Texarkana Wrongful Death Lawyer Michael Grossman on Fatal Semi Truck Accidents and the Aftermath
Have you suffered a loss recently in a tragically fatal semi truck accident in Texarkana, TX? It is a sad fact that no action can bring back your loved one or somehow make up for the tragic loss. However, following such an accident you do have several choices for how to proceed legally in order to achieve some compensation for your loss as well as some justice for those whose negligence caused the loss.
You might ask us, what are the legal options following such a tragedy, and whom will I need to contact to start the process to achieve just restitution and to bring those responsible to account for their actions? In any case of wrongful death involving motor vehicles and especially in cases involving semi trucks, the practical and legal proceedings are complex and convoluted, far beyond the skill-set of an inexperienced attorney, much less someone who does not have a legal background or have extensive knowledge of the law who might try and represent themselves. The fact that it is a wrongful death case will make it complicated such that only an experienced attorney can hope to bring you through the situation. The fatal semi truck accident wrongful death lawsuit is a complicated process made more so by each of its components. Grossman Law Offices offers this article by way of information so that you have the tools to make your first step in the arduous process following the tragic loss of a loved one to fatal semi truck accident. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to call us at 1-855-239-1290 (toll free) for a free consultation. Remember as well that time is of the essence. If you are uncertain what your legal options are, call us today.
Fatal Semi Truck Accidents
A general and prevailing misconception regarding wrongful death litigation that involves semi trucks is that the only real difference between a situation where someone is killed by an 18-wheeler and a situation where someone is killed by an automobile is the size of the accident and possibly the size of the settlement, since 18-wheelers are commercial vehicles. Both of those elements have truth in them. The size of the physical accident is indeed larger, seeing as how the difference in mass between a big rig and an automobile is enormous, and indeed some semi truck accidents affect more than just a few people on the highway. If, for example, the anti-lock breaks of a semi truck failed and the truck was moving along a flat standard grade stretch of highway, the velocity of the truck would carry the vehicle a mile before it stopped. Imagine thousands of pounds of steel hurtling down the road for a full mile. The damage could be enormous. However, some accidents involving semi trucks are of a similar scale to an automobile accident, if, for instance an 18-wheeler changes lanes without looking and knocks another vehicle off the road. It can be just as fatal, though. The second part of the misconception is that aside from the physical size of the accident, the only real difference is in the settlement, which is sure to be at least a little larger since 18-wheelers are commercial. Once again, this can be the case, since the insurance policies that commercial trucking companies hold are very large. However, the real difference between a fatal accident involving a semi truck and a fatal accident involving an automobile are the legal proceedings and the players on the defense. As we will go into later, the trucking companies and the insurance companies are not going to mess around, they are not going to be altruistic, and they will try their hardest to prevent you from seeing a single cent of remuneration for the loss of your loved one.
In fatal semi truck accidents what you really need is an experienced and competent lawyer who has dealt with the companies in question before and who knows the ins and outs of the legal process involved with litigating a semi truck wrongful death claim. An attorney taking on this case is not just dealing with the negligent driver of the truck. They are dealing with a whole team of experienced and aggressive lawyers, adjusters, and company officers. The wrongful death lawyers in Texarkana, TX at Grossman Law Offices have been litigating cases like this for twenty years and can foresee the variations and complications that are going to be a part of this case. We will fight for your rights, however, so that you and your family will receive the just compensation you deserve for your tragic loss. Below we will outline some of your options as well as some of the primary obstacles that could prevent you from achieving restitution without an experienced and capable fatal semi truck accident attorney. If at any point you have any questions, don’t hesitate to call 1-855-239-1290 (toll free).
What Are the Options for Damages?
When we refer to damages, we are referring to the ultimately quantifiable list of financial and emotional losses. This becomes more complicated than you would think, but in the majority of fatal semi truck accident claims, there are two possible sets of damages the victim’s family can claim. These are damages for wrongful death, and survival damages. When we are talking about wrongful death damages, we are talking about the damages resulting from the suffering that the family and the loved ones have incurred following the death of a family member, and the additional losses that come if that person was a wage earner. When we talk about survival damages we are referring to the emotional and financial losses that come after losing a family member, the hospital bills, the wages lost, et cetera.
Wrongful Death Damages
The damages for wrongful death could include the compensation for any medical expenses suffered by the victim while they were in the hospital and the funeral expenses resulting from the accident. These are fairly black and white. They will be clearly marked on bills and can be easily presented to a jury. Wrongful death damages also includes the loss of the financial support of the deceased as proved by his or her prior support to the loved ones. In cases where the primary wage-earner was the victim of the accident, the losses are particularly acute, seeing as how not only was all of that income lost, but also some current member of the family will have to find a better job, possibly undertake expensive training, and so forth. The severe emotional trauma and the mental strain caused by the loss of a loved one, as well as the loss of an irreplaceable member of a family are two damages covered under wrongful death damages, are a more likely to be contested by the defense, who could claim that because these are intangible, they are not so easily quantifiable.
