Grapevine Truck Accident Lawyer

If You've Suffered Serious Injury due to the Negligent Driving of an 18-Wheeler Driver in Grapevine or Coppell Texas, Call us Today

Our lawyers have first-hand knowledge about the traumatic emotional and physical harm that comes with Carrollton truck accidents. Thanks to our years of experience here, we’ve discovered that lots of Carrollton truck accident victims are hesitant in pursuing legal action because they feel as if putting a price on their injuries is sickening and participating in this also causes them to journey back and almost re-live the accident. Filing a claim may not be much fun, but as we’ll notice later on in this article, quick action is incredibly important to getting a successful outcome with your claim, so you need to move as quick as possible following the accident.

When you choose to file a lawsuit for the injuries caused by a Carrollton truck accident, two objectives can be achieved: one is that it allows the injured party to rebound from the financial and emotional pain caused by the truck accident while those responsible for the accident face some kind of punishment. No amount of money can take away the damages inflicted on you or erase the horrific memory from your mind, you still have considerable financial losses you have to overcome. The only way to get your family headed in a positive direction following that ordeal is to get compensated from those responsible for your accident. Chances are, you’ve probably missed some work because of your injuries, so covering medical bills for your injuries and repair bills for your car can be impossible unless you file a lawsuit against those who caused your injuries.

The other objective with a Carrollton truck accident lawsuit is to decrease the chance of more negligence by punishing those who were responsible for the accident. Individuals who’ve suffered severe financial loss in truck accident lawsuits tend not to repeat the same mistakes. If you want to get someone’s attention you’ve got to aim for their bank account.

Common Negligent Causes of Truck Accidents

If you want to discover who you should file a lawsuit against, the first step in the process is to determine how the accident happen and who was responsible. Lots of individuals are involved in transporting goods via a truck, so in lots of Grapevine truck accident cases, more than one party may have committed some type of negligence that resulted in or played a role in a Grapevine truck accident. A qualified Grapevine truck accident lawyer can lean back on past lessons learn from years of working truck accident claims to properly discover the cause of your accident and all of those who were at fault. Any number of negligent parties could have contributed to a particular truck accident: the trucker, the trucking company, makers of the truck or trailer, the business that mapped out the truck’s route, the company that stocked the truck, or other various third parties. For instance:

• Truckers - Truckers work countless hours traveling across highways and interstates and in many truck accident cases, they are responsible either entirely or partially for injuries that occur. Truckers can create accidents when they’re intentionally negligent in ways like: driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol, speeding, running stop signs, or erratic swerving. In other instances, truck accidents happen due to driver exhaustion. Federal law requires that drivers take mandatory rest breaks, but lots of truckers overlook those guidelines so they can meet the time constraints established by their companies. One study reports that truckers’ chances at being involved in a wreck double after eight straight hours behind the wheel, and in one survey, 20 percent of truckers confessed to falling asleep at the wheel more than once in the previous month. Whether on purpose or accidentally, if a trucker’s negligence led to an accident that harmed you, then you can pursue a lawsuit against that individual.

• Trucking companies - Texas follows what’s known as respondeat superior, which holds employers accountable for the actions or inactions of their workers. If the truck driver’s negligence was the cause of your accident, that means the trucking company would also be held liable. So if a trucker had a slew of prior DUI convictions, and caused an accident while they were plastered, then the trucking company is definitely liable for any injuries resulting from the accident.

  It also needs to be noted that the trucking company doesn’t have to actually act negligently on its own to be held accountable for the negligence of its truckers. Bottom line: As long as the trucker is acting negligently, a lawsuit can be filed seeking damages from the trucking company. A lot of times, the trucking company is the preferred defendant to seek damages from since they have a greater access to more resources.

• Manufacturers - Trucks and trailers and made of tons of parts all linked together to make sure the vehicle operates safely. If any of these parts doesn’t perform like they were made to while the truck is operating, then an accident can follow. If this malfunction was the result of a design defect or manufacturing error and a wreck follows, then anyone hurt in the Grapevine truck accident has the ability to pursue compensation from the manufacturer.

• The Company that Planned the Route - Not every road and neighborhood is intended for trucking and lots of bridges may have weight and height restrictions established. In order to maintain safety, busy trucking companies may turn to other companies to contract out safe routes for the trucks to use. If this business maps out a route that is found to be unsafe and dangerous for Grapevine trucks, then a lawsuit can be filed against that party.

• The Company that Loaded the Cargo - A lot of times, the company that owned the cargo loads it onto the trailer themselves, and other times they’ll rely on another company for this. If the company that put the cargo on did so in an unsafe manner, this can lead to a wreck and countless injuries this company would be liable for. Cargo in 18-wheelers must adhere to an 80,000-pound weight limit, but many companies try to transport additional goods at a lower cost by disregarding this rule. There’s a reason weight limits are in place because an overloaded truck has a greater chance to topple and create more damage when an accident happens.

