Plano 18-Wheeler Accident Attorney

Our Plano Texas Attorneys can Help You if You've Been Seriously Injured in an Accident Due to a Negligent Commercial Truck Driver

Our lawyers are quite aware of the incredible emotional and physical harm that can come from 18-wheeler accidents. Thanks to our years of experience, we’ve discovered that lots of 18-wheeler accident victims are weary about taking legal action since they think putting a price on their injuries is distasteful and doing that causes them to re-open that wound in their psyche. While filing a claim isn’t fun, as we’ll see later in this article, quick action is necessary to your claim’s success, so you need to move as quickly as you can following your Richardson 18-wheeler accident.

When you decide to pursue a lawsuit to help you handle the harm inflicted by the 18-wheeler accident, you achieve two things: first, as the injured party, you’ll be able to recover from the financial and emotional trauma caused by the wreck while punishing those responsible for your accident. There’s no sum that take away the damages you sustained in the Plano 18-wheeler accident, or erase the horrific memory from your brain, but you still have major financial losses you have to overcome. The only solution in getting your family back on the road to recovery is getting compensated from those responsible. You’ve probably missed tons of work because of your injuries, so paying for medical expenses to fix your injuries and repair bills to fix your car can be impossible unless you file a lawsuit against the parties who caused your injuries.

The other objective is that an 18-wheeler accident lawsuit helps you decrease the chance of continued further behavior happening by punishing the individual who created the accident to begin with. People who have lots tons of money in 18-wheeler accident lawsuits usually don’t repeat the same mistakes. If you want to make sure some gets the point - take aim at their checkbook.

Common Negligent Causes of 18-Wheeler Accidents

To figure out who you should file a suit against, you’ve got to first determine how your accident happened and who was responsible. A lot of different people are involved in transporting goods via an 18-wheeler, so in lots of truck accident cases, more than one individual may have committed some kind of negligence that caused or played a factor in a Plano 18-wheeler accident. A veteran Plano 18-wheeler accident lawyer can use the experiences gained over years of working truck accident claims to properly determine the reason behind your accident and who played a part. Any amount of negligent parties could have been responsible for a particular 18-wheeler accident: the truck driver, the trucking company, makers of the truck or trailer, the company that planned the truck’s route, the company that loaded up the truck, or other third parties. For instance:

• Truck drivers - Truckers devote countless hours to traveling up and down our state highways and interstates, and in the majority of 18-wheeler accident cases in Richardson and Plano, they are liable entirely or partially for injuries. Truckers can’t create accidents with negligence such as: driving under the influence, speeding, ignoring stop signs, or crazed swerving. In other instances, 18-wheeler accidents happen because of simple driver exhaustion. Drivers are mandated by federal law to take required rest breaks, but a lot of truckers ignore these rules so they can meet established company deadlines. Studies reveal that a truck doubles their chances of being in a wreck after eight straight hours behind the wheel and 20 percent of trucks say they fell asleep at the wheel more than once in the month before being surveyed. Whether intentional or accidentally, if a trucker’s negligence caused an accident that injured you, then you can file a lawsuit against that person.

• Trucking Companies - Texas follows a legal concept known as “respondeat superior” that holds employers liable for the actions or inaction of their workers. If the truckers’ negligence was the reason for your accident; then the company could also be ruled responsible. So if a trucker had a string of DUI convictions and caused an accident while drunk, then the trucking company is definitely liable for any injuries caused by the accident.

  Along with that, the trucking company doesn’t have to actually do anything negligent on its own to be found responsible for the poor decisions of its truckers. That means as long as the trucker is negligent, then a lawsuit can be filed seeking damages from the trucking company. Most of the time, the trucking company is the one who ends up in the crosshairs when it comes to pursuing damages since it has access to far more resources than the truckers themselves.

