Michael Grossman

Our attorneys won $31,000,000 in a Dallas County Court judgment against a Fort Worth bar who over-served a customer, ultimately resulting in a serious car accident.

Following a fatal 18-wheeler accident, the family of a deceased woman hired Grossman Law Offices to investigate the matter and report our findings. The family initially knew very little about what happened in the accident, only that the mother of the family was killed and that there was an 18-wheeler involved. Our attorneys mobilized immediately upon being hired, and, along with our accident reconstructionist, conducted a thorough analysis of the scene. Early in the case, it became apparent what had happened: The driver of an 18-wheeler made an abrupt lane change, forcing our client's car into the grass median of the interstate. Once the vehicle drove into the grass, traction was lost, causing the car to swerve back onto the highway wherein the vehicle then struck a parked 18-wheeler. It was obvious that our clients had a case, and they instructed us to move forward with a wrongful death suit. However, what was less clear is which trucking company was primarily responsible. On one hand, it could be argued that the initial 18-wheeler set the whole chain of events into motion when that driver made an illegal lane change. On the other hand, the second 18-wheeler was illegally parked in an emergency lane, in violation of federal statute, and it could easily be said that if he had not been parked there, the victim would have lived since the car would have just been able to come to a stop on the road's shoulder. Naturally, this fact pattern created an opportunity for the two trucking companies to point the finger at one another. Our attorneys aggressively litigated the case, never allowing either defendant to escape responsibility for their contribution to the accident. Further, it would be a monumental understatement to suggest that this case took a lot of effort to successfully resolve. Our attorneys took the depositions of dozens of people involved, travelling to several different states in the process. Further, we invested many hundreds of hours of man power into the case. Our philosophy was simple: if we allow the defendants a moment to catch their breath, they will treat the case as less of a priority. So, from the very beginning until the the case was resolved, we made sure that no time passed from one milestone to the next. Eventually, the defendants relented and the case was resolved on the courthouse steps. From start to finish, a case that ordinarily would take most firms years to litigated, was resolved in 13 months, due entirely to our attorneys' diligence.

Our attorneys were hired to pursue a wrongful death truck accident case following a fatal wreck in West Texas. This case was certainly important to our firm, the same as any other wrongful death case, but it took on a new level of significance because of the horrific injustice that almost occurred thanks to a botched police investigation. As we ultimately learned from analyzing the physical evidence and from talking to numerous witnesses who all told the same story, the accident occurred as a large oilfield truck entered I-20, immediately cutting across multiple lanes and into the "fast lane," wherein this truck forced a small passenger car off of the roadway and into oncoming traffic, causing a fatal head-on collision. As if that was not bad enough, the truck driver then fled the scene. However, the police report told a completely different (and utterly inaccurate) story. Essentially, the police made it sound like the deceased passenger car driver (our clients' father) just arbitrarily left the roadway and crashed into the other vehicle, killing himself in the process. The family thought that did not sound right, and they brought us into the case soon after the accident, which proved to be one of the most important decisions they ever made. Since we were able to conduct a thorough investigation while the evidence was still available, we were able to identify that the police figured the accident all wrong. Our research soon led us to eye witnesses to the accident. Said witnesses, an entire family sharing a minivan, all saw the same thing. They explained how the driver of the commercial vehicle ran the other car off the road and then fled, but they also explained how they pursued the commercial truck driver and took down his license plate information. Once the driver realized they were following them, he tried to run them too off the road. These witnesses then helped us identify other witnesses who were at the scene, and as more and more good Samaritans came forward, we were able to completely dispel the "official" version of what happened in the accident. Nevertheless, since the police report ultimately showed an inaccurate fact pattern, the defendants were emboldened, and they denied liability in the case for many months. Eventually, we uncovered evidence that showed that the truck driver A) had worked nearly 80 hours in five days, B) was likely on drugs at the time of the accident, C) had attempted to tamper with witness testimony, and D) that he likely conspired with his employer to cover his tracks. Once we got this evidence under the spotlight, the defendants accepted responsibility, and the case was resolved soon thereafter.