Survival Damages
The survival damages include the compensation for any lingering medical bills from the victim’s time in the hospital following the tragedy, as well as the money actually lost by the victim from their lack of work, as well as the lack of work for the family members who might have taken time off to be with the victim, all of this being due to the fatal accident. Survival damages also includes some damages for emotional turmoil following the accident, as well as any physical pain and suffering undergone by the family as a result of the accident.
We understand that talk of compensation and remuneration can be unsettling since no sum of money can give you back your deceased loved one or even begin to fully compensate you for the extremity of the loss you have suffered. At the same time, though, we also know that the period following a fatal semi truck accident can be fraught with severe financial losses that come from the hospital bills, the funeral bills, the loss of wages, the loss of property, and the loss of future opportunity, as well as many other losses. The compensation is an important part of the process since it will help to provide financial security following the accident. It also has the additional and added purpose of holding certain parties accountable for their negligence. Here at Grossman Law Offices, we understand that this next step is important for the family and we know how to assist you so that you receive the most possible compensation you deserve for your loss. We will also fight to see that the responsible parties are held accountable for their actions.
Because so many of the damages include less tangible losses that come from emotional suffering and trauma, and are therefore extremely subjective, it is vital that your retain the services of a Texarkana wrongful death lawyer who has a great deal of experience and competence when it comes to accurately and adequately calculating the full range of total losses and damages resulting from the fatal semi truck accident. Michael Grossman and the attorneys at Grossman Law Offices understand the process for building a complete and comprehensive fatal semi truck accident wrongful death lawsuit that carefully separates and quantifies both wrongful death damages and survival damages. An issue that creates even more confusion in fatal eighteen-wheeler accidents is that there is often more than one liable party whose negligence could have contributed to the fatal accident. If you want to find all of the responsible parties and hold them justly accountable for their actions, then you need an experienced wrongful death attorney in Texarkana, TX, who knows all of the different strategies necessary to bringing a suit against multiple defendants and claiming damages from all of them. Just coming up with the list of damages is complicated enough as it is, but you will also need a competent and experienced lawyer who can either pursue the case in a court trial or force the insurance company to come to an equitable and just settlement.
At Grossman Law Offices, we have twenty years of experience in litigating cases like this and we understand the strategies necessary for building comprehensive and strong lawsuits to bring against all of the liable and responsible parties involved and then following through with a strong case for just compensation that the liable parties must pay our clients. Texarkana fatal semi truck accident lawyer Michael Grossman understands what it takes to build and litigate a strong case that will see our clients to their goal of achieving just compensation for the terrible loss they have incurred as a result of the negligent actions that caused a fatal semi truck accident.
Trucking Companies, Insurance Adjusters, and Defense Specialists
A major obstacle to achieving compensation and to bring the responsible parties to account for their actions exists in the total defense of the responsible parties. As we noted before, commercial big rig accidents are different from automobile accidents because of the legal complexities, the extent of damages, and the aggressive behavior of the agents of the trucking company and the insurance company. Below are a some of the serious roadblocks to achieving justice in a fatal semi truck accident, and therefore some of the reasons why it is vital to retain the services of an experienced wrongful death attorney who knows the in and outs of fatal semi truck accidents.
The Insurance Company
The fairly tame commercials that one sees on television for auto insurance companies presents them as fair, consumer-friendly, almost altruistic companies who want to be seen as almost family-like or paternal in their protection of the policy-holders. The truth that everyone knows to be the case is that insurance companies are for-profit businesses that gambling their assets against the chance that the policyholders and their vehicles will be injured in an auto accident. And then, when they are, or when their vehicles are damaged, the insurance company will work to show that it was the other party who was responsible, and the other party’s insurance company who should pay. In other words, insurance companies have a bottom line. They are not your friends. They are not your family. They are a business.
Compared to the insurance companies for commercial trucking companies, however, the standard auto insurance companies start to look pretty fair and altruistic. The trucking company that either owned the big rig involved in the accident or hired the owner operator who drove the cargo purchased an enormous insurance policy to protect them in the event of an accident, but this by no means guarantees the family of the victim to an easy, hassle-free lump sum of compensation for their loss. The commercial trucking insurance company is dealing with policies that are 50 times larger than the standard policy for an automobile. The risk is so high that the insurance company hires a team of adjusters who are highly experienced and competent at short-changing the claimants in order to help the insurance company maintain or increase their profits.
