Dallas Tractor Trailer Accidents

Why You Need a Dallas Tractor Trailer Accident Attorney Working on Your Case

You may already know what to do after you’ve been injured in an ordinary car accident. Most of us know how to exchange contact and insurance information with the other driver, contact the police, and file a claim against an insurance policy. But what happens if your accident isn’t an ordinary car accident, but rather a collision with a tractor trailer?

Just as a truck accident is no ordinary car accident, truck accident litigation is no ordinary litigation. If your accident involved a truck, chances are your case will involve complexities that only an experienced truck accident attorney is prepared to handle.

In this article, we’ll discuss some of the basics of truck accident law, including some of the ways that truck accident litigation differs from ordinary car accident litigation. Topics we’ll discuss include:

• Identifying who’s at fault for your accident
• Conducting an investigation
• Settling your case
• Taking your case to trial
• How truck accident cases differ from car accident cases
• What a Dallas tractor trailer accident attorney can do to help

Because of the complexities involved in truck accident litigation, it usually takes a Dallas tractor trailer accident attorney to accurately apply the law to the facts of a case and make sure that your rights are protected. While this article provides basic information about truck accident litigation, it’s best to call Fort Worth personal injury lawyer Michael Grossman for a free individualized assessment of your situation so you know your rights.

Identifying who’s at Fault for your Accident

In a truck accident case, as in any litigation, one of the first steps is always to identify who was at fault for your injuries. Only once you understand who caused your accident will you know who to name as the defendant or defendants in your lawsuit. If you don’t name the proper defendants, you won’t be able to collect what you deserve or hold the parties responsible for your injuries accountable for their actions.

Usually, many individuals and companies play a role in getting a truck ready for a delivery. With so many parties involved, there’s a lot that could go wrong. Frequently, more than one party is responsible for causing a truck accident. When multiple parties contribute to causing an accident, all of them may be held responsible and named as defendants in your lawsuit.

There are a number of companies and individuals who are frequently responsible for causing truck accidents. Below, we’ll discuss a few of those parties and the jobs they do which may have led to your injuries.

• Truckers
  You’ve probably already considered suing the trucker for your accident. Often, truckers are among the parties most directly to blame for causing a wreck. Sometimes, truckers are just plain careless. In other instances, they cause accidents by skipping mandatory rest breaks and sitting too long behind the wheel. Studies have shown that approximately twenty percent of long-haul truckers admit to nodding off behind the wheel each month and that the likelihood of being involved in a wreck approximately doubles for truckers who drive more than eight hours continuously. Whether the trucker involved in your accident was fatigued, or just plain careless, you may hold him responsible for his actions by naming him as a defendant in your lawsuit.
  
  
• Trucking Companies
  Rarely will it be the case that the trucker is the only party you can sue for your injuries. Often, the trucking company will be on the hook as well. Sometimes, trucking companies act carelessly themselves by negligently failing to maintain their trucks or by hiring dangerous truckers. Careless trucking companies can be held directly responsible if their errors cause your accident.
  
  In other instances, a trucking company will not appear to have done anything wrong. If it truly was the trucker’s error and not the trucking company’s which caused your injuries, you may still be able to sue the trucking company under the doctrine of respondeat superior. This doctrine says that an employer can be held liable for the on-the-job actions of his employees, even if the employer didn’t do anything wrong himself. In the world of truck accident litigation, this generally means that you can sue the trucking company whenever you can sue the trucker.
  
  
• Manufacturers
  A truck is made of countless parts and the safe operation of many of them is critical to the safe operation of the entire truck. If a tire is defective or a strap holding cargo can’t bear its load, the situation may become dangerous to other motorists. Occasionally, products such as tires, straps, and other truck parts will leave the factory with a manufacturing defect or a fundamental design flaw. When a defective product causes an injury and the manufacturer is to blame, the manufacturer may be named as a defendant in a product liability lawsuit.
  