Our firm was hired after a woman lost her husband of 10 years, due to the carelessness of a truck driver. Our client's husband, a truck driver himself, was killed when the driver of a different tractor trailer failed to yield the right of way and cut him off, forcing the decedent to collide into the trailer of the other rig. Our client was absolutely devastated by the loss of her husband. She not only suffered severe emotional distress, she also endured financial upheaval, because her husband was the sole breadwinner. Despite being entirely in the wrong, the defendants tried to invoke several "novel" defense theories to downplay their liability. Our attorneys were able to defeat these arguments, early on in the case, and the defedants were left with only one viable argument: the victim was not wearing his seatbelt. This was a fallacious argument for two reasons. First, the damage to the victim's tractor was so severe that no one could conclusively determine whether he was wearing his seatbelt or not. Second, because of the severity of the impact, wearing a seatbelt would have made no difference. In order to refute this argument, we took a two-pronged approach. We hired a medical doctor who provided an opinion to dispel the myth that the decedent would have survived had he been wearing his seatbelt. And more importantly, we filed the case in a venue where evidence about seatbelt usage was inadmissable. After a few rounds of depositions that did not go well for the defendants, they came to the table and offered to mediate. The case was settled at mediation. Prior to his passing, the decedent worked very hard to provide for his family, so that his wife did not have to work, and was able to pursue her dream of a college education. Resolving this case favorably helped our client see this dream come true.

Our firm was contacted by an out-of-state attorney who represented the family of a Georgia man who was killed while in Texas. The lawyer explained that the man lost his life in an 18-wheeler accident, and the family had tasked the lawyer with finding a firm in Texas to represent them. After extensive research, the attorney selected our firm. Now, there was a major problem with the case: the police report put the victim 100% at fault for the wreck. The police claimed that he was speeding, weaving in and out of traffic, and ultimately killed himself when he ran his motorcycle into the back of an 18-wheeler. The referring attorney explained that the family didn't believe that the decedent would be so reckless and that something must be wrong with the police report. We explained to the referring attorney that we would be glad to look into it, but we would drop the matter if the evidence corroborated the police report, since we're not in the business of pursuing frivolous cases. He understood and agreed. We soon began to suspect that the police report was wrong. We spoke to the witnesses whom the police report claimed had seen the decedent riding his motorcycle recklessly. They all said that the police misquoted them or flat-out made up what was in the report. Case in point, one gentleman, himself a tractor trailer driver, was quoted in the police report as saying that the victim sped by at twice the speed limit. The witness said that was all wrong. What he actually told the police, he insisted, was that the witness passed going twice as fast as he (the witness) was, only the witness was driving a heavy vehicle and was therefore only going about half the speed limit. So, the motorcyclist wasn't going fast, the witness was going slow. We continued to get testimony from other witnesses, and they all said the same thing: the investigating officer misquoted them. We soon learned that the officer who made the report wasn't actually the one who spoke to the witnesses. He sent a rookie officers to get statements from the witnesses and then relied on the rookie's notes to make his report. Something got lost in translation, apparently. To his credit, when we deposed the officer and presented him with our findings, he was honorable, admitted his mistake, and changed his official position. But this still left one problem unsolved. Even if the motorcyclist wasn't speeding or riding recklessly, he still crashed into the back of an 18-wheeler, so how would that be anyone's fault but his own. Unfortunatelty for the trucking company, the 18-wheeler involved in the wreck had a sophisticated GPS device installed, and we were able to use the authorirty of the court to obtain the device's data. This particular GPS hardware would record the truck's position once every ten seconds and then store it internally. Armed with this GPS data, we were able to map out the truck driver's path. Our firm was contacted by an out-of-state attorney who represented the family of a Georgia man who was killed while in Texas. The lawyer explained that the man lost his life in an 18-wheeler accident, and the family had tasked the lawyer with finding a firm in Texas to represent them. After extensive research, the attorney selected our firm. In short, he cut the motorcyclist off, and the motorcyclist couldn't avoid hitting the 18-wheeler. The trucking company's accident reconstructionist originally defended the truck driver's story. But when we showed him the GPS data and how it showed a ping which located the truck about 200 feet from the intersection and then pinged again (ten seconds later) at the point of impact, the trucking company's own expert was forced to agree that there's no way the truck driver would've had time to cover that distance and come to a stop in ten seconds, meaning he must have ran the stop sign. The trucking company soon settled with our clients. While this was not the biggest case we've ever had, it demonstrates what our attorneys are capable of. Unquestionably, most attorneys would have given up as soon as they saw a police report that was problematic. But we followed the evidence and were ultimately able to help our clients obtain fair compensation for their loss.

In this case, we represented the family of a middle-aged woman who was killed in a car accident. The incident occurred as another vehicle struck the car that the decedent was a passenger in head-on on the passenger side. The impact resulted in catastrophic injuries which claimed the life of the decedent. Our attorneys were hired soon after the accident and we launched a full investigation. Through the course of our investigation, it was soon determined that the head-on collision was caused by a failed component in the defendant's vehicle (the particulars of which cannot be elaborated upon per the resolution agreement). Suit was filed against the manufacturer of said component and litigation commenced. The case was successfully resolved through litigation.