Garland 18-Wheeler Accident Attorney

Injured in a Commercial Vehicle Accident? Call Attorney Michael Grossman in Garland, Mesquite & Rowlett Texas, Today

Our lawyers know the catastrophic emotional and physical harm created by 18-wheeler accidents. With all the experience we have, we’ve discovered that lots of 18-wheeler accident victims are hesitant to take legal action because they think putting a price tag on their injuries is unnerving and doing that requires them to think back about the accident. While it can be unpleasant to file a claim, as we’ll see later on in this article, quick action is critical to the success of your claim, so you have to act promptly after an accident.

There are two objectives in using a lawsuit to deal with the harm done by an 18-wheeler: first, allowing the injured party to recover from financial and emotional trauma done by the wreck and punishing those whose negligence led to the accident. While no amount of money can take away the damages sustained by your accident or erase the awful memory from your mind, you’ll still have to deal with incredible financial burdens that you have to recover from. The only way to get your family back on track from such a hardship is to pursue compensation from those responsible. You probably have missed work because of injuries, so paying for medical bills to handle your injuries and repair bills to fix your car can be impossible unless you sue the individual or parties who caused your injuries.

The other objective with an 18-wheeler accident lawsuit is to lessen the chance at further negligence by punishing those who caused the accident. People who have lost huge sums of money in 18-wheeler accident lawsuit usually don’t do the same thing again. If you want to get someone’s attention - go for their bank account.

Common Negligent Causes of 18-Wheeler Accidents

If you want to file a lawsuit, you first have to determine how the accident happened and who was responsible. Lots of individuals are involved in the transport of goods via a truck, so in lots of 18-wheeler accident cases, more than one individual may have committed some form of negligence that either caused or factored into the cause of the Garland 18-wheeler accident. A veteran Mesquite 18-wheeler accident lawyer can use their past experiences learned over time working 18-wheeler accident claims to properly figure out the cause of your accident and everyone who played a part. Any amount of negligent parties could have caused a particular 18-wheeler accident: the trucker, the trucking company, makers of the trucker or trailer, the company that planned the truck’s route, the company that loaded the truck, or other third parties. For instance:

• Truck drivers - Truckers compile long hours traveling up and down the interstate, and in most 18-wheeler accident cases, they are responsible for partial or all of the injuries. Truck drivers cause accidents with intentional behavior like: driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol, speeding, ignoring stop signs, or excessive swerving. Other times, 18-wheeler accidents happen because of driver exhaustion. Truckers are required by federal law to take mandatory rest breaks, but many truckers disregard those rules in order to meet mandatory deadlines. Studies have revealed the chances for a trucker getting into an accident grow after eight straight hours behind the wheel and 20 percent of the truckers confess to falling asleep at the wheel at least once in the month before participating in this survey. Whether intentionally or by accident, if a trucker’s negligence led to an accident which harmed you, you may pursue a lawsuit against that individual.

• Trucking companies - Texas follows a legal term known as respondeat superior, which holds employers liable for the actions or inaction of their workers. If your accident was caused by the trucker’s negligence; therefore, the trucking company is also held liable. That means if the trucker had a history of DUI convictions, and causes an accident while drunk, then the trucking company is certainly responsible for any injuries caused by the wreck.

  Along with that, the trucking company doesn’t have to behave negligently on its own to be held liable for the negligent behavior of its truckers. That means as long as the trucker acts negligent, a lawsuit can still be brought to obtain damages from the trucking company. A lot of times, the trucking company is a more desired defendant from which to seek damages because it has access to more assets than its truckers.

• Manufacturers - Trucks and trailers are made up of thousands of parts that are locked together to make sure the vehicle works safely. If any of these parts don’t perform like they’re intended to while the 18-wheeler is moving, then an accident can happen. If this malfunction was due to a design defect or manufacturing error and a wreck happens, then anyone hurt in the accident has the ability to seek compensation from the manufacturer.

