San Antonio Injury & Wrongful Death Lawyer |
Commercial Trucking Accident Injury Lawsuits
Commercial Truck Accidents can Cause Massive Damage & Serious Injury.
Let Our Law Firm Help You After a Semi-Truck Accident in South Texas
Prevailing through any accident isn’t easy, but nothing compares to the catastrophic damage caused by 18-wheelers. Big rigs can have a weight exceeding 80,000 pounds, so immense damage happens when they’re involved in accidents. Because truckers are paid by the hour, they can wind up working for extended hours without breaks, and this leads to increased chances in decreased concentration and consciousness, plus more accidents, injuries, property damage and possible fatalities that accompany those wrecks.
For over 20 years, the 18-wheeler accident attorney at The Snow Law Firm have been working personal injury cases in San Antonio. We understand how victims can have plenty of medical and legal questions they’re needing answers for after sustaining their injuries or maybe they’re grieving after losing a family member due to a big rig wreck. The most important goal at this point is making sure you’ve been examined by medical experts after your San Antonio 18-wheeler accident. Getting treated for your injuries is important, but you still needed to get them officially recorded too for use in trial. If you’re without insurance or have insurance that isn’t sizable enough in its coverage, then we’ll help find a doctor that will work with your financial issues and develop a payment plan suited just for your financial situation.
After your injuries have been handled, you need to give serious consideration to getting compensation for your harm through a possible lawsuit. The law states negligent parties don’t instantly have to pay you for your injuries, and that it’s up to you as the victim (also called the plaintiff in the legal world) to handle the burden of showing you deserve to be compensated. Only an experienced San Antonio 18-wheeler accident attorney provides you with the best ability to get the proper compensation you’re owed. Our San Antonio attorney want to make you aware of your legal options so you can help your family as much as possible.
This article is meant to just provide information and shouldn’t be used as a free fill-in for the legal expertise that comes from a skilled attorney who can examine the particulars of your case. To learn more about how the law effects the specifics of your case, contact us today to get answers for what you’re wondering about.The Reasons to File a San Antonio 18-wheeler Accident Injury Lawsuit
Our San Antonio attorney have experienced up close the emotional and physical trauma created by 18-wheeler accidents. Due to our extensive experience, we’ve discovered plenty of 18-wheeler accident victims are cautious about seeking legal action since they think putting a price on injuries is off-putting and having to do this forces them to relive the tragedy in their mind. Even though filing a claim isn’t fun, as we’ll discuss later in this article, speedy action is extremely important to your claim’s success so you need to understand it’s critical to move quickly after your accident occurs.
There’s two benefits of seeking a lawsuit when dealing with harm stemming from a San Antonio 18-wheeler accident: first, it lets the injured party recover from the financial and emotional tragedy caused by the accident, while punishing those whose choices led to the accident happening in the first place. There’s no amount of money that can take away the damages created by your accident or wipe that memory from your mind. However, you still have extremely sizable financial burdens to deal with. The best way to get your family back to some type of normalcy after this type of accident is by getting compensation from the individual or group who was liable for your accident. More than likely you’ve missed tons of time working due to your injuries, so handling your medical bills for your injuries and medical bills for your vehicle can be impossible unless you file a lawsuit against the party or parties who were responsible for your injuries.
