Dallas Big Rig Accident Lawyer

Dallas Personal Injury Lawyer Michael Grossman Describes the Legal Process Following Big Rig Accidents

A fully loaded big rig can weigh around 25 times more than an ordinary car. When a big rig and a car collide, it’s no surprise that the car and its passengers usually end up bearing the brunt of the crash.

Collisions involving big rigs usually have big consequences. Big rig accidents usually yield big injuries, big medical bills, big repair bills, and big effects on the lives of those involved. Our objective at Grossman Law Offices is to make sure that you receive a big recovery for your losses.

Regardless of the severity of their injuries, the truth of the matter is that unrepresented accident victims are almost never able to recover fully for their losses after a wreck. Because stakes are usually high in a truck accident case, insurance companies are usually willing to go to great lengths to prevent accident victims from recovering. After you’ve been involved in a truck accident, hiring a lawyer and knowing your rights are two steps you can take towards winning your case and collecting damages for your injuries.

In this article, Dallas personal injury lawyer Michael Grossman explains some of the basics of big rig accident cases. Topics we’ll discuss include:

• The purpose of truck accident litigation
• Investigating the circumstances of your accident
• Naming the defendants in your case
• The two ways to win your claim
• Obstacles to watch out for
• What our Dallas personal injury lawyers can do for you

This article covers only the very basics of a truck accident claim. In order to learn more about big rig accidents and the legal process that accompanies them, or to receive a free personalized assessment of your legal options, call Grossman Law Offices at 1-855-326-0000 (toll free).

The Purpose of Truck Accident Litigation

Truck accident litigation has two purposes. First, filing a claim gives injured accident victims the potential to recover financially for their losses. It may seem insensitive to suggest that money could ever compensate an accident victim and his or her family for the emotional and physical suffering that follows a big rig accident. As you’re probably well aware, however, losses following truck accidents are frequently financial, too. Often, accident victims face high medical bills and repair bills following a wreck. Especially if a victim is unable to return to work while recovering from injuries, these bills can seem to come at the worst possible time. Filing a claim against a defendant can help you with the financial aspects of your recovery. Often, receiving damages from the party responsible for an accident goes a long way in helping a victim and his or her family get back on their feet again.

Usually, being prepared to litigate your claim is necessary to recover fairly for your losses. Under the law, parties that cause accidents have no obligation to pay accident victims anything. You can’t expect that the individual, insurance company, or other entity responsible for your losses will volunteer to pay you money. If you want to recover, you’ll need to fight for your rights.

Truck accident litigation has a second purpose. When you file a lawsuit against the individual or entity that caused your accident, your injuries won’t be suffered in vain. You’ll be punishing the responsible party, and holding that party accountable for its actions. This diminishes the likelihood that the party will make similar mistakes that put other families in danger in the future.

Investigating the Circumstances of your Accident

Nearly every successful lawsuit starts with a thorough investigation, and truck accident lawsuits are no exception to this general rule. Following your accident, conducting an investigation serves two important purposes. First, your investigation will allow you to determine who caused your accident. Often, it won’t be obvious who was at fault for causing a truck wreck. Many individuals on the road, including other drivers and pedestrians, may have played a role in causing a crash. In other situations, the mistake which ultimately leads to an accident occurs behind the scenes as the truck is being prepared to make a delivery. Until you know who caused your wreck, you won’t be able to name a defendant in your litigation.

Second, investigations allow accident victims to gather the evidence that they need to prove the defendant’s liability in court. Jurors don’t want to be told how to decide. They want to make up their own minds after seeing photographs, hearing 911 call recordings, holding bits of defective tires, and otherwise evaluating evidence that you collect during your investigation. Evidence isn’t just a nice touch; it’s necessary to win your case.

The attorneys at Grossman Law Offices know how to conduct a strong investigation in order to determine who caused your injuries and how to get the evidence you’ll need to hold the defendants accountable. In fact, we’ve made it a standard procedure to visit the scene of the accident in nearly every truck accident case that we handle, no matter how far away. When we get to the accident scene, we look for the evidence you’ll need to win your case. We record measurements, take pictures, talk to witnesses, perform forensic testing, gather police reports, find video surveillance footage, examine wreckage, and otherwise locate and collect evidence in a way that makes it admissible in court. All of this is done at no out-of-pocket cost to our clients.

