Fatal 18-Wheeler Accidents

If You've Lost a Family Member in a 18-Wheeler Accident, Our Attorneys Can Help You Recover the Compensation Your Family Deserves

Beyond any doubt, our society depends upon 18-wheelers to fulfill its transportation needs, but there’s also no doubt that commercials trucks are enormous, dangerous vehicles that sadly occasionally lead to fatal accidents. If you lose a loved one in a fatal 18-wheeler accident, then you have the right to pursue wrongful death litigation against the responsible party; however, you will need the help of a skilled fatal 18-wheeler accident attorney to be successful.

At Grossman Law Offices, Michael Grossman and his team of wrongful death and personal injury attorneys have been handling cases involving fatal truck accidents for 20 years. Through our experiences, we’ve come to intimately sympathize with intense emotional turmoil and sense of loss that the surviving loved ones are struggling with after a fatal commercial vehicle accident. Moreover, we’re aware of how challenging and intimidating it can be for the loved ones to attempt to deal with their own wrongful death litigation when struck with intense grief. Wrongful death litigation involving 18-wheeler accidents can be worth millions of dollars, so commercial trucking companies will expend great effort and expense to fight these claims. In order to deal with such complicated laws and legal processes, you need a skilled and experienced fatal truck accident attorney like those at Grossman Law Offices. While there is nothing we can do to replace your loved one or bring him or her back to you, but we can help you secure compensation for your loss and grief. First, let us explain a little more about wrongful death litigation involving 18-wheelers, so you can better understand the legal situation in which your family has been thrust.

Reasons for Pursuing Litigation

Both for the personal benefit of your family and the overall benefit of society, there are three extremely important reasons to pursue litigation after fatal 18-wheeler accidents:

• In most fatal 18-wheeler accidents, no criminal charges will be filed against the liable parties, so the only way to bring the negligent entities to justice is through a wrongful death lawsuit.
• The only way to discourage negligence in trucking is to seek compensation from those entities that cause the deaths of others with their negligence. If these parties are left unpunished, then they will only commit more acts of negligence, leading to more accidents, injuries, and deaths.
• Your family deserves to be compensated for the loss of your loved one. Particularly, if the deceased loved one was your family’s primary wage earner, then your family will need to be compensated in order to keep functioning. Moreover, shouldn’t you also be compensated for the emotional trauma your family has been forced to suffer, not to mention the irreparable hole that has been left in your family?

Two Methods for Seeking Compensation

Just because you’re seeking compensation through a wrongful death lawsuit after a fatal 18-wheeler accident doesn’t mean you’re actually going to have to go to court to settle the matter. In many cases, your lawyer will negotiate a settlement rather than take the case to court. Most 18-wheelers are commercially owned and operated, and the company that owns the truck is likely to have some form of insurance. When this is the case, you will be negotiating an insurance settlement with a shrewd insurance adjuster.

Even when the truck was not adequately insured, you may be able to negotiate a fair settlement with the defendant who caused the accident. The problem is that the law does not compel the defendant to pay your family the compensation it is owed; thus, it’s not often easy to encourage them to come to the negotiating table in good faith. When negotiating a settlement, you need the protection of a well-seasoned fatal truck accident attorney, or you risk being taken advantage of. If the defendant knows the evidence is stacked against him or her, then he or she may offer the victim’s family a quick but sub-par settlement that is designed only to prevent the trucking or insurance company from having to pay the true value of the family’s losses.

On the other hand, a skilled attorney who presents the legitimate threat of losing more at court inspires defendants and insurance companies to make settlement offers that are fair and not just an attempt to connive the victim’s family. If you don’t have an attorney, and the defendant or his or her insurer makes a settlement offer, then you must never agree to the offer without first consulting with a lawyer. When you agree to a settlement, you surrender your right to sue in the future, so you must make certain you are being fairly compensated. In the state of Arkansas, the need for an attorney is even greater. In Texas, every grieving family member can file a separate wrongful death lawsuit against the defendant. However, in Arkansas, the family must name a personal representative of the family who then files one comprehensive wrongful death lawsuit for the entire family. You will need a crafty and experienced wrongful death attorney to deal with such a complex legal issue successfully.

When talks break down, there’s another option: taking the case to court. In a wrongful death civil lawsuit, the victim’s family, also known as the plaintiffs, carry the burden of proof for convincing the court that the defendant or defendants is liable for the death of the victim. In order to do so, the plaintiffs will need to prove:

• Duty – that the defendant had a legal responsibility owed to the victim. When it comes to 18-wheeler accidents, this usually requires the responsibility to operate the 18-wheeler in such a way that is safe for the other drivers, passengers, and pedestrians on the road.
• Breach – that the defendant neglected to perform the required duty. For example, when a truck driver falls asleep at the wheel and runs a stoplight. Since there are many different parties who play a role in the transportation of goods by commercial truck, there are many different parties that can breach duty. It’s not a matter merely of a truck driver who didn’t do his or her job, but could also involve a mechanical defect that could be blamed on either the manufacturer or mechanic, or possibly the negligence of the company that loaded the cargo.
• Causation – that the breach of duty resulted in the accident and the death of the victim.
• Damages – that the death of the victim resulted in measurable financial harm to the victim’s family.

