Case Summary

Allegations

Violations of the constitutional rights of truck drivers by placing them out-of-service for alleged “fatigue,” under the purported authority of certain federal regulations.  The lawsuit is based on 5 separate grounds for preventing the MN State Patrol from issuing out-of-service orders in the future: 1) Federal law authorizes out-of-service orders only for hours of service violations, not for alleged fatigue; 2) drivers have been denied their right to a hearing either before or after the out-of-service orders are issued; 3) the regulation addressing fatigue is applied in an unconstitutionally vague manner and fails to inform drivers of standards under which their alertness/fatigue will be judged; 4) the conduct of individual state troopers acting without a warrant constitutes an unreasonable search and seizure because MN law contains no regulatory provisions that serve as a constitutionally adequate substitute for a warrant and; 5) the State of Minnesota had not adopted the FMCSRs into state law and that therefore Defendants were unauthorized to issue any out-of-service orders for any reason. 

News

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Court Documents

• Findings and Conclusions 01.28.11
• Civil Rights Amended Complaint 09.23.09
• Civil Rights Complaint 05.13.09