You will probably be experiencing the results of a fatal semi truck accident for the first time with this case, and have the added burden of loss, financial instability and emotional trauma. The insurance adjusters, however, are at the top of their game and have been doing this for years and excelling at it if they are the senior adjusters for a commercial trucking insurance company, and they know how to play the situation to their advantage, even taking into account the vulnerability of a grieving family. The first thing they will do will be to meet you on the grounds that they ‘just want to help’, and they will talk about getting you the restitution you deserve. They will just want you to answer some questions, all routine type of stuff. Do no let this fool you. They will aggressively push you with question after question waiting for you to slip up and admit even the possibility of your loved one’s liability in the accident that took his or her life, so that they can avoid compensating you for your loss. We have known insurance adjusters to visit the home of the grieving family, to visit the funeral or the morgue or the hospital, attempting to just get the loved ones to ‘sign a few papers’, in which they conceal the part where the family signs away their right to pursue a wrongful death lawsuit against them. Sometimes they will offer a settlement right off in exchange for an agreement not to sue. These settlements are always going to be inadequate, so you must not sign anything until you have retained the services of your own attorney and consulted with them at length about the process for what to do next. So many grieving families feel like signing a settlement will bring about some sort of closure and so they will accept unjustly low offers just to put everything behind them. Don’t do this. You deserve better and the liable parties deserve to be held accountable. Once you retain the services of the attorneys at Grossman Law Offices, we will deal with the insurance adjusters for you and we can guarantee that with our twenty years of experience with this sort of case, we will not fall for some trick or jeopardize your case.
Defense Specialists
In the majority of cases, the trucking company and the team of defense specialist they have at hand knew about the accident and the wrongful death of your loved one before you did. The moment the truck driver calls the trucking company to report the accident, they will build a defense team of attorneys and specialists in fatal semi truck accidents and send them to the scene of the accident to begin the process of building a case against your claim. They will interview locals, find witnesses, and try to search for any evidence that will show that your deceased loved one or another third party was the liable party in the accident and that the trucking company bears no responsibility. This is their only possible course of action and they aggressively pursue it. When it come to uncovering witness statements, the driver of the semi truck has no interest in admitting that it was his or her fault and not the deceased. Their job and livelihood and hope of future employment depend on their record and they probably won’t throw that away just to be honest. The defense specialists do not have your interest in heart. They are thinking about the company they work for and you or your best interests do not come into the equation.
In order to succeed against these lawyers, you must try and combat their experience and competence with other experience and competence. For 20 years the attorneys at Grossman Law Office have been dealing with fatal semi truck accidents, the adjusters, and the defense specialists. We understand the complexities and we build our own investigative team as soon as our services are retained. We will immediately protect and sequester the vehicles that were involved so that we can keep them safe and preserve their integrity from any other party who might be interested in them, and we will set our specialists to work examining every inch of the vehicle. Others in the investigative team will be out in the field, interviewing any available witnesses, pouring over research into the trucking company records and the record of the driver, and collecting police reports and on-site measurements. We will ascertain what happened, who was liable, and will build a case on that towards helping you achieve restitution.
Why You Need a Lawyer
The availability of internet resources on law and certain legal situations might convince some non-legal experts to attempt to represent themselves in a situation where there has been a wrongful death resulting from a semi truck accident. Remember that a successful case involves far more components than just a simple knowledge of the legal process and the law. You deserve to have an experienced attorney who knows all the complexities of the process and will be able to forestall any attempts made by the defense to have the case thrown out or to show that the victim was the liable party. You deserve a competent lawyer who knows how to account for damages and can build a strong case based on the evidence at hand as well as witness testimony. When non-legal people try to represent themselves they generally end up destroying their own cases simply because they don’t have the experience necessary and the defense lawyers eat them alive. People think that because a case looks obvious that an insurance company will automatically settle because they don’t want to look bad in court, but the truth is that insurance company lawyers are a lot better at what they do than an untrained non-lawyer who attempts to represent himself or herself, and the company will know that and work very hard to discredit that individual.
Let Us Help
The Texarkana fatal semi truck accident attorney Michael Grossman and the lawyers at Grossman Law Offices understand how to build a strong case for the protection of your right to just compensation for the loss you have experienced from the liable parties whose negligence caused the death of your loved one. After 20 years successfully litigating cases like this, we have dealt with most of the major insurance companies in the United States and they understand our name and our reputation for success. If you have lost a loved one to a fatal semi truck accident in Texarkana, Tyler, Longview, Marshall or anywhere in the state of Texas, then don’t hesitate to contact us. We understand how to deal with trucking companies and insurance adjusters, and we know how to build a strong case that will defend your right to just compensation for your losses. Since our success rate is so high, the insurance companies will often choose to settle out of court at an amenable rate so as not to incur the extra expense of going to court against us and losing both the settlement and the court fees. Our goal is to do what is the best for our clients and we will work tirelessly to see that you receive the closure and remuneration for your losses that you deserve. If you have any questions, then don’t hesitate to call us no at 1-855-239-1290 (toll free) for a free consultation.