Richardson Truck Accident Lawyer

Call Grossman Law Offices if You or a Family Member has Been Injured in an Accident With a Commercial Truck

Our lawyers are quite familiar with the incredible emotional and physical trauma created by Richardson truck accidents. Through our experience and all our cases we’ve been involved in, we’ve discovered that lots of Richardson truck accident victims are skeptical about pursuing legal action because they feel that putting a price on their injuries is uncomfortable and getting involved causes them to think back to what happened. While filing these claims can be tough, as we’ll discuss later in this article, quick action is crucial to your claim’s success, so you have to move quickly after your accident happened.

Using a lawsuit to deal with the harm caused by your accident accomplishes two things: first it allows the injured victim to return from the financial and emotional pain resulting from the wreck and punishes the liable parties whose negligence created the truck accident. There’s no sum of money that can take away the damages caused by your accident or erase the horrific nightmare from your conscience, but you still have to address the huge financial losses you’ve been hit with. The only opportunity to get your family headed in the right direction following a major setback is to get compensation from the liable party or parties. You probably have missed plenty of work because of injuries, so covering your medical bills to handle your injuries and repair bills to repair your car can be impossible unless you file a lawsuit against the party or parties responsible for your injuries.

The other key with this lawsuit is that it helps decrease the chance of further negligence by punishing those liable for the accident. People who’ve lost exorbitant amounts of money in Texas truck accident lawsuits usually don’t make the same choices again. If you want to get someone’s attention - go for their wallet.

Common Negligent Causes of Truck Accidents

If you’re trying to figure out who to sue, you’ve got to first determine how the Richardson truck accident happened, and then see who caused the accident. There are usually several people and businesses involved in how goods get transported via truck, so in lots of Plano & Richardson truck accident cases, more than one person may have committed some degree of negligence that factored in or played a role in the cause of a Richardson truck accident. A veteran truck accident lawyer can use the lessons learned over time working truck accident claims to accurately determine the cause of your accident all of those who were liable. Any amount of negligent parties could have caused a truck accident: the truck driver, the company they work for, makers of the truck or trailer, the company the mapped the truck’s route, who loaded the truck, or other third parties. For instance:

• Truckers - Trucker drivers spend weeks on end traveling across the nation on our interstates and highways, and in the majority of truck accident cases in Richardson TX, they are responsible entirely or partially for the injuries. Truckers cause accidents with such negligence as driving while intoxicated or hopped up on drugs, speeding, disregarding stop signs, or crazed swerving. In other situations, Plano truck accidents happen because of trucker fatigue. Drivers are mandated by federal law to take required rest breaks, but lots of trucks disregard these safety guidelines so they can stay on track with meeting the company’s established time constraints. Studies have revealed that the chances of a trucker being in a Richardson truck accident double following eight straight hours behind the wheel, and 20 percent of truckers confessed to falling asleep at the wheel more than once in the month prior to being surveyed. Whether intentional or accidentally, if a trucker’s negligence led to an accident that caused you harm, then you can obtain a lawsuit against that individual.

• Trucking Companies - A legal concept called respondeat superior exists in Texas. What it means is basically employers are held accountable for the actions or negligence of its workers. If the trucker’s negligence resulted in your accident, the trucking company would also then be accountable. So if a trucker had a past collection of DUI convictions and caused an accident while drunk, then the Richardson trucking company is definitely liable for any injuries resulting from the accident.

  Along with that, the trucking company doesn’t have to commit negligence on its own to be held accountable for the negligent behavior of its truckers. That means as long as the trucker is found negligent, a lawsuit can be filed seeking damages from the Richardson trucking company that worker is linked to. A lot of times, the trucking company is the defendant that is pursued first since they have access to additional assets.

• Manufactures - Truckers and trailers are made of thousands of parts, big and small, linked together to make sure the vehicle works safely. If any of the parts doesn’t perform like they’re supposed to while the truck is moving, then an accident can follow. If this error was due to a design defect or manufacturing error and a wreck follows, then anyone hurt in the accident has the ability to pursue compensation from the manufacturer.

• The Company that Planned the Route - Every road and neighborhood isn’t designed and equipped to handle huge trucks, and a lot of bridges have weight and height restrictions in place. To make sure they travel safely, busy trucking companies will often choose to contract these routes out to other companies. If this business developed a course that proved unsafe and dangerous for trucks, then a lawsuit can be filed against that business.

  

• The Company that Loaded the Cargo - In some situations, the business which owned the cargo manages to put it onto the truck and sometimes another company is hired for that. If that company which loaded the cargo did so in a poor manner, this can cause a wreck leading to injuries that the company is responsible for. Cargo in trucks has to fit in the 80,000 pound weight limit, but lots of companies try to carry additional goods at a lower cost by neglecting this rule. There’s a purpose for weight limits because an overloaded truck is more prone to overturn and cause far more damage when it has a wreck.