• The Company that Planned the Route - Not every road and neighborhood is meant to handle trucks, and lots of bridges have weight and height restrictions. In order to make sure things are safe, busy trucking companies often turn to other companies to plan out safe routes. If this business plans a course that is unsuitable and harmful for 18-wheelers, then a lawsuit can be pursued against the party.

• The Company that Loaded the Cargo - Sometimes the company that owned the cargo puts it on the truck themselves, and sometimes another business does the job. If the company that loaded the cargo did so improperly, this can cause an accident leading to injuries for which this company is responsible. Cargo in 18-wheelers is limited to 80,000 pounds, but lots of companies try to transport additional goods at a lower cost by disregarding this rule. There’s a reason that weight limits have been established, because overloaded trucks have a greater chance to topple over and cause considerably more damage when it has an accident.

  When the company that loads the cargo doesn’t do it right, the cargo can loosen during transport, which then leads to a load shift that topples the trailer and causes an accident with other cars. When you’re dealing with flatbed trucks, poorly loaded cargo can fall onto the road and create horrendous problems for the cars trailing the truck.

• Other Drivers - Just because an 18-wheeler was part of an accident doesn’t mean the truck or its driver was the cause. In some cases, other drivers ignore their obligation to provide for the safety of others on the road, an a wreck with an 18-wheeler occurs, causing damage and injuries to additional drivers on the road. In that case, the victims can pursue damages from this third party.

Any of these groups or a combination of lots of them could have entirely or partially caused the 18-wheeler accident that hurt you. You need the assistance of a qualified Garland 18-wheeler truck accident lawyer who spot the cause and all of the potential defendants, so you can get the compensation you’re owed from all the parties who hurt you with their negligence.

Prompt Investigation is Essential

A quick and detailed investigation has to be done if you want to obtain the required evidence to identify all of the liable parties and prove your case after you’ve been hurt in an Mesquite 18-wheeler accident. Since there are numerous parties that could have negligently played a part in the accident that hurt you, a thorough investigation is need to figure out who all of the liable parties are and their proportional degree of negligence. You’re going to have to have proof if you want to persuade the jury to rule in your favor, and evidence will start vanishing quickly following any wreck. You need to get your Rowlett lawyer on the trail of evidence as quickly as you can. Every day you pass and don’t find a lawyer you’re comfortable with does serious harm to your case because the proof you need is vanishing - witnesses can’t be located or their memories become altered, videos get deleted, and the accident scene changes physically.

Did You Know?

Our Dallas Texas attorneys have won hundreds of 18 wheeler accident cases. Call us today to discuss your case. 1-855-326-0000

Our Garland 18-wheeler accident lawyers at Grossman Law Offices have spent two decades learning the art of investigating accident cases. As soon as we’re retained we get to the accident scene immediately at no expense to our clients, so we can spot any evidence that proves our client’s case. We do whatever is necessary to reach the bottom of the truth - sequestering and obtaining all the pertinent vehicles, getting photos, looking for video evidence, examining police reports, measuring the distance between skid marks and points of impact, undertaking forensic tests, locating and conducting witness interviews and compiling evidence we get to be used later in trial.

Chances are, you’ve probably fallen behind the defense’s investigative efforts. Most of the time the trucking or insurance company sends their investigators to the accident right after the trucker calls it in. The defense investigators aren’t worried about determining how the accident actually took place; they just want to obtain evidence that shows your injuries were caused by your own negligence. If you don’t have your own representation on the scene doing their own investigation, you don’t have any way of knowing if the defense committed evidence tampering or did an ethical investigation. If they’re able to get evidence to show your negligence, then they can turn down your insurance claim if they can show you were completely responsible or decrease the damages owed if they can properly prove your contributory negligence.

