fail tend to be the safety-critical systems, and they can include:
- Brake systems and components, where a failure can leave a loaded truck unable to stop in time
- Tires, where tread separation or a blowout at highway speed can trigger a rollover or a lane departure
- Steering and suspension parts, where a sudden break can send the truck across lanes
- Coupling devices and trailer hitches, where a failure can cause a trailer to detach
- Wheels, rims, and lug assemblies, where a separation can send a wheel into traffic
A failure in any of these systems on a fully loaded rig can turn a routine drive into a catastrophic wreck.
That is why these cases, when they are real, often involve life-altering injuries and high stakes for everyone involved.
What Makes a Truck Part “Defective” Under Arkansas Law?
A part is generally considered defective when it is unreasonably dangerous for its normal, foreseeable use.
Arkansas product liability law and general product liability principles typically recognize three ways a part can be defective.
A manufacturing defect happens when the design is fine, but something went wrong while that specific part was being built.
A design defect happens when the part was built exactly as intended, but the design itself is unsafe for every part made that way.
A marketing or warning defect happens when the part lacked adequate instructions or warnings about a known danger.
Arkansas law describes a product liability action broadly to cover harm caused by the manufacture, design, testing, warning, instruction, or labeling of a product.
Which theory applies changes the kind of proof you need, so the distinction is not just academic.
A manufacturing defect may turn on testing one failed part, while a design defect generally requires showing that the whole product line is unsafe.
When Is a Defective Parts Claim Worth Pursuing, and When Is It Not?
A defective parts claim is usually worth pursuing when the injuries are severe, and the physical evidence supports a real flaw in the part. These cases are expensive to build, so the math has to make sense before anyone files.
A claim tends to be realistic when several of the following are present. The failed part still exists and can be inspected, rather than being scrapped or lost.
The component failed in a way that points to a flaw, such as a tire that separated with no sign of a road hazard.
There is a recall, a known failure pattern, or prior complaints about the same part. And the injuries are serious enough to justify the cost of engineering analysis and laboratory testing.
A claim is often not realistic in the opposite situations. If the truck was repaired or sold before anyone inspected it, the key evidence may be gone for good.
If the part simply wore out from age or skipped maintenance, that points to the carrier, not the maker.
If a forensic review shows the driver or a repair shop caused the failure, the product claim usually collapses.
Being honest about this upfront protects injured people from chasing a theory that will not hold up while the real responsible party walks away.
How Defective Parts Claims Fit With Other Truck Accident Defendants
A defective parts claim rarely stands alone, because a truck crash usually has more than one possible defendant.
There are often several parties who can be held liable for a truck accident, including the driver, the trucking company, a maintenance contractor, a cargo loader, and a parts maker.
Arkansas sorts this out through its modified comparative fault rule under Arkansas Code Section 16-64-122, which was most recently amended in 2023.
Under that rule, an injured person can recover only if their share of fault is less than the combined fault of the parties they are suing.
If your fault is found to be 50 percent or more, you recover nothing, which is why fault allocation is the central fight in most Arkansas truck cases.
When you can recover, your award is reduced by your own percentage of fault. In a multi-defendant case, fault gets divided among everyone who contributed, including the parts maker if a defect is proven.
This is also where the defense often goes to work, because shifting blame onto you or onto other people and companies can complicate fault allocation and reduce the practical value of the case.
Pursuing the right mix of defendants and keeping your own share of fault low often decides whether a defective parts theory helps or hurts the overall case.
How Does a Defective Parts Case Play Out After an Arkansas Truck Crash?
Picture a loaded tractor-trailer running freight east on Interstate 40 between Little Rock and West Memphis, one of the busiest truck corridors in the state.
That corridor is one of the heaviest freight routes in the country, and combination trucks make up about 28%t of travel on Arkansas’s interstate highways, one of the highest shares in the nation.
In fact, Arkansas ranks fourth in the nation for the rate of fatal crashes involving large trucks, with an average of 91 people killed each year in truck-involved collisions from 2017 to 2021.
A front steer tire suddenly comes apart at highway speed, with no debris in the road and no sign that the driver struck anything.
The truck veers across the median and into a family’s sedan, causing serious injuries. At first glance, this looks like a driver-fault or maintenance case.
But a closer look at the tire shows a separation pattern that points to a manufacturing flaw, not a road hazard or simple wear.
If that tire is preserved and analyzed quickly, the family may have a claim against the tire maker on top of any claim against the carrier.
If the truck is repaired and the tire is thrown away before anyone inspects it, that same claim may never get off the ground.
This is the difference between a viable product case and a missed one, and it often comes down to how fast the evidence is locked down.
How Insurance Companies Fight Defective Parts Claims
Insurance companies defend these cases hard, because the dollar amounts are high and several insurers may be pointing fingers at each other.
A few tactics show up again and again in Arkansas truck crash claims involving alleged part defects.
The first is the race to repair or scrap the truck. The faster the vehicle is fixed or sold, the sooner the defective part disappears, and a product claim is very hard to prove without the part in hand.