• Manufacturers - Trucks and trailers are made of thousands of different parts all put together to make sure the vehicle operates safely. If any of these parts doesn’t work to its designed purpose, then an accident can happen. If this malfunction was due to a faulty design or a manufacturing error and a wreck happens, then anyone hurt in the Plano 18-wheeler accident has the ability to seek compensation from the manufacturer.

• The Company that Planned the Route - A lot of roads and neighborhoods aren’t made for trucking, and lots of bridges have weight and height restrictions in place. To make sure everything is safe, busy trucking companies often contract this out to make sure safe routes are planned. If this company develops a course that was unsuitable and dangerous for 18-wheelers, then a lawsuit can be filed against that business.

• The Company that Loaded the Cargo - There are some cases when the business owning the cargo puts it on the truck themselves, and other times that falls on another company to do that. If the company that put the cargo on the trailer didn’t do it correctly, this can lead to a wreck causing injuries that the company would be liable for. There are weight restrictions for cargo in 18-wheelers that are limited to 80,000 pounds, but lots of companies try to subvert this by carrying additional goods at a lower cost by ignoring this rule. There’s a reason for weight limits because an overloaded truck has a far greater chance to topple and can create more damage when it’s involved in an accident.

  When the company that puts the cargo on doesn’t fasten it properly, the cargo can become loosened during transport, which then leads to the load shifting and the trailer toppling and causing an accident with other vehicles. Where flatbeds are involved, poorly loaded cargo can topple onto the road and create incredible havoc for the cars traveling right behind.

• Other Motorists - Just because a truck was involved in a Plano 18-wheeler accident doesn’t mean the truck or its driver was the cause for the wreck. A lot of times other motorists disregard their obligation to provide for the safety of others, and an accident with an 18-wheeler unfolds, creating damage and injuries to additional drivers on the road. In that case, the victims can seek damages from this third party.

Any of these groups or a combination of multiple ones could have totally or somewhat caused the Richardson 18-wheeler accident that hurt you. You need the assistance of a veteran Richardson 18-wheeler accident lawyer who can spot the cause and all of the potential defendants, so that you can get the compensation you deserve from all the parties who harmed you with their behavior.

Prompt Investigation Is Essential

To get all the required evidence to find the responsible parties and prove your case after you’ve been hurt in a Plano 18-wheeler accident, a quick and thorough investigation needs to be done. Since a lot of different parties could have factored into the accident that hurt you, a complete investigation must be done to figure out all of the liable parties and their proportionate degree of negligence. It’ll be key for you to have proof to persuade the jury to lean in your favor, and evidence begins to disappear after any wreck. You need to put your Plano attorney on the trail of evidence as quickly as you can. For every day you wait to find a lawyer you’re comfortable with, you’re doing tremendous damage to your cause because the proof you’re seeking is disappearing - witnesses move and their memories become foggy, videos get deleted or scratched and the accident scene physically changes.

Our Plano 18-wheeler accident lawyers at Grossman Law Offices have devoted two decades to learning the learning the art of investigating accident cases. The moment we’re hired we go quickly to the accident scene at zero cost to our clients, so we can search for any evidence that proves our client’s case. We do what’s necessary to get to the bottom of the truth - securing and looking at all the vehicles involved, taking photos, looking for video evidence, looking at police reports, measuring the distance between skid marks and where vehicles collided, doing forensic tests, looking for and interviewing witnesses and gathering any evidence we can use later in court.

Odds are you’ve probably landed far behind the defense’s investigation it’s mounted. A lot of the times the trucking or insurance company sends their investigators to the accident scene immediately after it’s been called in by the trucker. The defense investigators aren’t worried about determining how the accident took place; they just want to find evidence that shows your injuries were due to your own actions. If you don’t have your Plano attorneys on the scene doing their own investigation, you don’t know if the evidence has been tampered or if the defense has done an ethical, proper investigation. If they can locate evidence to establish your negligence, then they can turn down your insurance claim if they can show you were entirely at fault, or get damages decreased if they can show your contributory negligence.