One case we recently dealt with in Garland shows the need for a quick and detailed investigation. In this matter, our firm was hired by the driver of a passenger vehicle after he got into a wreck that night with an 18-wheeler. The trucking company alleged that our client didn’t have any headlights put in their car when the accident took place. By the time we began working the case, our client’s demolished car had been transported from the accident scene and to a salvage yard close by. When our attorneys found the car at the junkyard, they noticed that it in fact didn’t have any headlights. Immediately we were worried about client being able to get compensated, but our investigators found a surveillance camera in the salvage yard, so they obtained a copy of the footage. This specific surveillance system was programmed to delete over its own memory every 48 hours, and we were able to get the footage right before it was deleted. When we watched it we saw a representative of the trucking company basically defacing the car, taking its headlights and leaving the scene. After the trial began, the trucking company’s defense team tried to claim at trial our client’s car didn’t have any headlights, and we had actual evidence that showed their actual deceptive tactics, which then helped us get compensation for our client. If our client had made the mistake of waiting any longer to retain us, the video would have been lost, the chances at getting proper restitution would have disappeared, and the trucking company would have been able to commit felonious evidence tampering.

Our Garland attorneys often run into lies and deception in truck accident cases, so you need to retain a lawyer so that he or she can start a quick and diligent investigation as quickly as possible. A lot of times, our investigators can still get the necessary proof long after an accident occurred, but the quicker we begin investigating, the better our odds of finding the proof needed to get the compensation you’re owed. Don’t delay any further before calling an 18-wheeler accident lawyer in Garland, Mesquite or Rowlett.

Common Obstacles that Plaintiffs Must Overcome

Just because you’ve filed an insurance claim after a regular car accident doesn’t mean you’re prepare to deal with an 18-wheeler accident lawsuit on your own. Trucking insurance policies are valued at 50 times the value of a normal automotive insurance policy. Because of the enormous size of commercial trucking insurance policies, trials to settle truck accidents is considerably more complex than a regular passenger car case. Plaintiffs who try to save money on lawyer’s fees by taking their own case wind up costing themselves considerably more money than they saved with decreased or completely denied compensation. Citizens with no legal experiences and lawyers fresh out of law school are often befuddled when they try to file lawsuits after 18-wheeler accidents because of numerous common challenges: establishing the burden of proof, the enormity of insurance policies, self-insured trucking companies and truckers who lie.

Burden of Proof

The law doesn’t require the defendant or defendants to give you anything after you’ve been hurt in an 18-wheeler accident unless you, the plaintiff, can show they have to. If you want to get the restitution you deserve for your injuries, you’ll need to prove every part of your case with strong, credible evidence. Even when other kinds of negotiation are used to settle a claim, evidence must be found to compel the defense or insurance to negotiate in good faith. You’ll need to show each of the four key components of an 18-wheeler accident case:

• Duty - The first part is that you’ll need to show the defendant owed you a duty to provide for your safety by acting reasonably. The law clearly established the legal duty of care owed for any specific circumstances and for each group, contingent on their relationships. In Garland 18-wheeler accident cases, meeting this factor can be pretty easy since all the motorists have to operate their cars in a manner that would properly provide for the safety of other motorists, pedestrians and passengers on the roads.

• Breach - If you want to prove your case, the next step is to show that the defendant(s) broke the obligation of care they owed you. This usually occurs when the defendant put others at harm with a choice that regular people wouldn’t make or not doing anything when a regular person would be expected to do something. You’ll need to get evidence that shows the defendant disregarded their legal duty of care by action or inaction in order to show this violation of duty. Along with that, you’ll need a Mesquite 18-wheeler accident lawyer who knows how to take that evidence persuade a jury that the defendant or defendants behaved improperly.

• Causation - Besides having to establish the defendant or defendant’s violation of a legal duty to you, but you also must show your injuries were directly caused by that breach of duty. Since different parties could have caused or played a role in an 18-wheeler accident in Rowlett, it takes credible evidence to make a jury see a causal link was present between the defendant’s violation of their obligation to you and the ensuing harm it caused to you. If not, then the defendant can take down your case by blaming someone else for your injuries. A lot of times, the defendant or defendant’s best way to avoid blame is to shift it to the victim directly for causing their injuries with their own negligence.