  
• Companies that Load Cargo
  In other instances, a truck itself is safe for travel, but the cargo it carries makes the truck dangerous. Most trucks may only be loaded up to 80,000 pounds, but companies that load trucks will often pack on more cargo than a truck is meant to haul in order to save the expense of making extra trips. When a truck is overloaded, it runs the risk of tipping over if a driver makes a sharp or fast turn. This obviously creates a danger to others on the road. In other instances, the company loading the truck won’t ensure that the truck’s cargo is securely fastened. Loose cargo can also create a hazard to other motorists. If the 18 wheeler involved in your accident was improperly loaded, the company responsible for loading the truck may be to blame.
  
  
• Companies that Plan Routes
  Trucks can’t drive on as many roads as cars can. Cargo restrictions, height restrictions, and weight restrictions keep trucks off certain roads. As a result, truckers rarely make up their routes as they go along. Instead, routes are planned by a company in advance. If an accident is caused because a company sent a truck along a route which it cannot safely navigate, the company that planned the route may be responsible for resulting injuries.

Truckers, trucking companies, manufacturers, companies that load cargo, and companies that plan routes are just a few of many parties which may have played a role in causing your wreck. A Dallas tractor trailer accident attorney can conduct an investigation to determine who was really to blame for your accident.

Conducting an Investigation

After a truck accident occurs, it’s important to have a Dallas tractor trailer accident attorney conduct a thorough investigation. An investigation will help you to uncover which party caused your accident, and will also allow you to gather the evidence you’ll need to prove it in court. Jurors don’t like to be told how they should decide. Instead, they like to hear, touch, and see evidence proving your case. Unless you’ve successfully found and preserved the evidence needed to back your position, you won’t win your lawsuit.

Fort Worth personal injury lawyer Michael Grossman knows how to conduct a successful investigation. In fact, at Grossman Law Offices it’s our standard procedure in nearly every truck accident case that we handle to fly to the scene of the accident to conduct our search for evidence. Of course, this is always done at no out of pocket cost to our clients. When we reach the accident scene, we record measurements, take photographs, conduct tests, talk to witnesses, find police reports, examine wreckage, and otherwise collect the evidence that you need to prove your case.

Defense attorneys understand the importance of conducting an investigation as soon as possible after an accident occurs. In fact, the defense attorneys in your case were likely dispatched to the scene of the accident mere moments after the wreck happened. They gathered their own evidence—evidence that they will try to use to prove that you caused your own accident. They get an early start on their investigations because they know that the longer they wait to conduct their search, the more likely the critical evidence will have already gone missing.

Your case should have all of the same advantages as the defense case. Make sure that you get an early start on your investigation too. The Dallas tractor trailer accident attorneys at Grossman Law Offices can usually build a solid case even if months have elapsed since your accident. The strongest cases, however, are almost always built when evidence is collected as soon after an accident as possible. Don’t hesitate to call an attorney as soon as you can.

Settling your Case

On television, lawyers are always going to court and trying cases before a jury. In real life, there’s been a trend towards settling cases out of court instead. If you’re able to reach a settlement agreement with the defendants in your case, you’ll avoid the necessity of going to trial altogether. This saves the time, money, and uncertainty always present when a case goes to trial and is entrusted to a panel of jurors.

It’s important to be wary when entertaining a settlement offer made by a defendant. While accepting a good offer can greatly benefit an accident victim, affecting a bad offer can prejudice a plaintiff’s rights forever. When you accept a settlement offer, you get your money faster and the defendant agrees to pay you in spite of the fact that no judge has ordered him to do so. On the other hand, when you agree to a settlement you give up your rights to sue the defendant for more money in the future. Defendants know this, and as a result they often try to pressure plaintiffs into accepting unfair settlement offers in order to avoid having to pay them what their cases are really worth. The defendant in your case may make you an offer before you’ve hired an attorney or even before the full extent of your injuries is known. If you accept one of these initial offers, you’ll rarely receive fair compensation for your injuries, but the settlement will prevent you from collecting what you could really be owed. It’s important to have a lawyer review an offer that the defendant makes you before you sign it.

It usually takes having a personal injury lawyer on your side to convince the defendant to settle your case fairly. Defendants make good settlement offers when they’re nervous that they’ll lose their cases in court. Having an experienced attorney in your corner is the best way to make defendants nervous. Fort Worth personal injury lawyer Michael Grossman has won cases against nearly every major insurance company in the nation. Insurers know our name and would usually prefer to settle favorably with our clients rather than face our lawyers in the courtroom.