One case we recently dealt with in Plano demonstrates the need for a quick and in-depth investigation. In this situation, our firm was hired by the driver of a passenger car after he was involved in a nighttime accident with an 18-wheeler. The trucking company was attempting to say our client didn’t have any headlights in his car when the accident happened. Once we joined the case, our client’s demolished car had been taken from the accident scene and to a salvage yard close by. When our Plano attorneys found the car at the junkyard, they discovered it really was missing its headlights. Worried about client’s chances of getting compensation, our investigators noticed a surveillance camera in the salvage yard, so they obtained a copy of the footage. This specific system was set up to record over its memory every 48 hours, and we got our hands on the video right before it was deleted. The video revealed an official from the trucking company illegally taking our client’s headlights from the car and leaving the scene. When the trial began and the trucking company’s defense team attempted to argue our client’s car didn’t have any headlights installed, we had the actual evidence to show they were trying to be deceiving and we walked away with compensation for our client. If our client had waited much longer to hire us, the video would have vanished, being able to get restitution would have been impossible, and the trucking company would have committed felonious evidence tampering.

Our Plano attorneys often have to deal with lies and deception in 18-wheeler accident cases, so you need to get a lawyer so that he or she can immediately start a timely and thorough investigation. In some instances, our investigators can still obtain the necessary proof needed long after an accident took place, but the quicker we can start investigating, the better odds of getting the necessary proof to get you the compensation you need. Don’t delay any further before talking with a Richardson 18-wheeler accident lawyer.

Common Obstacles that Plaintiffs Must Overcome

Don’t assume that just since you’ve dealt with an insurance claim following a regular car accident that you’re able to take care of an 18-wheeler accident lawsuit just on your own. Trucking insurance policies can be valued at 50 times the value of a normal car insurance policy. Because of the enormous size of commercial trucking insurance policies, court cases to solve Richardson 18-wheeler accidents are far more complex than a regular passenger car case. Plaintiffs who try to save money on lawyer’s fees by taking on their own case wind up costing themselves substantially more than they saved with diminished compensation or compensation that’s altogether denied. People with no legal background and lawyers who just graduated are often confused when they try to file lawsuits following 18-wheeler accidents due to numerous common obstacles: showing the burden of proof, the enormity of insurance policies, self-insured trucking companies and truckers who decide to lie.

Burden of Proof

The law doesn’t require the defendant or defendants to compensate you anything after you’ve been hurt in a Richardson 18-wheeler accident unless you, the plaintiff, can show they have to. In order to get the fair restitution you need for your injuries, you’ll need to prove your case with valid, credible evidence. Even other means of negotiation are used to settle a claim; evidence has to be discovered to prompt the defense or insurance to operate in good faith. You’ll need to demonstrate each of these four parts of an 18-wheeler accident case:

• Duty - The first thing you’ll need to do is show the defendant owed you an obligation to ensure your safety by driving appropriately. The law has legal duties set in place for each specific circumstance and for each group depending on their relationships. In 18-wheeler accident cases, meeting this factor usually is pretty easy, since all motorists have to operate their vehicles in a manner as to reasonably ensure the safety of other motorists, pedestrians and passengers on the road.

• Breach - If you want to prove your case, your next step is to show the defendant or defendants violated the responsibility of care you were owed. This usually occurs when the defendant put others at risk either with a choice that a normal person wouldn’t do or inaction when a regular person would be asked to do something. You’ll need to discover evidence that shows the defendant disregarded his or her legal duty of care by action or inaction in hopes of showing this breach of duty. You’ll need to retain a Plano 18-wheeler accident lawyer who knows how to take that evidence to persuade a jury that the defendant or defendants behaved wrongly.