  When the company putting the cargo on doesn’t fasten it properly, the cargo can loosen during transporting, creating a shifted load that could potentially topple the trailer and cause an accident with other cars. When dealing with flatbeds, poorly loaded cargo can hurl onto the road and create serious havoc for all the unsuspecting drivers following behind.

• Other Drivers - A truck may have been a part of an accident, but it’s unwise to assume it or its driver was the cause of the accident. Sometimes, other drivers neglect their duty to ensure the safety of others on the road, and a Grapevine truck accident occurs, creating damage and injuries to additional drivers. When that happens, the victims have the ability to pursue damages from this third party.

Any of these third parties or a combination of lots of them could have entirely or partially been the cause of the Grapevine truck accident that harmed you. You need the assistance of a veteran Grapevine truck accident lawyer who can figure out the cause and all of the potential defendants, so you can obtain the compensation you deserve from the parties who hurt you with their negligence.

Prompt Investigation is Essential

To obtain all the mandatory evidence that would pinpoint the responsible parties and prove your case after being hurt in a Coppell truck accident, a quick and complete investigation has to be done. Since there’s a lot of people and parties who could have played a role in your accident through their negligence, a diligent investigation is needed to discover all the liable parties and their degree of negligence. You’ll have to obtain proof to persuade the jury to rule for you, and evidence will quickly begin vanishing after any wreck. You need to put your Coppell truck accident lawyer on the trail of evidence as quick as you can. For every day you stall in getting a lawyer you’re comfortable, you’re doing serious harm to your case because the proof you need is disappearing - witnesses may move and their memories can become foggy, videos are recorded over and the accident scene will actually change.

Our Coppell truck accident lawyers at Grossman Law Offices have devoted 20 years to learning and improving in the art of investigating accident cases. The minute we’re hired we quickly travel to the accident scene at no cost to our clients, so we can search for any evidence to help our client’s case. We do what’s needed to get to the bottom of the truth - sequestering and securing all the key vehicles, taking photos, looking for video evidence, reviewing police documents, measuring the distance between skid marks and where impacts happened, doing forensic tests, conducting interviews and compiling evidence we get that will help later in court.

Odds are that you’ve probably already lagged behind the efforts being mounted by the defense. A lot of times the trucking or insurance company will jettison their investigators to the accident scene right after the trucker calls it in. The defense investigators aren’t focusing on how the accident really unfolded, their sole purpose is to get evidence that would show your injuries were a result of your own poor decisions. If you don’t have your lawyers on the premises doing their own investigation, you won’t know if the defense is tampering with evidence or conducted an ethical investigation. If they can locate evidence to show your negligence, then they can get your claim denied if they can show you were totally responsible, or get the damages shrunk significantly if they’re able to establish your contributory negligence.

A case we recently dealt with in Grapevine shows how critical it is to do a quick and first-rate investigation. In this matter, our firm was retained by the driver of a passenger car after he was involved in a nighttime accident with a truck. The trucking company alleged that our client didn’t have any headlights in his car when the accident happened. Once we began working the case, our client’s demolished car had been taken from the accident scene and to a salvage yard close by. When our attorneys spotted the car at the junkyard, they realized it truly was missing headlights. Our concern immediately turns to our client being able to get compensated, but our investigators noticed a surveillance camera mounted in the yard, so they were able to get their hands on the footage. As it turned out, this program had a timer to record over its memory every 48 hours and we arrived right before the film was going to be deleted. On the video we watched as a worker from the trucking company illegally took out the headlights and left the salvage yard. Later on when the company’s defense team tried to argue that our client’s car didn’t have any headlights, we had the actual evidence to point out their deception and get our client compensated. If our client had made the mistake of waiting any longer to retain us, the video would have been useless, the ability to restitution would have been squashed and the trucking company would have gotten away with felonious evidence tampering.

Our Grapevine truck accident attorneys often deal with lies and deception in truck accident cases, so you need to get a lawyer and allow him to start an investigation as quickly as possible. Sometimes our investigators can still locate the mandatory proof well after an accident happened, but the quicker our investigation happens, the better odds of finding the necessary proof to get the compensation that’s rightfully yours. Don’t delay any further before talking with a Grapevine truck accident lawyer.

Common Obstacles that Plaintiffs Must Overcome

You may have filed an insurance claim after a typical car wreck, but that doesn’t make you able to handle a truck accident lawsuit on your own. Trucking insurance policies are valued at 50 times that of a regular automotive insurance policy. Because of the enormity of trucking policies, litigation to settle truck accidents is far more detailed than a regular car case. Plaintiffs who want to save money on lawyer’s fees by taking on their own case eventually hurt themselves and don’t save anything when they wind up with decreased or denied compensation. People with no legal background and lawyers who just graduated wind up befuddled when they to file lawsuits after trucking accidents because many common problems: establishing the burden of proof, the size of the insurance policies, self-insured trucking companies and truckers who turn to lying.

