I was in an automobile accident. A gentleman ran a red light and hit me on the side, and I needed someone to help me cover my expenses that I was out due to the accident. I am very pleased with what he has done for me and I would recommend him to anybody. 
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C. Brimage
Automobile Accident Case
Fatal Tractor Trailer Accidents
Attorney Michael Grossman Can Help You if You Have Lost a Loved One in a Fatal Tractor Trailer Accident
All over the states of Texas and Arkansas, tractor trailers are rolling down the highway constantly all day long. Delivery schedules are demanding, and truck drivers spend long hours on the road, trying to get their payloads to their destinations on time. Considering the long hours and the cumbersome size of tractor trailers, it shouldn’t be surprising that accidents involving big rigs occur frequently, and that often times those accidents are fatal due to the gargantuan size and weight of the vehicles involved.
If you have lost a family member in a fatal tractor trailer accident, then you may have the right to pursue compensation for that loss but only if you can prove a solvent party was to blame for the wreck. In order to succeed with such a legal action, you’re likely going to have to fight because defendants seldom provide restitution willingly. If that is the case, then you will need an experienced and knowledgeable tractor trailer accident attorney to guide you through the legal process or you are not likely to walk away with equitable restitution.
At Grossman Law Offices, Michael Grossman and his team of 18-wheeler accident attorneys have been dealing with personal injury and wrongful death lawsuits resulting from tractor trailer accidents for 20 years, so we know what to expect and how to help you get the compensation you deserve. We recognize that it’s absolutely essential that you know your rights and are familiar with the upcoming legal process in order to make the right decisions to the secure the compensation to which you are entitled. Thus, we’re providing you with this informative article designed to give you background information about tractor trailer accident litigation, so that you can feel more comfortable about the unfamiliar situation in which your family has been thrust.
Although, please do not assume this article is a suitable replacement for hiring a fatal tractor trailer accident attorney. You need more than just a general outline of your legal options; you need a lawyer on your side that is familiar with the specific details of your case.
Why I Should File a Wrongful Death Lawsuit.
You have obvious personal reasons for filing a wrongful death lawsuit after your loved one has been killed a fatal tractor trailer accident. For one, you want to see the negligent party brought to justice for causing the death of your family member. Unless drugs or alcohol were involved in the wreck, the liable party will rarely face criminal charges for killing someone in a fatal tractor trailer accident. Thus, a civil lawsuit is usually the only way to punish the responsible party.
Furthermore, we realize that there is no amount of money that can adequately compensate your family for the untimely death of one of its beloved members. On the other hand, we’re aware that the death of your loved one has caused great financial setbacks, as well as, emotional turmoil for your whole family. You shouldn’t be expected to shoulder the financial burden that someone else has created on top of your anguish and grief.
Not every motivation for filing a wrongful death lawsuit is selfish, though. You owe a responsibility to the greater public to take action against parties who are fatally negligent if for no other reason than to make sure that party changes its behavior and prevents somebody else’s loved one from being injured or killed. Imagine just for a moment how you will feel if you do nothing, and then you’re watching the news in a year and see that the negligent party has killed again.
Determining Who is to Blame for a Fatal Tractor Trailer Accident
Most people immediately assume that the truck driver is the negligent party in any fatal tractor trailer accident, but that’s not always the case. When it comes to 18-wheeler wrecks, there is a wide variety of parties who may have either caused or contributed to the cause of a wreck. Any of these parties or a combination of these parties may have caused any given fatal big rig wreck. Before even beginning to file a lawsuit, you need the help of a skilled and seasoned tractor trailer accident attorney just to determine who caused the accident. In order to pursue compensation through a lawsuit, your lawyer will be looking to establish the three essential elements of an actionable accident case: duty, breach, and causation.
Duty
Whenever two or more parties interact for any purpose, they owe each other the duty of proving a reasonable level of care not to harm one another. Exactly what level of care is determined as reasonable depends upon the given situation and the entities involved. When it comes to transporting goods with a tractor trailer, there are several different duties involved, for example: the trucker’s duty to drive safely and within the rules of the road, and the manufacturer’s duty to provide a properly designed and functioning truck and trailer.
Breach
The duty required in a given interaction was ignored by one or more of the parties. Breaches can occur for a variety of reasons, for example: the truck driver falls asleep at the wheel, or the truck maker produces a vehicle that is defective.
Causation
When the breach of duty causes or contributes to the cause of the fatal tractor trailer accident. The trucker driver falls asleep at the wheel, and his or her rig drifts across the median, demolishing a small Smart Car, or the truck axle breaks forcing the 18-wheeler to jackknife across the highway, causing fatal accidents with several other vehicles.