Taking your Case to Trial

Occasionally, cases don’t settle. If you don’t reach a settlement agreement with the defendant, you’ll need to take your case to trial. At trial, the accident victim has the burden of proof. This means that the scales of justice are tilted in favor of the defendant automatically. The defendant won’t owe you a dime unless you can use evidence to tilt the scale in your favor instead. To do so, you’ll need to prove the four elements of a trucking accident case: duty, breach, causation, and damages.

Demonstrating duty means showing that the defendant owed you a duty of care to act in a way that wouldn’t lead you to get hurt. This is typically straightforward since most people owe each other at least the duty to behave as a reasonable person would behave in order to avoid causing harm to others.

Next, you must demonstrate that the defendant’s conduct constituted a breach of the duty that he owed you. Generally, this will mean presenting evidence to show precisely what the defendant did or did not do. The jurors will consider the defendant’s conduct, and, in most circumstances, will decide whether the defendant’s actions were unreasonable.

Third, you’ll need to prove causation. In other words, you’ll need to demonstrate that the defendant’s actions caused your injuries. Proving causation also requires evidence, especially because the defendant will probably argue that you or some third party was the real cause of your accident. If you aren’t able to pin the blame for your injuries definitively on the defendant, you won’t be able to recover for your injuries.

Finally, you must prove your damages. Once you prove that the defendant caused your injuries, you must show how much he owes you in compensation for them. This involves both calculating how much you’re owed, and bringing evidence of your losses to court in order to support your calculations. The amount of damages in a lawsuit is often contested by the defendant. Chances are that the defendant in your case will be calculating how much he thinks he might owe you too. His number will be much lower than yours, so it’s important to be able to prove how you reached your conclusion so that you can show the jurors that your sum is fair while the defendant’s is merely a last-resort attempt to escape responsibility.

If you’re successful at trial, you may be able to recover damages for your pain and suffering, lost wages, loss of earning capacity, medical bills, and other losses you suffered as a result of your accident. On the other hand, if you fail to bring evidence to court on even one of the elements of a truck accident claim, you’ll lose your case and recover nothing. If you plan to take your case to trial, it’s essential that you have a Dallas tractor trailer accident attorney on your side. Fort Worth personal injury lawyer Michael Grossman knows how to gather evidence and develop a trial strategy to meet your burden of proof.

How Truck Accident Cases Differ from Car Accident Cases

We’ve mentioned before that truck accident cases can involve complexities that don’t usually come up in cases following collisions between two cars. These complexities are usually enough to prevent an unrepresented plaintiff from recovering what his case is worth, but don’t get in the way of an experienced Dallas tractor trailer accident attorney. Large insurance policies, self-insured trucking companies, and truckers motivated to lie may all present obstacles to your case. Below, we’ll explain each of these potential challenges in greater detail.

Large Insurance Policies

The sheer size of the insurance policies involved in truck accident claims distinguishes truck accident cases from car accident cases. By law, trucking companies are required to carry insurance policies on their trucks. The policy held on the average truck is worth about fifty times more than the policy held on the average car. When an insured truck is involved in a wreck, insurers stand to lose fifty times more money than when a wreck involves an insured car. As a result, they’re often willing to spend up to fifty times as many resources to protect against paying out on a truck accident claim.

One resource that insurance companies use to avoid paying truck accident claims is their team of insurance adjusters. The adjusters that handle truck accident claims aren’t the same adjusters who manage ordinary car accident claims. Insurance companies reserve their top people to work on truck accident cases. The adjusters who are handling your case are probably considered among the best in their field, and received their current positions by making a habit of denying claims like yours. They likely intend to deny your claim too.

Be wary when speaking with adjusters. They tend to call accident victims to ask innocent-sounding questions about the wreck. What they’re really trying to do is to get you to admit anything that could be used against you to deny your claim. If you tell them something that could be interpreted to mean that you caused the accident or that you aren’t really hurt, your statements will be recorded and come back to haunt you. The best way to deal with adjusters is not to deal with them at all. Instead, hire a Dallas tractor trailer accident attorney to handle your case as early as you can. Our lawyers take all calls from adjusters. We don’t let them call our clients and we don’t give them the opportunity to ask our clients anything that could damage their cases.