Damages in Fatal Truck Accidents

At Grossman Law Offices, we know that your family is reeling emotionally right now, and the thought of putting a price tag on your anguish seems distasteful and even insulting. But, we also know that it’s often impossible for a family to put their lives back together following the death of a loved one without adequate financial compensation – the monetary strains are just too great. We understand that it’s just as important to you to be adequately compensated as to hold the liable party accountable.

In Texas, family members can seek two forms of damages wrongful damages and survival damages, but in Arkansas, the family must file just one lawsuit for the entire family. Husbands, wives, children, parents, and some dependent siblings can seek wrongful death damages which compensate these family members for the harm they’ve suffered due to the loss of their loved ones, including compensation for:

• Any medical expenses accumulated before the death of the victim.
• Funeral expenses.
• Loss of the economic backing previously provided by the victim.
• Loss of the consortium and unique familial love provided by the deceased.
• Emotional and mental distress felt by the family members.

Only the victim’s closest living relative can seek survival damages in Texas, but in Arkansas this sum is divided up by the entire immediate family. Survival damages allow either the family or the closest living relative to pursue the compensation that would have been due to the victim had he or she merely been hurt in the accident. Such survival damages may include restitution for:

• Additional medical treatment the victim would have required for his or her injuries.
• Physical pain and suffering experienced during the accident.
• Mental and emotional distress that would have been felt by the victim during recovery.
• A percentage of lost salary during recovery.
• Any lost earning potential due to crippling injuries.

In a fatal 18-wheeler accident, the total sum of all of these different damages can be a truly exorbitant amount of money. In Texas, seeking survival damages and wrongful death damages requires separate claims, strategies, and tactics; whereas, in Arkansas, it merely calls for one confusing, comprehensive claim.

Importance of a Quick and Diligent Investigation

When it comes to fatal truck accidents, it’s not always easy to determine exactly who caused or contributed to the cause of the accident with his or her negligence. In fact, it’s fairly common for several parties to have done something to help cause the wreck. Most notably, the truck driver may have driven the truck unsafely, causing an accident. However, a legal concept called respondeat superior holds the employer responsible for the negligent actions of its employees. Thus, if the trucker was negligent, so was the trucking company. However, in trucking accidents, there’s a strong chance a negligent third party either caused or contributed to the cause of the wreck. If a mechanical flaw in the truck or its parts caused the accident, then either the manufacturer or the truck or the part, or the mechanic charged with its care would be responsible. If poorly secured cargo caused a load-shift that caused the wreck, then the company charged with loading the cargo could be liable. If the company that planned the truck’s route sent it someplace unsuited for trucking, then it could be liable. If the truck driver stopped to drink in a bar and was served beyond the point of noticeable intoxication, then the drinking establishment could be held accountable. Moreover, if the negligence of another driver caused the wreck, then he or she could also be held accountable. You need the help of an 18-wheeler accident attorney with significant experience investigating truck accident scenes in order to have the expertise to both identify the liable parties and find the necessary evidence to prove the case against them.

To illustrate the importance of a quick and thorough investigation, consider a case from our past. The driver of a passenger car died after a night-time collision with an 18-wheeler, in which the trucker attempted to make a turn that was too tight, only to get his trailer stuck, blocking the road. (You would be stunned to learn how regularly this type of accident occurs with 18-wheelers). Oncoming traffic could not safely pass, nor could the drivers see the trailer since only the taillights by the curb were illuminated. The loved one of our clients rounded a curve and smashed into the trailer before he could react. The force of impact sheered the roof of the car and killed the driver on impact. After being hired the next day, our investigators raced to the scene only to find the victim’s car had already been taken to a salvage yard. Upon investigating the vehicle, we were stunned to learn the car had no headlights. No, the headlights weren’t broken, but instead they were absent altogether. While we were concerned for the fate of our client’s case, we didn’t give up hope and asked to view the footage on the salvage yard’s surveillance equipment. The footage showed an agent of the trucking company breaking into the junkyard to steal the victim’s headlights. When the trucking company attempted to claim later that the victim had been driving without headlights, we had the video to prove their deception.

Had our investigators not acted immediately, on the contrary, the case would have likely been lost and the trucking company would have succeeded with its nefarious act. The salvage yard’s surveillance cameras taped over their own memory every 48 hours. Had the family of the deceased waited another day to think about hiring a lawyer, the evidence would have been gone and so would have any chance of being fairly compensated. Without a time-tested fatal 18-wheeler accident attorney protecting your rights and investigating the scene, the evidence you need to win your case could just as easily be lost.

At Grossman Law Offices, we know that only a quick and thorough investigation will get to the bottom of what happened at your accident scene. When it comes to wrecks on busy roadways, the evidence is swept away quickly, eye witnesses become hard to find, and the trucking company may even tamper with the evidence. The only way to give yourself the best chance of winning your case and bringing all of the liable parties to justice is finding a lawyer you can trust and putting him or her on the trail of evidence before it is gone.