Typical Negligent Parties in Fatal Tractor Trailer Accidents
Like we mentioned earlier, just because a tractor trailer was involved in a fatal wreck doesn’t mean the driver was at fault; however, driver error is often to blame for 18-wheeler accidents – either through standard negligence like speeding or falling asleep at the wheel or through gross negligence like drunken driving. Other parties that may be liable for any given fatal tractor trailer accident may include:
Trucking Companies - Whenever a truck driver or any other employee of a company causes an accident, then his or her employer can be held liable in both Texas and Arkansas according to a legal concept called respondeat superior that makes employers accountable for the negligent actions or inaction of their employees. However, the degree to which the employer is held accountable may be greater depending upon the employer’s actions. If the truck driver had been ordered to violate federal laws regarding the amount of time spent behind the wheel in a given day in order to meet delivery schedules only to result with the driver falling asleep behind the wheel, then the trucking company would bear a greater percentage of the liability for the accident.
Companies that Planned the Route - Safely navigating a giant 18-wheeler through the modern world is a much more difficult task than most people realize. Not all roads are safe for tractor trailers, and not all bridges are sturdy enough to support 18-wheelers or tall enough to allow them to safely pass beneath. In order to deal with this complicated ordeal, many trucking companies turn to outside contractors to plan routes for their trucks. If an accident resulted because the company that planned the route failed to provide a safe pathway or sent the truck into an area where commercial trucks are banned, then this company could be liable for any damages that result.
Company that Loaded the Cargo - Just like with planning the truck’s route, many trucking companies contract with third parties to load the trucks. Moreover, in some cases, the cargo is loaded by the company that owned the cargo or sold it to the intended destination. When the cargo is not loaded properly, it can shift during the process of being transported, causing the trailer to tip over. If this load shift results in injuries or death to bystanders or the passengers and drivers of other vehicles, then the company that loaded the cargo is liable.
Truck of Parts Manufacturers - An 18-wheeler is a complex piece of machinery, comprised of thousands of intricately linked parts. When a tractor trailer breaks down due to design or assembly faults and the results are fatal, then a wrongful death or personal injury lawsuit can be filed against the manufacturer of the truck, trailer and/or the party.
Mechanics - Sometimes a truck fails to operate properly not because it was unsuitably made but because it was unsuitably maintained. If a fatal mechanical breakdown occurred in a tractor trailer due to poor maintenance by the mechanic charged with its care, then that mechanic could be brought to justice through a wrongful death lawsuit.
Other drivers - Just because a collision with an 18-wheeler caused your loved one’s death doesn’t mean that the truck or the truck driver was to blame for the accident. Another driver could have operated his or her vehicle carelessly, forcing the truck driver to react to avoid hitting that car only to fatally collide with another. In this case, the careless driver is to blame, not the trucker.
Determining whether a mechanical malfunction was the fault of the manufacturer who made a truck or the mechanic who cared for the vehicle is extremely trying and demands the care and expertise of a skilled tractor trailer accident attorney. With so many parties or combination of parties possibly to blame for any fatal tractor trailer accident, you must act quickly to secure an attorney, so he or she can begin investigating before the trail of evidence vanishes. When it comes to tractor trailer accidents, the evidence begins to fade quickly after the wreck, as the accident scene is cleaned up and witnesses become hard to find or forget what they saw. The only chance you have of finding the evidence that will identify all of the responsible parties and then prove the case against them is to act now and hire a time-tested fatal tractor trailer accident lawyer.
At Grossman Law Offices, we’ve spent two decades investigating accident scenes, and we know how to act quickly and diligently to investigate the scene and lockdown the pertinent evidence. If you hire us, we will rush to the scene of the accident to examine the physical evidence there. We will locate and interview all eyewitnesses and scour over police reports. We don’t stop there, though. In an increasingly secure society, we’ve learned that many storefronts have surveillance system and the city often has traffic light cameras, as well. Often times, we can find video or photographic evidence of the wreck.
What Damages are Pursuable after a Fatal Tractor Trailer Accident?
When your loved one has been wrongfully killed in a tractor trailer accident, you have the right to pursue both survival damages and wrongful death damages in one all-encompassing lawsuit. In the state of Arkansas, the family is required to name a representative to handle the claim for the entire family before any legal action can taken but this is not required in Texas.
Only the closest living relative of the victim has the right to seek survival damages, which are intended to compensate this person for the harm the victim was forced to suffer. For the purposes of survival damages, the closest living relative is the spouse, followed by the children, parents and then siblings. Compensation for survival damages may include:
- Property damage.