The defense lawyers do the same thing. Most defense attorneys are dispatched to the scene of an accident mere moments after a wreck occurs. Chances are that the defense attorneys involved in your case have already conducted their investigations, aided by teams of accident recreation specialists and investigators. They get an early start on building their case because they know that evidence tends to disappear as time elapses after a wreck. Cars are towed to salvage yards, trucks are repaired, records are destroyed, and witnesses go home. Defense attorneys know that the best evidence is usually only available when the accident scene is fresh.

One recent case that our Dallas personal injury lawyers handled illustrates this concept rather well. In that case, our client was being blamed for causing a collision with a truck. The defendant argued that our client was at fault for driving without headlamps installed on his vehicle. As soon as we were hired on the case, our lawyers went to the salvage yard where our client’s car had been towed to see if there was any truth to the defendant’s story. Sure enough, our client’s car was missing its headlamps. We weren’t satisfied, so we went to the salvage yard owner for the yard’s video surveillance footage. The tapes were scheduled to be erased later that day, but we got to them just in time. On the tapes, we saw that the defendant had visited the salvage yard and taken our clients’ headlamps from his car. Armed with this evidence, we had no trouble proving that the defendant had tampered with the evidence and that his defense was a sham.

In that case, if our client had called us even one day later than he had, the tapes which turned out to be so critical to his case would have been destroyed before we could find them. Take a lesson from this case, and from the defense attorneys in your case—it’s best to start your investigation as soon as you can. Our lawyers can usually prepare a strong case even if we aren’t contacted until several months after an accident occurs, but the strongest cases are usually built when we’re contacted as soon as possible. We recommend that you don’t delay in contacting a lawyer for assistance.

Naming the Defendants in your Case

In truck accident litigation, identifying the right defendant or defendants is not always straightforward. This is due to the fact that so many individuals play a role in preparing a truck to make deliveries. Any one of these individuals and entities, or any combination of them, may make mistakes which ultimately lead to a wreck. When multiple parties contribute to causing an accident, all of them may be named as defendants in your lawsuit.

A number of individuals and entities cause truck accidents with some frequency by making mistakes that have dangerous consequences. Truckers, trucking companies, manufacturers, companies that load trucks, and companies that plan routes are just a few of the parties who are often responsible for causing wrecks.

Truckers are among the parties most frequently responsible for causing accidents. Their actions often directly cause wrecks. In some instances, truckers are merely careless. They may speed recklessly, roll through stop signs, or make illegal turns. When driving errors lead to accidents and injuries, truckers may be held responsible for their carelessness. In other cases, truckers cause accidents by driving without getting enough sleep. By law, truck drivers are required to take periodic rest breaks and keep track of their stops in records. Some truckers are faced with impossible deadlines or with compensation systems which value speed over safety. These drivers often skip their rest breaks and falsify their log books. This happens more often than you might think. One study revealed that around 20 percent of long haul truckers would admit to having fallen asleep at the wheel at least once in the month preceding the study. Truckers who skip their breaks and spend more than eight hours at a time behind the wheel double their likelihoods of being involved in wrecks. Whether the truck driver in your case was careless or fatigued, you may be able to name him as a defendant in your lawsuit if his actions led to your wreck.

When truckers cause accidents, trucking companies are frequently on the hook as well. Trucking companies may be held responsible for accidents through either direct or vicarious (indirect) liability. A trucking company is directly liable for causing an accident if the trucking company did something negligent which ultimately led to a wreck. For example, if a trucking company was supposed to have kept its fleet in good working order but failed to repair the brakes on one of its trucks, the trucking company may be able to be held directly liable for any resulting injuries.

In other instances, trucking companies do nothing wrong themselves, but may still be held vicariously liable for an accident. The legal theory of respondeat superior makes this possible. According to respondeat superior, employers are responsible for the on-the-job actions of their employees. This is usually the case even if the employer didn’t endorse the employees’ conduct, didn’t know about the employees’ conduct, and otherwise did nothing wrong itself. In trucking accident cases, respondeat superior usually allows a plaintiff to hold a trucking company liable for an accident whenever a trucker caused a wreck.