• Causation - After you have established the defendant or defendant’s breach of legal duty, you then have to show your injuries were a direct result from this duty being breached. Since numerous individuals or companies could have played a part in causing a Richardson 18-wheeler accident, it takes strong evidence to persuade a jury to see a link existed between the defendant’s breach of his or her duties to you and the ensuing harm that occurred. If you’re unable to do this, then the defendant can defeat your case by shifting the blame elsewhere. A lot of times, the defendant or defendant’s best chances to avoid blame is to shift blame to the victim for causing their injuries with their own negligence.

• Damages - Once you’ve proven the first three parts needed in a successful 18-wheeler accident lawsuit, you have to then show the damages the defendant owed for the injuries you’ve sustained. Legally, damages isn’t referring to your injuries or property damage, but instead are about the compensation the defendant owes for causing that harm. The plaintiff has the ability to pursue damages for medical bills, lost income, pain and suffering, lost earning capacity, property damage and other losses involved in the accident.

  The unfortunate thing here is you can’t just demand compensation from the court and expect to get it instantly. No, you’ve got to provide evidence that shows not just your losses but also accurately illustrates how you totaled the monetary value of those damages. Most often, defendants will debate the total compensation requested by the plaintiff and counter with their own total off the damages owed that will likely decrease the total monetary amount of harm the plaintiff has incurred. In order to show that the defendant has low-balled its proposal, you’ve got to provide rock-solid evidence that your totals are on point and accurate.

  What is the true value of my case? Since damages like pain and suffering or loss of income are very subjective and open to interpretation, totaling damages can be overwhelming for inexperienced people. It’s very tough to put a price on things like pain and suffering or try to determine lost earning capacity by figuring out the amount of 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 Plano 18-wheeler accident lawyers have been figuring damages, and we’ve gained enough familiarity 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 need.

Not providing any of these four parts guarantees you’ll wind up failing to get the compensation you’re seeking for the harm you’ve experienced. You need the assistance of a Plano 18-wheeler accident lawyer - especially if you head to trial. Our years of experience trying 18-wheeler accident cases has helped our lawyers learn how to develop a strong legal game-plan to meet the burdens of proof and persuade the jury to rule in your favor.

Enormous Insurance Policies

Federal regulations state trucking companies have to obtain huge insurance policies to protect them against accidents, injuries and fatalities that happen when working with big rigs. Knowing this, lots of people falsely assume they’ll get compensated in no time and have no problems to face. Most of the time that’s just not true. Since insurance policies for trucks can be valued at 50 times those of normal passenger cars, the insurance companies usually devote 50 times the resources and hours to guard their trucking policies.

With everything that’s at stake, insurance companies turn to their shrewdest and most qualified insurance adjusters to work negotiations in these settlements. You’ve probably never dealt with 18-wheeler accident claims, but these adjusters are the elite in their field and handle these claims on a regular, daily basis. They are the elite in taking an accident victim’s onset of shock and basic trust in their friendly, local insurance agent, then twisting it against them to turn down their claim. They develop a fake form of friendship and attempt to convince the victim they’re there to make sure they get compensation - but first they need to answer some simple questions. The facts: They don’t want to help, they just want to increase the company’s bottom-line by shooting your claim down. Next, they bombard you with endless questions that basically re-word the same questions over and over again to try and get you to mess up and confess to being liable for your accident. If they can gain this, then they can get your claim turned down. The less communication you have with the insurance adjuster the better, so hire a veteran Plano 18-wheeler accident attorney and let your legal team handle the harassing questions from the insurance adjusters. In fact, we usually tell clients to never talk with an official from the insurance company without a lawyer there as a shield. If you retain our firm, our attorneys will deal with all of the conversations with the insurance company and guard you from slipping up and saying you were liable.

Sometimes aggressive adjusters will try to get accident victims to surrender their rights to pursue a lawsuit in exchange for a paltry settlement offer. It’s a good idea to avoid the stress and unknowns with a jury trial, but you don’t want to accept an offer that doesn’t properly compensate you for the harm you’ve endured. Only a Richardson lawyer with an extensive history of success can get the insurance company to take a fair settlement, because they’re afraid of losing additional money in trial.