Burden of Proof

The law doesn't demand the defendant or defendants pay you a dime after you've been hurt in a Grapevine truck accident unless you, the plaintiff, are able to prove they must do so. In order to get the fair restitution you rightfully deserve, you'll need to prove your case with factual evidence. Even when other forms of negotiation are used to settle a claim, evidence needs to be discovered to pressure the defense or insurance to work in good faith. You'll need to show each of these four components when dealing with a Grapevine trucking accident case:

• Duty - First off is that you must show the defendant owed you a duty to ensure your safety by acting appropriately. The law has established the legal duty of care owed for a particular circumstance and for each party depending on their relationships. When it comes to truck accident cases, this element can be met rather easily, since all motorists have to operate their vehicles in a manner that will reasonably provide for the well being of other motorists, pedestrians and passengers on the roads.

• Breach - If you want to prove your case, the next part is that you've got to demonstrate that the defendant or defendants violated the responsibility of care owed to you. This usually occurs when the defendant put others at risk either with an action that a normal person wouldn't commit or through indifference and just doing nothing when most of us would be expected to do something. You'll have to search for evidence that proves the defendant neglected his or her duty of care through action or inaction to prove this breach of duty. Along with that, you'll need a Coppell truck accident lawyer who knows how to use that evidence to persuade a jury to agree that the defendant or defendants acted unreasonably.

• Causation - Besides the fact that you have to show the defendant or defendants' violation of a legal duty to you, you also have to show your injuries directly were a cause of this breach of duty. Since numerous parties could have caused or contributed to the outcome of a Coppell trucking accident, it takes strong, rock-solid evidence to make a jury agree that a causal relationship existed between the defendant's breach of their responsibility to you and the ensuing harm that followed. If you're unable to do this, the defendant will be able to take your case apart by blaming someone else for your pain. Often, the defendant's best odds at avoiding blame are to put it on the victim for causing their own injuries with their own negligence.

• Damages - Once you’ve been able to prove the first three parts needed for a successful truck accident lawsuit, you then have to show the damages the defendant owed for your injuries you’ve sustained. Legally, damages aren’t about your injuries or property damage, but instead refer to the compensation the defendant owes for causing that harm. The plaintiff is able to pursue damages for medical bills, lost income, pain and suffering, lost earning capacity, property damage and other losses sustained in the accident.

  Unfortunately you can’t just request compensation from the court and think you’ll quickly get it. You’ve got to provide for not only your losses but also shows how you came to total the monetary value of your damages. Usually the amount of compensation being sought is contested by defendants, who will counter with their own estimation of damages, which will probably be far below the amount of harm sustained by the plaintiff. If you want to show the defendant low-balled his estimation of damages, you’ve got to provide rock-solid evidence to show your totals are credible.

  What’s the true cost of my case? Since damages like pain and suffering or loss of earning ability are very subjective and open to debate, totaling damages can be overwhelming for anyone who’s inexperienced. It’s very difficult to put a price on pain and suffering or figure lost earning capacity by taking the value of hypothetical raises and inflation. In court, you’ve got one chance to total the amount of equitable compensation that you’re entitled to. For the past two decades, our Grapevine truck accident lawyers have been trying to determine damages, and we’ve developed enough comfort with other similar cases to learn how to account for all your losses to discover an estimation of compensation that properly provides the restitution you’re owed.

Failing to not establish any of these elements means you will also likely fail at getting compensation you want for the harm inflicted on you. You must get help from a Carrollton truck accident lawyer - especially when you go to trial. Years of experience trying truck accident cases have helped our lawyers learn how to develop a strong legal strategy to meet the burdens of proof and move any jury in your favor.

Enormous Insurance Policies

Federal regulations demand that trucking companies get huge insurance policies as protection for when accidents, injuries and even fatalities happen because of doing business with trucks. Many people, unfortunately, think this means they’ll instantly get their money and without complication. The majority of the time that’s just simply untrue. Since insurance policies for trucks are valued at 50 times those of regular passenger cars, the insurance companies in turn will invest 50 times the effort and energy to guard their trucking policies.