Additionally, manufacturers may be liable for causing wrecks if their defective products lead to accidents. In order for a truck to operate safely, its critical components must be working properly. Occasionally, truck parts leave the factory with manufacturing defects or design flaws which make the parts unsafe for use. If a tire is defective, for example, a truck runs the risk of rolling over. If a strap designed to hold cargo in place is flawed, cargo could fall from the trailer onto the roadway. If a manufacturer’s error caused your accident, you may be able to sue the manufacturer for damages.

Companies that load trucks are usually different companies than the companies that own trucks. These companies may be held responsible for accidents that result from improperly loaded or overloaded cargo. Occasionally, the individual responsible for loading a truck will do a careless job, and the cargo won’t be properly secured to the trailer. When this occurs, cargo can come loose during the truck’s travels and fall onto the roadways. Cargo, especially large cargo, lying in the middle of the road can create a serious danger for other travelers. In other instances, companies responsible for loading trucks overload trailers. By law, most trucks may only be loaded to 80,000 pounds. Many companies, however, cram more than 80,000 pounds onto a trailer in order to deliver more goods without the added cost of making additional trips. Overloaded trailers have a tendency to tip over. If overloaded or improperly secured cargo resulted in your accident, the company that loaded the truck may be held responsible.

Companies that plan routes may also be to blame for wrecks if a truck collides with an environmental obstacle that it didn’t have sufficient room to clear. Trucks can’t go on all of the roads that your car can. Weight, cargo, and height restrictions limit trucks from traveling certain bridges, tunnels, and roads. As a result, truckers almost never make up their routes as they go along. Instead, a company will plan a truck’s journey before a trucker even gets behind a wheel. If the roads a truck travels are unsafe for big rig traffic and an accident results, the company that planned the route may be named as a party to a lawsuit.

Truckers, trucking companies, manufacturers, companies that load trucks, and companies that plan routes are only a few of many individuals and entities which may cause a wreck. In order to hold the responsible party accountable and collect fully for your losses, it’s important to identify all of the parties who were at fault for causing your accident.

The Two Ways to Win your Claim

Television has glamorized the notion of jury trials by frequently depicting attorneys in court shouting at witnesses, judges, and each other. In the real world, trial is only one way to win your claim. Settlements also allow accident victims to recover for their injuries. Below, we’ll explain a little bit about both of these ways to win your case.

Winning by Settlement

In a settlement, the plaintiff and the defendant avoid the need for trial by negotiating and reaching an agreement without the assistance of a judge or jury. In a typical settlement agreement, the defendant voluntarily agrees to pay the plaintiff a particular sum of money, even though no judge has ordered that he do so. In exchange for the money, the plaintiff promises not to sue the defendant in the future for more money for injuries that resulted from the same accident.

Accepting a good settlement offer is highly beneficial to an accident victim. When you elicit and accept a fair settlement offer, you’ll usually get your money much faster than you would have had your case gone to trial. Additionally, accepting a fair settlement offer means avoiding the uncertainty that’s always present when you entrust the fate of your claim to a panel of randomly selected jurors.

Getting a good settlement offer from a defendant usually isn’t easy and typically requires the assistance of a Dallas personal injury lawyer. Defendants know that they have no obligation to pay you anything unless you win your case in court. Because of this, they’re rarely motivated to volunteer to pay you money in a voluntary settlement unless they’re nervous that they will lose if they face you at trial. The best way to make a defendant nervous is to have strong evidence and a lawyer with an excellent reputation on your side. The big rig accident attorneys at Grossman Law Offices can make sure that your case has both. We’ve been handling truck accident claims for twenty years and we’ve won favorable settlements and verdicts against nearly every major auto insurance company in the country. Insurance companies know our reputation and would frequently rather settle with our clients than face one of our Dallas personal injury lawyers in the courtroom.