The insurance company will also try to avoid liability for your injuries by using a talented defense team that can spot legal loopholes and challenges that will cause certain plaintiffs to damage their odds of getting compensation. You need a veteran Richardson 18-wheeler accident lawyer who can match what the defense specialists launch. Our attorneys have won millions upon millions from every well-known insurance company, and we’ve learned how to predict everything they could do.

Self-Insured Companies can be More Treacherous

Instead of getting a regular insurance policy, some trucking companies put aside some amount of their assets in reserve to use as insurance when accidents happen. While the insurance industry is overseen by the federal government, which requires that all companies be registered, adjusters have licenses and ethical standards be followed, self-insured companies don’t follow these rules. Because of this, self-insured companies have gained the reputation of acting unethically and being hard to negotiate with. A lot of times, in order to properly negotiate a settlement with a self-insured company, you’ll need to work with an officer from this company. Since this worker probably gets part of their income from profit sharing, they have plenty of motivation to reject your claim. This worker would be providing you with their own paycheck if they let you get proper restitution you’re deserving of. With their money at stake, self-insured companies put their own interests before those of injured victims and will turn to improper choices like bullying witnesses, changing or tampering with evidence and threatening victims.

If a self-insured company has tried to bully you, then you can get them to stop with the help of a Plano 18-wheeler accident lawyer. The moment we’re hired, our attorneys can get self-insured companies to negotiate in good faith by using legal action.

Truck Drivers Can’t Be Trusted

While we want to believe people are basically good and decent, the trucker who hurt you with their negligence has too much reason to lie. If it’s discovered that trucker hurt others while driving in a negligent manner, then he or she will be getting a pink slip in no time, if they haven’t been fired already. A proven negligent trucker will find it near impossible to find another job like this with that kind of black mark on his or her record. When you factor in the job market and the economy, lots of other honest and upstanding truckers will turn to lying so they can protect their jobs and ability to provide for their families. To get the compensation you want, you’ve got to be able to show the trucker is lying.

Our Plano 18-wheeler accident lawyers have discovered the way to investigate and find the key evidence that exposes the trucker’s lies. We’ll take apart the trucker’s credibility slowly with all the pertinent evidence we have so we can show there’s no truth to their lies.

In the same way adjusters tried to truck victims into admitting their negligence with tons of questions, our attorneys will plan a kind of questioning for the deposition with the intent of trucking the trucker into confessing their own lie. The Plano 18-wheeler accident lawyers at Grossman Law Offices have done thousands of depositions with witnesses over the last two decades, and we know how to construct the right questions to expose the truckers’ lies.

How We Can Help

If you’ve been hurt or a family member has died in an 18-wheeler accident in the Plano/Richardson area, you need to obtain a Plano 18-wheeler accident lawyer to protect your legal rights and help you get the compensation you’re rightfully owed. From filing to restitution, our Plano attorneys deal with every detail of your case and see to it you’re updated as changes arise. We’ll also give you these services:

• An investigation to determine how the accident happened.
• Discovering all of the responsible parties and filing comprehensive claims and lawsuits against each person or party.
• Finding the necessary evidence to meet your burden of proof.
• Using our successful reputation to apply pressure on the defendants.
• Shielding victims from non-stop harassing telephone calls that come from insurance adjusters.
  
• Using strong investigation and deposition strategy to reveal the truckers’ lies.
• Developing a strong strategy to persuade the jury to rule for our clients.
• Forcing self-insured companies to act ethically and negotiate properly.
• Making sure our clients get proper medical attention.

The odds are strong that the defendant has already finished its investigation and case against you. By waiting any longer to get a lawyer, you’re causing severe damage to getting the proper restitution you deserve. Call us toll free today at 1-855-326-0000 for a free consultation and discover how we can assist you like countless other Texans.