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  When the company that puts the cargo on doesn’t fasten it enough, the cargo can become loose during transport, which leads to a load shift, a toppled trailer and then an accident with other cars. If you’re dealing with flatbeds, poorly loaded cargo can be sprayed onto the road can create plenty of panic and carnage for cars traveling behind the truck.

• Other Drivers - Just because a truck was part of an Plano or Richardson truck accident doesn’t necessarily mean the truck or its driver was the cause for the wreck taking place. Sometimes other motorists ignore their obligation to ensure the safety of other drivers, and a wreck with a truck happens, leading to damages and injuries to multiple 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 led to the truck accident that hurt you. You need the assistance of a veteran Richardson truck accident lawyer who can spot the cause and all of the key defendants, so you can get the compensation you need from all the parties who hurt you with their negligence.

Prompt Investigation is Essential

To get the required evidence to identify all of the key parties and prove your case following a North Texas truck accident, a speedy and top-notch investigation has to be done. Since a lot of different parties could have factored into the source of the accident that hurt you, a prompt investigation is needed to figure out all of the key parties and their proportionate degree of negligence. You’ll have to get proof to persuade the jury to rule in your favor, and evidence begins to vanish shortly after any truck accident. You need to retain a Richardson truck accident lawyer and put them out in search for evidence as quickly as possible. For each day you waste to get a lawyer you’re comfortable with, you’re doing serious damage to your cause since the proof you’re looking for is vanishing - witnesses leave and their memories become fuzzy, videos get deleted and the accident scene physically changes.

Our Texas truck accident lawyers at Grossman Law Offices have devoted two decades to learning the art of how to investigate Richardson truck accident cases. The minute we’re retained we travel quickly to the accident scene at no cost to our clients, so we can search for any evidence that backs up our client’s case. We do what’s needed to reach the truth - obtaining and securing all of the key vehicles, taking photos, scouring for video evidence, looking through police reports, measuring the length between skid marks and points of impact, doing forensic tests, locating and talking to witnesses and gathering key evidence that can be used in court later.

You should already go ahead and expect that you’re behind the defense team’s investigation they’ve started. Most of the time, the trucking or insurance company gets their investigators to the accident scene shortly after it’s been reported by the trucker. The defense investigators could care less about determining how the accident occurred; they just want to spot evidence which shows your injuries were because of your own negligence. If you don’t have your attorneys at the accident scene doing their own investigation, you will be unaware on if they’ve been involved in evidence tampering or did a credible investigation. If they locate evidence to show your negligence, then they can turn your claim down if they’re able to show you were responsible or decrease the damages owed if they can prove you contributed to the accident with your own negligence.

One case we recently dealt with in Plano illustrates the need for a quick and well-done investigation. In this situation, our firm was retained by a driver of a passenger car after he was in a late night truck accident. The trucking company attempted to say our client didn’t have any headlights in their car when the accident took place. Once we joined the case, our client’s demolished car had already been taken from the scene of the accident to a salvage yard that was not far away. Once our attorneys spotted the car at the junkyard, they saw that the headlights were indeed missing. Immediately we were worried about our client getting any compensation, but we noticed a surveillance system mounted in the salvage yard, so they obtained a copy of the footage. This specific system was designed to tape over its memory every 48 hours, and we got to the footage right before it was erased. The video revealed a worker from the trucking company illegally taking the headlights out of the car and leaving the premises with them. During the trial, the trucking company’s defense team was trying to say that our client’s car didn’t have any headlights when the accident took place, but we had actual proof that revealed their deceptive tactics and went on to get compensation for our client. If our client wasted an extra day before hiring us, the video would have vanished, the chances at getting restitution would have been destroyed and the trucking company would have been able to commit felonious evidence tampering and not get caught.

Our Richardson truck accident attorneys will often deal with lies and deception, so you need to hire an attorney quick so they can begin a timely and thorough investigation as quickly as they can. In some situations, our investigators can still discover the key proof long after a Texas truck accident has taken place, but the quick we start investigating, the better our chances of getting the necessary proof to get you the compensation you deserve. Don’t wait any longer in talking with a Richardson truck accident lawyer.

Common Obstacles that a Plaintiff Must Overcome

Just because you’ve filed an insurance claim after a car accident doesn’t mean you’re ready to work a truck accident lawsuit on your own. Trucking insurance policies are valued at 50 times that of a regular passenger car. Because of the huge size of commercial trucking insurance policies, litigation for Plano truck accidents is considerably more complex than your regular car passenger car case. Plaintiffs who try to save money on lawyer’s fees with self representation wind up costing themselves far more with decreased or totally denied compensation. People with no legal acumen or young law graduates become frustrated when filing truck accident lawsuits due to several common challenges: establishing the burden of proof, the size of the insurance policies, self-insured trucking companies and truckers who try to lie.