Particularly if you haven’t hired an attorney, the defendant in your case may try to convince you to accept a bad settlement offer. While good settlements can benefit accident victims, bad settlements can permanently strip you of your legal rights since they require you to give up your ability to sue the defendant for what your case is really worth. Defendants know that accident victims often face high bills and lost wages. They hope that you’ll accept small amounts of fast cash that they dangle in front of you in full satisfaction of their liabilities. They may claim that their offer is all that you’re entitled to or the best that you’re going to get. Don’t believe their lies. If the defendant in your case offers you a settlement and you haven’t hired a lawyer, chances are that they’re trying to dupe you. An experienced Dallas personal injury lawyer can tell you how much your case is worth and help you evaluate whether the defendant’s offer is truly fair. Be sure you speak with a lawyer before you give up any of your legal rights.

Winning at Trial

Sometimes, for many reasons, cases don’t settle out of court. If your case doesn’t settle, you’ll need to take it to trial to win. As between the plaintiff and the defendant, a plaintiff has the more difficult task in court. This is because the plaintiff bears the burden of proof at trial to prove that the defendant should be held responsible for the plaintiff’s injuries. If the burden of proof isn’t sufficiently met, the defendant in a case wins by default.

Because of the heavy burden placed on a plaintiff’s shoulders, it’s rarely a good idea to represent yourself in court. This is especially true in cases as complex as truck accident litigation. Meeting your burden of proof usually requires a strong trial strategy, compelling evidence, and a personal injury lawyer. Your evidence and trial strategy should be calculated to prove the four elements of a truck accident claim in a compelling way. Those four elements are duty, breach, causation, and damages. Below, we’ll explain each of these four elements so that you gain a better understanding of how to win your case in court.

Duty is the first element of a truck accident case. Proving duty involves showing that the defendant in your case owed you some particular duty of care to act in a way that wouldn’t cause you to get injured. The duty of care that people owe to protect others is dictated by the law, and depends largely on the circumstances of the situation at hand and on the relationships between the parties themselves. In most instances it isn’t difficult to show that defendants in truck accident cases owe the accident victim at least some duty of care, since most people owe each other the duty to act as a reasonable person would act in order to avoid harming others. It’s likely that this “reasonable person standard” will apply to the conduct of the defendant in your case.

The second element of your claim is breach. After you’ve demonstrated what duty of care the defendant owed you, you’ll need to show that the defendant’s conduct breached that duty of care. Once you’ve demonstrated both duty and breach you’ll have shown that the defendant was negligent. This is an important step to proving the defendant’s liability. In most truck accidents, the defendant breaches the duty of care that he owes the accident victim if he does something that a reasonable person wouldn’t do or fails to take some precaution that a reasonable person would have taken to keep the accident victim safe. To prove breach, you’ll need to present evidence to the court regarding precisely what the defendant did or failed to do. Then, the jurors will decide whether the defendant’s actions were severe enough to constitute a breach of the duty of care that he owed you.

After you’ve proven that the defendant was negligent, you’ll need to prove the element of causation. Proving causation means proving that the defendant’s negligence was the cause of your injuries. We’ve discussed how many parties have a hand in preparing a truck for the road and how many individuals may be on the road at the time an accident occurs. In many cases, defendants try to blame these third parties, or you, for the accident. If you don’t have enough evidence to prove that it was the defendant you’ve named in your case who caused your accident, you won’t win your lawsuit.

After you’ve proven the defendant’s liability, you must prove your damages. The term “damages” refers to the money that the defendant will pay you if you win your case. You can collect damages for injuries such as pain and suffering, medical bills, repair bills, lost wages, loss of earning capacity, and other losses you may have suffered as a result of your accident.

When seeking damages, it isn’t enough to simply ask for reimbursement. You’ll need to prove what you’re entitled to. This involves calculating the total amount of your losses and bringing evidence of your injuries to court to support your calculations. In most truck accident cases, the amount of damages is a contested issue. The defendant in your case has likely calculated how much he thinks your losses are worth, just in case he loses his case. If his number is greater than zero, it will be far less than yours. He’ll argue that your demand is an inflated sum and essentially amounts to a request for a handout. In order to prove the defendant’s calculations are merely last-resort attempts to avoid his legal responsibility, you need evidence to support your demands.