• Damages - After you’ve shown the first three parts needed for a successful 18-wheeler accident lawsuit, you have to then prove the damages the defendant owed you for the injuries you had. Legally, damages aren’t referring to your injuries and damaged property, but instead center around the compensation the defendant owed for causing that harm. The plaintiff has the ability to pursue damages for such things as medical bills, lost income, pain and suffering, lost earning capacity, property damage and other types of losses stemming from the incident.

  Unfortunately you can’t just instantly ask the court to compensate you and expect to get it. No, you’ve got to provide evidence not just for your losses but also that shows how you totaled the monetary value for your damages. What usually happens is that defendants will debate the amount of compensation the plaintiff has requested and will provide their own estimation of the damages owed, which will probably cheapen the overall fiscal amount of harm endured by the plaintiff. If you want to show the defendant has short-changed you, you have to provide irrefutable evidence to show your calculations are accurate.

  What is the worth of your case? Since damages such as pain and suffering and loss of earning capacity can be extremely subjective and open to debate, totaling damages can be extremely complicated for someone who’s inexperienced. It’s very difficult to determine a price on pain and suffering or determine loss of earning capacity by considering the total value for potential raises and inflation. In court, you’ve got one shot to total the amount of equitable compensation you feel you’re entitled to. For the past two decades, our Garland 18-wheeler accident lawyers have been figuring damages, and we have become familiar enough with cases like yours to know how to factor in all your losses and reach an estimation for compensation that properly gives you the restitution you deserve.

If you can’t properly prove any of these four elements, you can be guaranteed that you’ll also fail to get compensated for the harm you’ve sustained. You need the assistance of a Mesquite 18-wheeler accident lawyer - especially if you head to trial. Years of experience trying 18-wheeler accident cases has helped our lawyers learn how to construct a full-proof strategy to meet the burdens of proof and persuade the jury to rule in your favor.

Enormous Insurance Policies

Federal regulations state that trucking companies have to purchase big insurance policies to protect against the accidents, injuries and fatalities that occur when you do business with big rigs. As a result, many assume that that will be able to quickly get compensated and there won’t be any problems. Fact is this isn’t true. Since insurance policies for 18-wheelers can be valued at 50 times those of regular passenger cars, the insurance companies tend to invest 50 times the resources and effort to guard their trucking policies.

With everything that’s on the line, insurance companies turn to their shrewdest and most qualified insurance adjusters to work their settlement negotiations. While you are probably new to dealing with 18-wheeler accident claims, these adjusters are the top of their business and work with these claims on a routine basis. They are skilled at taking advantage of accident victims, their initial shock and their basic trust in their local insurance agent, then turn that against them so they can deny their claim. They offer a fake friendship and try to convince the victim they want to help him or her get compensated - but the victim needs to first answer some quick, easy questions. They have no intention of helping; they just seek to increase company profits by tossing your claim. After that, they hit you with incessant questions that basically are just re-wording the same questions over and over with the goal of getting you to mess up and admit your own fault for the accident occurring. If they can get that on record, then your claim can be denied. The less you talk to an insurance adjuster the better, so get a qualified Rowlett 18-wheeler accident lawyer and let your legal council handle the sneaky questions from insurance adjusters. In fact, we tell clients you shouldn’t talk to a representative of the insurance company without a lawyer there acting as a buffer. If you retain our firm, our lawyers will take care of all the conversations with the insurance company and guard you from any chance at admitting your own responsibility.

In some cases, aggressive adjusters will even attempt to get accident victims to waive their right to sue, in turn for a paltry settlement offer. It’s usually a good idea to not deal with the stress and uncertainty of a jury trial, but you don’t want to take an offer that doesn’t properly compensate you for the harm you’ve endured. Only a lawyer with a history of success can get the insurance company to offer a fair settlement because they are worried about losing additional money at trial.