Burden of Proof

The law doesn’t force defendants to instantly pay you anything after you’ve been hurt in a Richardson, TX truck accident unless you, being the plaintiff, can properly show they need to. If you want to get the proper restitution you want for your injuries, you’ll have to prove your case with credible evidence. Even when other kinds of negotiation are available to settle a claim, evidence has to be spotted to make the defense or insurance negotiate in good faith. You’ll have to establish each of these four necessary components of a trucking accident case:

• Duty - First thing you have to do is show the defendant owed you a duty to ensure your safety by acting reasonably. The law has set in the legal duty of care owed for particular circumstances and for each group depending on their link. In Plano truck accident cases, meeting this element can be simple, since every motorist has to operate their car in a way that normally would ensure the well being of other motorists, pedestrians and passengers on the highway.

• Breach - If you want to prove your case, the next thing is to show the defendant or defendants violated the obligation 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 make or through neglect when a normal person would probably do something. You’ve got to gather evidence that proves the defendant disregarded their legal duty of action through action or neglect if you want to prove this duty was broken. Along with that you’ll need a Richardson truck accident lawyer who knows how to use that evidence in a manner that will help persuade a jury to agree that defendant or defendants acted poorly.

• Causation - Besides establishing the defendant or defendant’s breach of legal duty to you, but you’ve also got to show your injuries were caused directly because of this violation. Since different groups could have factored into or directly caused a Richardson semi-truck accident, it takes credible evidence to make a jury see a causal relationship was evident with the defendant’s breach of their obligation to you and the harm inflicted on you as a result. If you can’t do this, the defendant or defendant’s best option at avoiding blame is to put the fault directly on the victim for causing their injuries with their own negligent behavior.

  

• Damages - After you’ve shown the first three parts needed for a victorious truck accident lawsuit, you’ve got to then prove the damages the defendant owed for the injuries you’ve sustained. Legally, damages aren’t about your injuries or property damage, but instead refer to the compensation the defendant owed for causing that harm. The plaintiff has the option to go after damages for medical costs, lost income, pain and suffering, lost earning ability, property damaged and other losses sustained in the Richardson commercial truck accident.

  However, you just can’t request compensation immediately and think you’ll get it. You’ve got to put forth evidence that shows your losses but also how you totaled the monetary value of those damages. Usually, defendants will debate the amount of compensation the plaintiff has put forth and will come back with their own estimation of damages owed that will probably decrease the total overall amount of harmed incurred by the plaintiff. In order to prove the defendant low-balled its total, you’ve got to provide rock-solid evidence to show your numbers are accurate.

  How much is your case worth? Since damages like pain and suffering or loss of earning capacity are extremely subjective an open to debate, totaling damages can be tough for those not accustomed to this task. It’s very tough to put a price on pain and suffering or estimating lost earning capacity by figuring the total amount for hypothetical raises and inflation. In court, you’ve got one shot to total the amount of compensation you deserve. For the past two decades, our Richardson & Plano truck accident lawyers have been involved in damage estimation, and we have worked in enough cases just like yours to factor in all your losses and reach an estimation of compensation that will give you the restitution you deserve.

Not being able to establish any of these elements guarantees you’ll also not be able to get compensated for the harm you’ve sustained. You’ve got to have the assistance of an experienced truck accident lawyer - definitely if it means you’re going to trial. Years of experience trying Texas truck accident cases has helped our lawyers develop the ability to devise a solid legal strategy that meets the necessary burdens of proof and moves the jury to rule for you.

Enormous Insurance Policies

Federal regulations require that trucking companies obtain huge insurance policies for protection against accidents, injuries and fatalities that happen from doing business with big rigs. Because of this many under the false impression that they’ll get quickly compensation and there won’t be problems. Most of the time that’s not true. Because insurance policies can be valued at 50 times the coverage for regular passenger cars, the insurance companies will usually devote 50 times the energy and effort to defend those policies.

With everything that’s on the line, insurance companies will learn on their toughest and most qualified insurance adjusters to work the settlement negotiations. This process involving truck accident claims is probably brand new to you, but these adjusters are the very elite and work these claims on a regular basis. They’re skilled at taking an accident victim’s initial state of shock and basic trust in their neighborhood insurance agent, then turning it and using it against them to deny their claim. They make up a fake type of friendship try to get the victim to believe they want to really help them get compensated - but first they’ve got some basic questions to ask. They really don’t care about helping; they just want to make sure company profits grow with your denied claim. After that they hit you with tons of questions that basically just reword the same statements endlessly in an effort to get you to make a mistake and say you were liable for your accident. If they get this, then there’s a good shot that your claim can be denied. The best move here is that you need to have as little contract with an insurance adjuster as you can, so hire a veteran North Texas truck accident lawyer and let your legal team deal with the harassing questions from the adjusters. In fact, we advise clients not to talk with a representative from the insurance company without a lawyer there as a shield. If you obtain the services of our firm, our lawyers will take over and make sure all conversations with the insurance company are routed through our offices. That also decreases the chances of you accidentally admitting your own liability.