Calculating damages is frequently no simple task for non-attorneys and even inexperienced lawyers. If your medical treatment is ongoing, it may take some work to estimate how much your medical bills will ultimately amount to, especially if it’s still unclear how extensive your treatment will be and how long your recovery will take. Additionally, it’s frequently challenging for non-attorneys to put a price tag on ambiguous intangible losses such as pain and suffering. Calculating loss of earning capacity can be another obstacle for the inexperienced. Damages for loss of earning capacity are designed to compensate a plaintiff for the wages he won’t be able to earn in the future as a result of being unable to return to his job after an accident. Calculating loss of earning capacity isn’t as simple as taking the accident victim’s last yearly salary and multiplying by his life expectancy. You need to account for factors such as the time value of money and promotions and raises that the victim would have received had he been able to continue to work. The Dallas personal injury lawyers at Grossman Law Offices know how to account for all of your losses and calculate all of your damages. We also know what evidence you’ll need to prove your losses in court.

Proving every element of a truck accident case is critical, and if you miss evidence on even one of the four elements, you’ll lose your case. That’s one reason why it’s so important to have a Dallas personal injury lawyer on your side, especially if you think your case might end up at trial.

Obstacles to Watch Out For

Largely because of the dollar amount involved in truck accident litigation, many complexities pop up in truck accident cases that don’t present issues in ordinary car accident claims. Three of these obstacles are large insurance policies, self-insured trucking companies, and lying truck drivers. These three hurdles often prevent even sophisticated and business savvy accident victims from successfully pursuing their own claims, but our Dallas personal injury lawyers know how to overcome these potential challenges.

Large Insurance Policies

Every trucking company is required to insure its trucks. Most trucking companies do this by purchasing insurance policies from insurance companies. The policies held on big rigs have an important difference from the policies held on ordinary cars—they’re worth about fifty times more money than the insurance policy that you probably carry on your car. As a result, insurance companies stand to lose much more money when they pay a claim under a truck insurance policy, and they can afford to spend much more money defending against paying these claims. When insurance companies funnel resources into defending against paying truck accident claims, this obviously works to your disadvantage.

One resource that insurance companies use to avoid paying truck accident claims is their very finest insurance adjusters. If you’ve ever been involved in a car accident before, you may have some idea of what adjusters do. Essentially, their job function boils down to making sure that they can deny your claim or offer you as little money as possible in compensation for your injuries. The adjusters that handle truck accident claims aren’t the same adjusters that handle car accident claims. Instead, only the best and the brightest are usually allowed near truck insurance policies. The adjusters you’ll be negotiating with probably earned their current positions by developing a reputation for being tough on accident victims. They intend to be tough on your claim too.

Look out for the tactics that insurance adjusters may use to justify denying your claim. In many instances, adjusters call accident victims repeatedly to ask them questions about the wreck. Though their questions may appear innocent and well-intentioned on the surface, they’re usually calculated to get you to admit something that could be used against you. If you tell them something that could be taken out of context to mean that you aren’t really hurt or that you caused the accident, you can expect your words to be recorded and come back to haunt you. There’s only one good way to deal with insurance adjusters, and that’s not to deal with them at all. Instead, have your lawyer take their calls. At Grossman Law Offices, we don’t let insurance adjusters call our clients. When they can’t speak to the accident victims that we represent, they don’t even have the opportunity to ask our clients things that could be damaging to their cases.

Specialized insurance defense attorneys are also among the players on an insurance company’s team. Insurance companies keep these lawyers on staff or on retainer, and call them into action as soon as a wreck occurs. They begin building a case against you even before you’ve decided whether or not to pursue a claim against them. Because they specialize in insurance defense law, these lawyers know many loopholes in the law that can be used to deny the claims of accident victims who don’t understand the law as well as they do. If you try to file a lawsuit on your own, chances are that these attorneys will be successful in having your claim dismissed on some technicality, even if your claim is entirely legitimate. The Dallas personal injury lawyers at Grossman Law Offices can make sure that the defense lawyers don’t have the opportunity to take advantage of your by having your case dismissed.