The insurance company will also try and duck liability for your injuries by using a savvy defense team that can spot legal loopholes and procedural issues that will cause most plaintiffs to destroy their chances of getting compensation. You need a veteran Garland 18-wheeler accident lawyer who can match the efforts of the defense attorneys. Our attorneys in Garland, Mesquite and Rowlett have won several million dollars from every well-known insurance company in America, and we’ve discovered how to prepare for every possible tactic they may use.

Self-Insured Companies Can Be More Treacherous

Instead of buying a regular insurance policy, some trucking companies elect to budget aside part of their total assets to use as insurance in the event of accidents. While the federal government regulates the insurance agency, which requires that all companies be registered, adjusters be licensed and ethical standards be followed, self-insured companies are confined by certain ethical guidelines. As a result, self-insured businesses have earned the reputation for acting unethically and being complicated to negotiate with. A lot of times, in order to negotiate a settlement with a self-insured company and you’ll have to work with an officer of the company. Since this individual probably gets their salary from profit sharing, they have every reason to turn your claim down. This worker would have been giving you their own money if they let you get the compensation you’re entitled to. With their income at stake, self-insured companies usually put their own motives ahead of injured victims and will turn to improper behavior like bullying witnesses, changing or tampering with evidence and even threatening victims.

If a self-insured company has tried to bully you or harass you, then you can make them stop with the help of a Mesquite 18-wheeler accident lawyer. As soon as we’re retained, our Garland attorneys can influence self-insured companies to negotiate in good faith by using legal action.

Truckers Can’t be Trusted

We want to believe that people are basically good and trustworthy, but the trucker who hurt you with their negligent actions has too much motivation to life. If the trucker is found to have hurt others while driving negligently, then he or she is probably going to be pink slipped in no time, if they haven’t been let go already. Along with that, a trucker who’s been proven negligent isn’t going to have an easy time getting another job with a black mark like that on their record. When you factor in the job market and state of the economy, those truckers who are normally good, upstanding people will turn to lying in hopes of saving their jobs and ability to provide for their families. To get the compensation you want, you have to be able to prove the trucker is lying.

Our Garland 18-wheeler accident lawyers have learned how to investigate and discover the key evidence that will expose the truckers’ lies. We will smash his or her credibility to pieces with all the evidence we’ve obtained, which will disprove their lies.

In the same manner that insurance adjusters attempt to get victims to admit their negligence with a barrage of questions, our attorneys develop a series of questions for the deposition that are constructed to get the trucker to admit his or her own lie. The Mesquite 18-wheeler accident lawyers at Grossman Law Offices have deposed countless witnesses in the last two decades, and we know how to word the questions just right to reveal the truckers’ deceptive lies.

How We Can Help

If you’ve been hurt or lost a family member in a 18-wheeler accident in the Garland/Mesquite/Rowlett area, you need to hire an 18-wheeler accident lawyer to protect your legal rights and help you get the compensation you deserve. From when we file everything to the case’s resolution, our attorneys will take care of every detail of your case and see to it you’re kept aware of any developments as they arise. We will provide you with such services as:

• Investigating to determine the cause of the accident.
• Determining all of the liable parties and filing comprehensive claims and lawsuits against each individual or party.
• Discover the necessary evidence to meet your particular burden of proof.
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• Using our successful reputation to pressure the defendants.
• Protecting victims from harassing telephone calls and questions coming from the insurance adjusters.
• Exposing the trucker’s lies with a strong investigative and deposition gameplan.
• Planning a solid gameplan that will help the jury to be persuaded to rule for our clients.
• Getting self-insured companies to act ethically and negotiate in good faith.
• Making sure our clients get proper medical treatment.

The chances are strong that the defendant has already concluded its investigation and case against you. By waiting to hire a lawyer any longer, you’re causing serious damage to your ability to get quick restitution you deserve. Call us toll free at 1-855-326-0000 for a free consultation and to see how we can assist you like we have thousands of other Texans.