When two or three vehicles are involved in a car accident, it's usually fairly easy to determine who's at fault. But in a multi-car pileup like the one that happened last week in New Orleans, finding out who should be held responsible for each crash can be much more difficult.

Thursday's 40-car accident on Interstate 10 resulted in two fatalities and multiple injuries. The wreckage is now gone, but police are investigating the accident and its causes. Their reports will help shape the multiple personal injury cases that are likely to follow, in addition to possible wrongful death lawsuits.

Initial reports blame poor visibility. Smoke from a nearby marsh fire mixed with fog, making it very hard for drivers to see. Poor highway design has also been cited. For those reasons, the city of New Orleans and the Louisiana Department of Transportation could be named as defendants in lawsuits stemming from the crash.

Then there are the drivers themselves. Part of dissecting the pileup involves determining which vehicles hit each other, then identifying those drivers. On Tuesday a company with a truck in the accident filed a petition in Orleans Civil District Court, asking it to help preserve some evidence in the case. That evidence could feed into several personal injury and wrongful death lawsuits. Once police complete their initial accident report, all of this information will contribute to establishing liability for the individual crashes within the pileup, and plaintiffs' lawyers could try to consolidate them into one series of cases.

Like the accident itself, determining fault could be something of a mess. But for those who were injured and the families of those killed, it's a necessary one.

Source: WWLTV.com, "Legal papers filed in fatal I-10 accident," Paul Murphy, Jan. 3, 2011