Enormous Commercial Trucking Insurance Policies

What makes commercial truck accident cases differ from passenger car wrecks is the sheer amount of the money involved, as commercial trucks and their drivers are usually safeguarded by huge insurance policies – in many cases as much as 50 times the size of a standard passenger car policy. With much more to lose, the insurance company is much more willing to spend more of its assets and time trying to fight the wrongful death claim. In both Texas and Arkansas, the insurer only needs to prove the victim was more than 50 percent to blame for the accident to avoid paying compensation. Thus, in order to avoid a multimillion-dollar verdict, the insurance adjusters will attack your loved one’s good name, trying any means they can to suggest he or she caused his or her own death with his or her own negligent actions or inaction. Insurance companies will entrust this critical task only to their shrewdest and most experienced adjusters. These are people who have made a career and reputation out of rejecting other people’s accident claims.

Over the years, insurance companies have gotten clever about avoiding paying the compensation the families of victims deserve. Instead of just flatly rejecting claims with an aggressive attitude, they will try to pretend like they’re trying to help the victim’s family secure compensation – but only if the victim’s family can answer some simple questions. Then, they’ll blast you with a barrage of confusing queries designed to get you to mistakenly admit your loved one’s negligence for the fatal accident. As we mentioned, these are experienced adjusters, so they know how to trick you into saying something you regret. If that doesn’t work, they may try to get you to agree to a settlement that is far less than you deserve in exchange for you signing a release of liability form that surrenders your right to sue.

When dealing with the insurance company, your best tactic is to let your lawyer handle all communications. A settlement might be in your best interests, but only if it’s a fair settlement. Let a skilled 18-wheeler accident attorney handle all of the insurance company’s questions and assess of any its offers to ensure equity. At Grossman Law Offices, our fatal truck accident attorneys will not allow you to fall for the insurance adjusters’ tricks.

Accident Recreation Specialists and Defense Lawyers

Whether or not you respond to your loved one’s death by hiring a lawyer, you need to know that the defense won’t be wasting any time. Commercial truck companies and their insurers will waste no time in dispatching one of the defense lawyers to the scene of a fatal 18-wheeler accident to begin its investigation. However, don’t make the mistake of thinking they’re interested in justice. The defense’s only motivation is to find any evidence it can use to suggest that it wasn’t negligently to blame for the fatal wreck – that means blaming the victim or someone else. As we’ve told you already, this can mean using what evidence that can find or sometimes even altering what evidence is there.

Not only do you need a lawyer to conduct an investigation to prove your case, but also to keep the defense honest. At Grossman Law Offices, we race to the scene to begin our investigation as soon as we’re hired. We isolate and lock down the vehicles involved so that we can search for clues, and we scour the scene of the wreck for any available evidence: videos and photographs, eye-witnesses, forensic evidence, truck logs, the state of the scene of the wreck. Just like the defense, we know the critical importance of a thorough investigation.

Grossman Law Offices Can Help You

If you attempt to handle your own wrongful death claim involving an 18-wheeler, you’re making an enormous blunder that you and your family will regret. The threat of a lawsuit means nothing to an insurance company unless it’s a threat posed by an attorney with a track record of beating them in court. Commercial trucking insurance companies welcome lawsuits from the inexperienced, because they have teams of defense lawyers at their beck and call just waiting to deal with these situations. They know that they can rely upon the lack of experience of non-lawyers to overcome any amount of evidence against them. The complexity of the legal process allows them to confuse laymen with procedural requirement. If you don’t know how to submit demand packets, respond to a list of admissions, react to a counter-suit, or prove up damages, then you will simply not be able to obtain the compensation you deserve and will likely end up with nothing at all.

You will not be given any special treatment by the court and will be expected to perform just as if you are any other attorney. Don’t allow yourself to be counted among the innumerable plaintiffs who have ended up with nothing. You owe it to your family member to make sure the party or parties that caused his or her death are brought to justice and made to pay.

For the past 20 years, our fatal 18-wheeler accident attorneys at Grossman Law Offices, have been helping grieving family members get the compensation they deserve trucking companies, their insurers, and negligent third parties. Thanks to our efforts, hundreds of grieving Texans and Arkansans have walked with many millions of dollars after high-profile fatal trucking accident cases. Knowing the necessity for speedy action, we conduct a timely and thorough investigation into the cause of the accident as soon as we’re hired, with an emphasis both on identifying all liable parties and building a strong case against them. In the last two decades, we’ve taken on and beaten every major insurance company in the country. Both the defense lawyers and the insurance adjusters are personally familiar with the threat we present in court. Thus, they are that much more likely to offer our clients a fair settlement to avoid a costly trial. Our firm is devoted to doing everything it can to help you and your family overcome the tragedy that has beset it. We can help your family begin its painful recovery, so if you have lost a loved one in an 18-wheeler accident, contact Grossman Law Offices today for a free consultation at 1-855-589-5645 (toll free). You can tell us your tragic tale, and we will explain your legal options, answer your questions, and inform you of how we can be of assistance. We’re waiting to help you bring the liable parties who caused your loved one’s death to justice.