With everything that’s on the line, insurance companies turn to their sneakiest and most veteran insurance adjusters to work settlement negotiations. You’re probably new to the whole arena of handling truck accident claims, but these adjusters are the very best in their profession and work these claims daily. They are experts in grabbing hold of the accident victims’ initial state of shock, their basic trust in your average neighborhood insurance agent, then using that against them later when they turn down their claim. They develop a friendship that seems real (but is fake), adding they want to help them get compensated - first off though they’ve got to answer some simple questions. They don’t care about helping, they just want to up the company profits by turning down your claim. After that, they hit you repeatedly with a ton of questions that basically re-word the same questions over and over in an effort to get you to mess up and admit your own liability for the Grapevine truck accident. If they can get those words recorded, then your claim can get denied. The less contact you have with an insurance adjuster the better so obtain a veteran Carrollton truck accident lawyer and let your legal team handle the nagging, harassing questions from insurance adjusters. In fact, you shouldn’t talk to any worker from an insurance company without a lawyer acting as a buffer. If you hire our firm, our lawyers will take over all conversations with the insurance company and protect you from any chance at admitting your own liability.

Sometimes aggressive adjusters will try to get accident victims to waive their right to sue in exchange for a paltry settlement. It’s good to avoid the stress and uncertainty of a jury trial, but you don’t want to take an offer that doesn’t properly help you for the harm you’ve endured. Only a lawyer with an extensive track record of success can get the insurance company to provide a fair settlement, because they’re concerned about losing extra money at trial.

The insurance company will also try and shirk liability for your injuries by using a talented defense team that can locate legal loopholes and procedural hurdles that will inexperienced plaintiffs to ruin their chances for getting compensation. You need a veteran Grapevine truck accident lawyer who can match the efforts of defense specialists. Our attorneys have won countless millions from every big-time insurance company in the country, and we’ve discovered how to anticipate any potential move they’d make.

Self-Insured Companies can be more treacherous

Instead of buying your normal trucking insurance policy, some trucking businesses devote a sum of their assets to used as work insurance for wrecks. While the federal government regulates white t-shirts, which demands that all companies be registered, workers be licensed and ethical standards are followed, but self-insured companies don’t have to live under these guidelines. As a result, self-insured companies have gained the reputation for acting unethically and being hard to work with in negotiations. Most of the time, in hopes of negotiating a settlement with a self-insured company, you’ll need to work with the officer of a company. Since the worker probably gets most of his or her salary from profit sharing, they have every reason to deny your claim. The worker would be basically giving you their money if they allowed you to get equal restitution you’re entitled to. With their own cash on the line, self-insured companies usually shift their own interests before those injured victims and will turn to such improper behavior as bullying witnesses, changing and tampering with evidence and even threatening victims.

If a self-insured company tried for a second to bully you or push you around, then you can get them to stop those actions with the help of a Grapevine truck accident lawyer. The moment we’re hired, our attorneys can pressure self-insured companies and make them to negotiate in good faith.

Truck Drivers Can’t be trusted

We want to think people are good, decent and honest but the trucker who hurt you with their negligent behavior has too much motivation to lie. If the trucker injured others while driving in a negligent manner, then they’ll probably get a pink slip in no time, if they haven’t been canned already. Along with that, a trucker who’s been proven negligent will have a very tough time getting a similar job with that kind of black mark on their record. When you weigh in with the status of today’s job mark and the national economy, lots of decent ethical truckers will turn to lying so they can save their jobs and ability to take care of their family. To get the compensation you need, you’ve got to be able to show the trucker is lying.

Our Grapevine truck accident lawyers have learned the skills to proper investigation and searching for key evidence that pinpoints the trucker’s lies. We’ll tear their credibility apart with all the available evidence, which will blow holes in their deception.

In the same way that insurance adjusters attempt to get victims to blurt out their negligence through a machine gun, rapid fire list of questions, our Grapevine attorneys will plan their own line of questioning for the deposition made to trick the trucker into admitting their own life. The Grapevine truck accident lawyers at Grossman Law Offices have deposed thousands of witnesses in the last two decades and we have the ability to frame the questions just right to show the truckers’ lies.

How We Can Help

If you’ve been hurt or lost a member of the family in a truck accident in Grapevine, Coppell or Carrollton, you need to obtain a truck accident lawyer to look after your legal rights and help you get the compensation you need. From filing to resolution, our attorneys will take care of every part of your case and see to it that your updated on any details as they arise. We’ll also give you the following services:

• Doing an investigation to determine the cause of an accident.
• Finding all the key parties and constructing comprehensive claims and lawsuits against each.
• Obtaining the necessary evidence to reach your burden of proof.
• Using our successful reputation to pressure the defendants.
• Shielding our clients from non-stop questions and phone calls from insurance adjusters.
  
• Using strong investigative and deposition strategies that will shine light on the truckers’ lies.
• Developing a strong game plan to cause the jury to rule for our clients.
• Demanding that self-insured companies act ethically and negotiate in good faith.
• Making sure our clients get proper medical care.

Odds are that the defendant and his defense team of lawyers have concluded its investigation and concluded its case against you. By stalling any longer to find a lawyer, you’re causing immense damage to getting fair compensation you deserve. Call us today at 1-855-326-0000 (toll free) for a free consultation and discover how we can help you like we have tons of other Texans.