The second is a dispute over causation. Defense engineers will often argue that the part failed due to wear, abuse, or bad maintenance rather than a defect, which conveniently shifts blame away from the manufacturer.
The third is finger-pointing among defendants. The carrier blames the parts maker, the parts maker blames the carrier’s maintenance, and each tries to push your fault percentage higher so the comparative fault rule cuts your recovery.
A fourth tactic targets you directly, through recorded statements and social media review, looking for anything to suggest you contributed to the crash or exaggerated your injuries.
Recognizing these moves early is part of protecting the value of a claim before the evidence, and the story gets reshaped.
How Technology Helps Prove a Defective Parts Case Faster
Defective parts cases are won or lost on physical evidence, and modern tools can get answers far faster than guesswork ever could.
Depending on the truck and its systems, the electronic control module, often called the black box, may capture data such as speed, brake use, throttle position, and fault codes from around the time of a crash.
Pulling that data quickly can confirm whether the brakes were applied and how the truck’s systems behaved when the part failed.
Tire and component forensics can show whether a failure came from a flaw in the part or from outside damage.
Laboratory analysis of metal and rubber can reveal cracks, weak points, or production errors that the naked eye would miss.
Three-dimensional scanning and crash reconstruction can rebuild the scene and test whether a defect, a driver, or a road condition most likely explains what happened.
The common thread is speed, because much of this evidence can be lost the moment a truck is repaired, moved, or returned to service.
Acting fast to preserve the part, download the data, and document the scene is often what keeps a defective parts theory alive.
How Long Do You Have to File a Defective Truck Parts Claim in Arkansas?
In Arkansas, product liability claims generally must be filed within three years of the date the injury, death, or damage occurs, under Arkansas Code Section 16-116-203.
Arkansas courts have also recognized that this clock typically does not start until you knew, or reasonably should have discovered, the connection between the product and your injury.
Even so, waiting is risky in these cases for a reason that has nothing to do with the calendar. The defective part itself can vanish long before any deadline, so the practical window to preserve evidence is often much shorter than the legal one.
Talking to a lawyer early helps make sure the part is secured while it still exists.
Talk to an Arkansas Truck Accident Lawyer About a Defective Parts Claim
If a defective part may have caused your truck crash, the most important step is to act before the evidence disappears.
Shamieh Law has recovered more than $300 million for injured clients, and our truck accident lawyers in Little Rock move quickly to preserve the truck, the failed part, and the data that a product claim depends on.
We treat every client like family, and our approach of Winning With Awareness means we fight aggressively for results while keeping you informed and supported at every step.
We get to work fast, use current technology to analyze the evidence, and pursue every party that shares responsibility for your injuries.
You will not pay anything unless we win your case.
Call us today at 501-361-1334 for a free consultation, and let us look at whether a defective parts claim is a real option in your case.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I sue the truck parts manufacturer if the trucking company already offered a settlement?
Yes. A settlement with the trucking company does not automatically end a separate product liability claim against the maker of a defective part, because they are different defendants with different insurance. That said, the details of any release you sign matter a great deal, so it is wise to have a lawyer review any offer before you accept it. Settling with one party too quickly can sometimes affect your rights against the others, which is one more reason to get advice before signing anything.
What if the defective part was destroyed after the crash?
This is one of the biggest obstacles in these cases. A product claim usually depends on inspecting and testing the actual part that failed, so if the truck was repaired, sold, or scrapped before anyone preserved the part, proving a defect becomes very difficult. In some situations, the law may impose consequences on a party that improperly destroyed key evidence, but the safer path is always to move fast and secure the part before it is gone. The sooner a lawyer can send preservation notices, the better the odds of keeping the claim alive.
Is a recall required to prove a part was defective?
No. A recall can be strong supporting evidence, but it is not required to bring a defective parts claim in Arkansas. Many dangerous parts are never recalled, and a claim can still succeed based on engineering analysis, testing, and proof that the part failed in a way that points to a flaw. A recall simply makes the case easier to prove when one exists.
Who pays if both the driver and a defective part caused the crash?
Both could share responsibility. Arkansas uses a modified comparative fault system, so fault can be divided among the driver, the trucking company, and the parts maker based on each one’s contribution to the crash. Each responsible party may owe its share, which is why pursuing all of them can matter to your total recovery. The key limit is that your own share of fault must stay below the combined fault of the parties you are suing for you to recover at all.
How much does it cost to pursue a defective parts case?
These cases are among the more expensive personal injury claims because they often require engineering analysis and laboratory testing. The good news is that reputable injury firms handle these cases on a contingency fee basis, meaning you pay no fee unless there is a recovery. Because the costs are real, an honest firm will tell you early whether the likely value of the case justifies the investment.
Does Arkansas’s comparative fault rule reduce a product liability award?
It can. If you are found partly at fault for the crash or your injuries, your award is reduced by your percentage of fault, and you recover nothing if your fault reaches 50 percent or more. This is why the defense often works to shift blame onto the injured person, and why keeping your fault percentage low is a central part of protecting the value of any truck crash claim.