Self-Insured Trucking Companies

In most instances an insurance company will be involved in a big rig accident case, but occasionally you’ll be dealing directly with a trucking company instead. This is usually the case when the trucking company involved in your lawsuit is self-insured. A self-insured trucking company pays a successful plaintiff out of its own pocket rather than using the services of an insurance company. Instead of negotiating with a traditional insurance adjuster, you’ll be negotiating directly with the company’s officers if the trucking company involved in your accident was self-insured.

We’ve mentioned how tough it can be to deal with the top adjusters in the insurance business, but frequently dealing with the officers of a self-insured trucking company can be far worse for an unrepresented plaintiff. To begin with, the amount of an officer’s salary usually depends directly upon the self-insured trucking company’s profits. If an officer elects to pay your claim, chances are that his paycheck will take a direct hit. Most officers are more concerned with their own finances than they are with yours, and as a result many will go to great lengths to see to it that your claim is denied.

While an insurance company’s adjusters are professionals bound by a code of ethical conduct, no such guidelines restrict the conduct of a self-insured trucking company’s officers. Many officers have been known to tamper with evidence, threaten accident victims, and harass witnesses in order to avoid paying claims. If a self-insured trucking company’s officers are giving you a hard time, don’t let their unethical conduct damage your case or your sanity. Instead, call the lawyers at Grossman Law Offices. We can use the law to put a fast stop to these kinds of inappropriate behaviors.

Lying Truck Drivers

In any litigation, defendants often have motives to lie. In truck accident litigation, truckers have additional reasons to bend the truth. Few reputable trucking companies would allow someone with a history of causing truck accidents to get behind the wheel of one of their trucks. As a result, many truckers who are found responsible for causing wrecks are fired. The trucker in your case knows this. Faced with the choice between telling a lie and losing their jobs, many truckers will elect the former and tell lies in order to get off the hook. To avoid responsibility and maintain their livelihoods, truckers frequently blame accident victims like you for causing wrecks.

If the trucker in your case is lying and you can’t prove it, you run the risk of losing your claim. It’s important to be able to expose the trucker’s lies for the judge and jury. The Dallas personal injury lawyers at Grossman Law Offices know how to do just that. Frequently, we’re able to uncover enough evidence to prove that the trucker’s story doesn’t add up. In the face of overwhelming contradictory evidence, the judge and jury are unlikely to believe a trucker whose story can’t be harmonized with hard facts. In other instances, we use depositions to get to the truth. In a deposition, your lawyer is able to ask questions to the defendant’s witnesses. Over the past twenty years, the attorneys at Grossman Law Offices have developed deposition questioning techniques that are usually successful in getting witnesses to admit the truth during a deposition. We’ll grill the trucker in your case to get him to come clean before your trial.

What our Dallas Personal Injury Lawyers can do for You

Big rig accidents have big consequences but a Dallas personal injury lawyer can help you make sure that justice is served. The lawyers at Grossman Law Offices have been handling truck accident cases for the past twenty years and have the experience and expertise to get results. When we take a big rig accident case, we handle every aspect of that case for our clients, and keep our clients informed at every step of the process. Some of the services that we provide in nearly every truck accident case that we take include:

• Making sure that our clients get medical attention, even if they didn’t think they could afford it.
• Conducting a thorough investigation to determine who was responsible for the wreck.
• Gathering measurements, photographs, recordings, witness statements, documents, and other evidence our clients need to prove their cases in court.
• Putting pressure on defendants to settle our clients’ cases.
• Developing strong trial strategies to litigate our clients’ cases in court when necessary.
• Taking all calls from insurance adjusters and defendants.
• Making sure that self-insured trucking companies and their officers mind their manners.
• Taking depositions and gathering evidence to catch truckers in their lies.

To find out more about the services that we provide, or to learn more about big rig accident law, call Grossman Law Offices at 1-855-326-0000 (toll free). When you call, we’ll give you a free consultation and explain all of your options according to your specific situation. We’re available around the clock seven days a week. The sooner you call the stronger your case will be.