- Medical bills charged to the victim before he or she died.
- The victim’s pain and suffering.
- The victim’s mental anguish.
In contrast, wrongful death damages can be sought by each of the following members of the immediate family – spouse, children, and parents. Notice that siblings are not eligible for wrongful death damages, which may include restitution for:
- Cost of the funeral and burial.
- Lost financial support the victim provided.
- Mental and emotional trauma experienced by the family members.
- Lost familial love and consortium.
For some forms of damages, proving their value is clear-cut. All you need to do to prove medical expenses is to produce the receipts for the bills. Other forms of damages are far more subjective in nature and thus open for debate. In order to prove the value of pain and suffering and emotional distress, you need an experienced wrongful death attorney who has hundreds of other cases to use as measuring sticks. A grieving wife who must be admitted to a mental institution to cope with the loss of her husband is experienced more grief than an estranged father who was hardly even shaken up by the loss of his child.
Challenges to Recovery
When it comes fatal tractor trailer cases, victims don’t always need to sue in order to find the compensation they deserve. Most commercial trucking companies have insurance policies, and those policies are usually quite large to safeguard against the tremendous damage that often results from big rig wrecks. Thus, often times, the aggrieved family will be working out a benefits settlement with the insurance company.
Unfortunately, the presence of a large insurance policy doesn’t guarantee satisfaction as one might think. In fact, with more money to lose with a larger policy (commercial truck insurance policies are sometimes worth 50 times that of a passenger car), the insurance company is often far more likely to resist paying the families of those wrongfully killed. Crafty insurance adjusters may try to trick your family into accepting far less than your claim is worth in exchange for waiving your right to sue.
In other instances, the insurance adjuster may attack your loved one’s reputation, trying to make him or her appear like he or she was entirely responsible for the accident with his or her own negligence. Any victim who was more than 50 percent negligent disallows his or her family members from pursuing compensation for his or her death.
To protect yourself from attacks on your loved one’s reputation or from deceptive insurance settlement offers, you need to hire a seasoned fatal tractor trailer accident attorney whom you can trust. Before signing any agreement from the insurance company, you must have it reviewed by a trained professional to protect you from being short-changed.
Filing a Wrongful Death Lawsuit
Some tractor trailers, particularly those that are privately owned, will not have insurance. Against these companies, you will need to file a wrongful death lawsuit in order to secure compensation. However, even in these instances, you may be able to work out a settlement rather than going to court. In either case, you will need evidence to either win in court or inspire a fair settlement offer.
Don’t expect the defendant in your case to willingly offer compensation. In fact, if the truck driver caused your wreck, then expect him or her to lie in order to cover up his or her own culpability for the accident. If the truck driver is found to have negligently killed someone, then he or she will surely be fired. In addition, another job will not be readily available to someone with such a black mark on his or her record. Thus, even a normally honest person might lie to keep his or her job.
At Grossman Law Offices, we’ve dealt with enough truck accident cases to know how to reveal a trucker’s lies with a clever deposition plan designed to get the truck driver to trip over his or her own half-truths and misrepresentations.
We Can Help
For more than two decades, the fatal tractor trailer accident lawyers at Grossman Law Offices have been winning wrongful death lawsuits and negotiating fair insurance settlements for the hundreds of grieving Texans and Arkansans we’ve represented. Over the years, we have forced every major insurance company in the country to pay a total of many millions of dollars in damages. As a result, many insurance companies and defense lawyers would rather sit down to resolve a mutually agreeable settlement than stand up against our firm in court. This allows our clients to get back to trying to rebuild their shattered families instead of worrying about the uncertainty of a trial.
To find out how we can be of assistance to you, call us now for a free consultation at 1-855-589-5645 (toll free). You will have an opportunity to tell us your tragic story, ask any questions you may have, and discover your legal options.
A young handicapped woman lost her life when a long-term care facility failed to provide her with treatment for obvious symptoms of severe illness. The defendants maintained that there were no outwardly visible signs of illness. The medical evidence showed otherwise. The case was successfully resolved through litigation, though damages caps imposed by tort reform were a factor.
$400,000.00
$132,000.00
$25,000.00
(policy limits) Our firm was hired to pursue an intoxicated driver who killed an elderly school crossing guard. The fatal accident occurred as the decedent was escorting a woman and her child across the roadway through a crosswalk. The defendant then sped through the school zone, in an intoxicated a state, and struck the decedent who died on the scene.
