Can you share an example of a tractor trailer accident that your firm has represented?
A recent case that comes to mind involves a man who was in a truck and was hit by an 18-wheeler. He suffered back and neck injuries and after probably twenty depositions, which are just another fancy way of taking oral statements under oath in writing, the defendants offered a whopping $5,000 to settle the case. We went all the way to trial and got a $1.6 million verdict. Although this is a recent story, it's kind of a typical one which accurately portrays the way some trucking companies behave. Even though they are in the wrong, even though they have hit and injured a person, they refuse to take responsibility for their actions. It requires a lawyer to go down in front of a judge and jury and convince the jury that responsibility must be taken on behalf of the trucker or company at fault.
Another example of a trucking case and some of the different twists and turns that often occur is as follows. There have been cases in which an 18-wheeler on the side of the road will literally bump the car into oncoming traffic. As a result, there could be an accident on the other side of the road. It is important to have a lawyer who understands trucking laws in case the 18-wheeler shows up and blames the other vehicle driver for the accident. This could spark the driver to then blame the trucker and it becomes a total blame shifting game from there on out. Therefore, it is vitally important that your lawyer understands those types of circumstances.
In the case described above, there are appropriate steps that should be taken. For example, your attorney needs to actually retrieve the rest logs of the trucker in order to track their sleep schedule. Doing so could uncover evidence that in fact the trucker shouldn't have been driving at all. The lack of sleep and failure to rest might have started the accident, and arriving at the scene promptly to assess the circumstances of the situation will help prove a trucker's guilt. Reconstruction of the accident scene can allow us to see that what the insurance companies are claiming is not really true. We can tell the jury how it really happened and then have an expert come in and conduct video animation to show the juries how the accident truly came about.
In all cases, especially ones similar to the situation described above, it is very important to hire an attorney early to ensure that the evidence is still fresh when it is investigated by one of our associates. We can put together the pieces that led up to the accident. Ultimately, we will have different experts re-simulate the rolls of each party involved in the accident in order to prove that had the trucking company handled the incidents of the accident different, our client would have lived or sustained less substantial injuries.