Sometimes aggressive adjusters will even attempt to get the accident victims to wave their rights to file a lawsuit for a paltry settlement offer. It’s a solid idea to avoid the stress and uncertainty of a jury trial, but you don’t want to take a settlement offer that doesn’t properly assist you with the harm you’ve dealt with. Only a lawyer with an extensive track record of success can get the insurance company to provide a fair settlement, since they’re fearful of losing far more in a jury trial.

The insurance company will also try to avoid liability for your injuries by using a skilled defense team that can spot legal loopholes and procedural problems that will endanger some plaintiffs’ chances at securing compensation. You need a veteran Texas truck accident lawyer who can match wits with the defense teams and their attacks. Our attorneys have won several millions from every well-known insurance company around, and we’ve learned how to anticipate everything they’d throw out.

Self-Insured Companies can be more Treacherous

Instead of getting a regular insurance policy, some trucking companies set aside a sum of their assets to be used as protect for accidents. While the federal government oversees the insurance industry, which requires all businesses to be registered, adjusters to be licensed and ethical standards to be followed, self-insured companies don’t have to follow these ethical guidelines and constraints. That’s why self-insured companies have earned a reputation for being unethical and impossible to work with in negotiations. Most of the time if you wind up in a settlement with a self-insured business, you’ll be working with an employee of that company. Since this individual probably is paid by some type of profit sharing, they have every reason to turn down your claim. This officer would basically be handing over their money if they let you get the restitution you’re entitled to. With their income at stake, self-insured companies put their own interests ahead of the injured victims’ and will turn to improper acts like bullying witnesses, evidence tampering or even harassing victims with continuous threats.

If a self-insured company has resorted to bullying or pushing you around, then you can get them to quit with the help of a Richardson truck accident lawyer. The moment we’re hired, our attorneys can pressure self-insured businesses to operate in good faith and threaten legal action if needed.

Truck Drivers Can’t be Trusted

We always want to believe people are upstanding and decent, but the trucker who caused your injuries has plenty of reason to lie. If the trucker was discovered to have hurt others while being negligent, then he or she will be handed a pink slip in a matter of time, if they haven’t been let go already. A negligent truck will also have a tough time finding another job similar like that with a glaring mark like that attached to his or her record. Factor in the job market and economy, and your normal stand-up truckers will turn to lying so they can protect their jobs and ability to provide for their families. To get the compensation you need, you’ve got to show the trucker was engaged in lying.

Our Richardson Texas truck accident lawyers have learned how to investigate and spot the key evidence that will expose the truckers’ lies. We’ll take apart their credibility with all the available evidence to prove they were indeed lying.

Just in the same fashion that insurance adjusters try to get victims to admit their negligence with tons of questions, our attorneys will develop questions for the deposition that are intended to truck the truck driver into admitting their own lies. The Richardson truck accident lawyers at Grossman Law Offices have deposed countless witnesses over the last two decades and we know how to ask questions in a way to shine a light on the truckers’ deception.

How We Can Help

If you’ve been hurt or a loved one has died in a trucking accident in Plano or Richardson, you need to get a truck accident lawyer to protect your legal rights and make sure you get the fair compensation you’re owed. From when we first file papers to the resolution, our attorneys will tackle every detail of your case and see to it that you’re constantly updated with any changes as they occur. With us, you get these services:

• An investigation to determine how the accident happened.
• Identifying all the key parties and filing comprehensive claims and lawsuits against each individual or group.
• Finding the right evidence so you can meet your burden of proof.
• Using our successful reputation to pressure the defendants.
• Shielding victims from harassing telephone calls and questions coming from insurance adjusters.
• Using a strong investigation and deposition strategy to reveal the truckers’ lies.

  Did You Know?

  

  Michael Grossman has been fighting for 18 wheeler accident victims` rights for over 20 years. Call Mike to discuss your case. 1-855-326-0000

• Planning a strategy to persuade the jury to lean towards our clients and rule for them.
• Forcing self-insured companies to act appropriately and negotiate in good faith.
• Making sure our clients get proper medical car.

The odds are that the defense has already concluded its investigation and finished its case against you. By waiting any longer to obtain legal counsel, you’re doing serious harm in your ability to get the adequate restitution you deserve. Call us toll free today at 1-855-326-0000 for a free consultation and to see how we can aid you like thousands of others throughout the state.