A second resource that insurance companies use to avoid paying out on policies covering trucks is a team of specialized insurance defense attorneys. These lawyers are on staff or on retainer for the insurance company and usually handle nothing but cases like yours. Because of their specialization, they know the law inside and out, and usually have no problems having unrepresented plaintiffs’ cases dismissed on technicalities. Like the defense attorneys, Fort Worth personal injury lawyer Michael Grossman also specializes in personal injury cases like yours. Our lawyers know all of the defense attorneys’ tricks and how to protect your case from being dismissed.

Self-Insured Trucking Companies

Though most truck accident litigation involves an insurance company, sometimes an insurer will not be involved. Some trucking companies elect to be self-insured rather than to purchase a traditional insurance policy from an insurance company. These self-insured trucking companies set aside a portion of their own assets for distribution to a successful plaintiff in the event that the company is ever successfully sued by an accident victim. Dealing with a self-insured trucking company usually means negotiating directly with one of the company’s officers rather than with an insurance adjuster.

Though adjusters are ruthless professionals highly skilled in denying claims, the officers of a self-insured trucking company can often present even bigger problems for an accident victim who doesn’t have a lawyer. For one thing, these officers’ paychecks usually depend on how well the company does each year. If an officer elects to pay your claim, his paycheck will probably be a little lighter than normal. Since most officers are more concerned with their own financial situations than with yours, you can imagine why they’d be reluctant to pay you what you deserve. Additionally, officers are not licensed professionals bound to abide by ethical rules to maintain their licenses the way that adjusters are. Officers of self-insured trucking companies are known for tampering with evidence, threatening witnesses, and harassing accident victims. If the officer of a self-insured trucking company is bothering you or your loved ones, call us right away. Our Dallas tractor trailer accident attorneys can use the law to keep officers from behaving unethically.

Truckers Motivated to Lie

Finally, truckers have a strong motivation to lie about the cause of an accident, and their lies could cost you your case. Most reputable trucking companies don’t employ truckers who have a history of causing wrecks behind the wheel of a big rig. If the trucker in your case is found to have been responsible for your accident, he’ll probably lose his job. When faced with a choice between losing their jobs or telling a lie, many truckers will fib to protect their livelihoods. Usually, this means that a trucker will push the blame for an accident off of himself and onto you. If you can’t prove that the trucker is lying about the cause of the accident, you could lose your case.

Fort Worth personal injury lawyer Michael Grossman has methods to get to the truth, even when truckers are lying. Often times, our lawyers can collect enough evidence to contradict a truckers’ story that the jury will assign him little credibility. In other instances, we use depositions to get to the bottom of things. In a deposition, your lawyer asks questions to the defense witnesses, and records their answers so that they can’t change their stories before trial. By using carefully developed questioning techniques, we can often lead a trucker into admitting the truth at deposition.

What a Dallas Tractor Trailer Accident Attorney can do to Help

At Grossman Law Offices, our Dallas tractor trailer accident attorneys are experts in handling truck accident litigation. In fact, we’ve been doing it for twenty years. When we take a case, we handle it from start to finish while keeping our clients informed of our progress at every step of the way. Some services we provide in each tractor trailer accident case that we handle include:

• Making sure you get the medical attention you need, even if you didn’t think you could afford it.
• Taking all phone calls and handling all correspondence and paperwork associated with your case.
• Conducting a thorough investigation to determine who was at fault for your wreck.
• Filing lawsuits against all responsible parties.
• Collecting the evidence you’ll need to meet your burden of proof.
• Using our reputation to pressure the defendants into settling your case.
• Making sure that self-insured trucking companies’ officers behave.
• Negotiating with insurance adjusters on your behalf.
• Conducting depositions and exposing truckers’ lies.

If you or a loved one has been injured in a truck accident, you need to act now to protect your rights. Call us at 1-855-326-0000 (toll free) to find out what you need to be doing to recover what you deserve for your injuries and to ensure that the responsible parties are brought to justice.