The family hired our firm to investigate and pursue the defendant under a wrongful death cause of action. Following our investigation and preliminary vehicle inspection, our attorneys issued a Stowers' demand to the defendants. A significant factor in resolving this claim is that merely days before we submitted our demand to the defendant' insurance carrier, we won a large case against the very same insurance carrier, which was one of several such victories secured against the carrier in our firm's history. Our threats of litigation were therefore heeded and the defendants offered policy limits to settle the claim without the need to file suit.
Confidential
Confidential
Confidential
(policy limits) An incredibly intoxicated driver drove head-on into a vehicle, killing several of the vehicle's occupants. The defendants had limited assets, yet an alternative policy was uncovered, which the defendants argued was non applicable. Under threat of litigation, our attorneys negotiated a settlement for the policy limits.
$300,000.00
$132,000.00
$0.00
Recovered for client suffered soft-tissue injuries when her car was side-swiped by a dump truck.
$41,000.00
$13,666.00
$50.00
(policy limits) Our attorneys secured a recovery against a major trucking company for the daughter of a man who was killed after his vehicle collided into an 18-wheeler which was blocking the roadway. Litigation is ongoing against additional defendants.
Confidential
Confidential
Confidential
Recovery for client who sustained a pulled muscle in an 18-wheeler accident.
$19,000.00
$6,270.00
$100.00
Recovery for the driver of car that was side-swiped by an 18-wheeler. Plaintiff suffered muscle aches, pains & dizziness.
$30,000.00
$10,000.00
$500.00
The family of a deceased woman hired our firm following a fatal 18-wheeler accident. The fatal accident occurred as the driver of an 18-wheeler lost control of his vehicle and veered out of his lane, resulting in a massive collision. The decedent, a passenger in a vehicle, died on the scene.
Her adult children consulted our firm to initially investigate the accident and make sense of the facts and circumstances since the family felt that the police report did not make it clear enough precisely what occurred. We launched a full investigation an immediately deposed the investigating officers.
Upon the completion of our investigation, it was apparent that the trucking company was indeed negligent and a lawsuit was soon filed. The defendant's launched an aggressive defense whereby they initially claimed that the truck driver was overcome by his passenger who allegedly grabbed the steering wheel and deliberately drove the truck off the road, despite the truck driver's best efforts.
We refuted this claim by illustrating that the tire marks that were present clearly show the truck gradually moving across the road and eventually onto the grass, which is entirely inconsistent with an abrupt lane change caused by someone taking control of the wheel. It was quite an unusual defense strategy that we were frankly surprised to even find ourselves having to refute.
The defendants then argued that a tire blowout may have contributed to the accident, which is significant because it would enable the defendant to offset some portion of their liability to a tire manufacturer or installer. Through deposition testimony of the investigating officer we established that there was absolutely no indication at the scene of the accident that a tire had blown out.
Finally, the defendants argued that the company which loaded the trailer may have improperly loaded the cargo. This argument was most plausible considering that the precise cause of the decedent's death was that she was essentially pummeled by cargo that broke through trailer and struck her person.
Our firm consulted several experts in the fields of heavy cargo transportation and physics. Our experts felt that the cargo was secured in a manner that is perfectly consistent with industry standards and that due to the forces involved, the cargo would not have behaved any differently irrespective of how it was secured. In short, the collision caused the cargo to break free and the negligence lay squarely on the trucking company and not any other entity. The case was successfully resolved through litigation.
$2,000,000.00
$775,000.00
$25,000.00
The mother of a young man hired our firm to investigate the death of her son following a fatal car accident. The incident occurred as one of the two vehicles involved ran a red light and drive into the path of the other. The defendant was driving a work vehicle for a construction company. The defendant survived the accident and stated to police that the decedent caused the accident. The police could not conclusively determine who was at fault, yet the police report strongly implied that the decedent was likely at fault based on the statement provided by the defendant.
The plaintiff's mother was not convinced. Through a thorough investigation, we ultimately determined that the stoplight that the defendant claimed that our client ran, in fact, worked on a timer whereby the light was always green between certain hours unless a vehicle traveling on the intersecting road had been stopped at the right light for more than 30 seconds. Based on an analysis of the vehicles and tire markings, it was conclusively determined that both vehicles were traveling at the speed limit, which clearly indicates that the defendant driver had not accelerated from stop, rather, he was traveling at the speed limit, which would not have triggered a green light for the defendant.
The logical implications of this information is that the light could not have been red for the plaintiff, and it certainly would have been red for the defendant. As a consequence of this information, the case was resolved through litigation.
$335,000.00
$134,000.00
$63,000.00
Recovery for the father of a young man who was killed in a car accident.
$95,035.00
$31,678.00
$25.00