The other goal for a San Antonio 18-wheeler accident lawsuit is to attempt and decrease more negligent behavior by punishing those responsible for the San Antonio accident. People who have lost substantial money in a San Antonio 18-wheeler accident lawsuit will tend to not make the same choices again. The best way to get someone’s attention is to attack their bank account.Common Negligent Causes of 18-Wheeler Accidents
If you’re trying to figure out who to sue, the first goal is to learn how your accident happened and then discover who was at fault. Tons of people take part in transporting goods on an 18-wheeler, so in many San Antonio 18-wheeler accident cases, more than one party may have been negligent and factored into a San Antonio 18-wheeler accident. An experienced San Antonio 18-wheeler accident lawyer can rely on past cases from over the years litigating 18-wheeler accident claims to accurately figure out how your accident happened and who was responsible. Any number of negligent parties could have contributed to an 18-wheeler accident: the trucker, the trucking company, manufacturers of the truck or trailer, the business that loaded the truck, or other third parties. For example:Truckers – Tons of hours are spent on highways and interstates by truck drivers, and in the majority of 18-wheeler accident cases, they are responsible either partially or entirely. Truckers will cause accidents when behave negligently. This is evident through: driving under the influence, speeding, ignoring stop signs, or excessive swerving. Many times San Antonio 18-wheeler accidents are the result of the San Antonio trucker being exhausted. Federal law requires that drivers take necessary rest breaks, but many of them disregard these guidelines so they’re able to meet company time constraints. Studies have revealed that truckers double their chances of being in an accident after eight straight hours of driving. Our survey showed that 20 percent of drivers confessed to falling asleep at the wheel more than once in the previous month. Whether by accident or deliberately, if a trucker’s negligence resulted in an accident that caused you to be injured, then you’ll have the chance to seek a lawsuit against that trucker.Trucking Companies – Texas follows a legal concept called “respondeat superior.” This means that employers face the same liability for the actions or inaction of their employees. If it’s determined that the truck driver’s negligence resulted in your wreck, then the trucking company could also be punished. So if a trucker had a litany of previous DUI convictions, then causes an accident while drunk, then the trucking company becomes responsible for any injuries stemming from the tragedy.
It also needs to be mentioned that the trucking company doesn’t have to act negligently on its own to be ruled liable for the negligence of its truckers. So as long as the trucker is deemed negligent, a lawsuit can be sought for damages from the trucking company. Most of the time the trucking company is the defendant people want damages from because it has greater ability to access more resources than drivers.Manufacturers – Look closely at how they’re made, and you’ll see trucks and trailers are constructed from thousands of parts; all fastened together to ensure the vehicle’s safety. If any of these parts don’t function like they’re intended to while the truck is operating, then that can result in an accident. If the error was a result of a design defect or manufacturing error and a wreck follows, then anyone harmed in the wreck has the chance to get compensation from the manufacturer.The Company that Planned the Route – Not every road and neighborhood in San Antonio is intended for 18 wheelers and plenty of bridges have weight and height restrictions in place. To make sure everything’s safe, trucking companies will rely on other businesses to map out safe routes for big rigs to travel. If this company maps a course that is unsafe and dangerous for San Antonio 18 wheelers, then a lawsuit can be pursued against that business.The Company that Loaded the Cargo – A lot of times the company that owned the cargo is able to get it on board themselves, and other times another company handles that duty. If the company that put the cargo on did so in a poor or unsafe manner, this can result in a wreck and injuries that the company would be liable for. Cargo in a San Antonio 18 wheeler is limited to 80,000 pounds, but lots of companies attempt to carry additional goods at a decreased cost and neglect this rule.
Weight limits are developed for a reason because an overloaded truck has a higher probability to topple and cause far more damage when it has a wreck. When the company that puts the cargo on doesn’t secure it properly, the cargo has a shot to loosen during transportation, creating a load shift that overturns the trailer and leads to wrecks with other vehicles in Cargo. When flatbeds are incorporated, poorly loaded cargo can smash onto the road and create instant panic for lots of shocked drivers traveling behind the trucker.Other Drivers – An 18-wheeler may have been in a San Antonio accident but that doesn’t mean they’re the immediate cause for the accident. Sometimes other drivers disregard their duty to make sure others are kept safe on the road, and a San Antonio 18-wheeler accident happens, creating damage and injuries to more drivers on the road. When that happens, victims can pursue damages from these third parties.
Any of these parties or a group of them could have entirely or partially played a role in the San Antonio 18-wheeler accident that harmed you. You need the help of an experienced San Antonio 18 wheeler accident lawyer who can find the cause and all of the credible defendants, so you can get the compensation you deserve from all the people who injured you with their negligent behavior. A Prompt Investigation is Critical!
A speedy and professional investigation has to happen if you want to get the key evidence to determine all of the necessary parties and prove your case after you’ve been injured in a San Antonio 18-wheeler accident case. Since there are lots of groups that could acted in a negligent manner and played a factor in your injury, a strong investigation is needed to determine all of the key parties and their amount of negligence. You’re going to need proof to be able to convince the jury to rule for you, and evidence begins to disappear immediately after a San Antonio wreck. It’s essential to get your San Antonio lawyer searching for evidence as quick as you can. For every moment you waste not getting an attorney you trust, you’re doing serious harm to your claim because the proof you need is disappearing – witnesses leave town or their memories become fuzzy, videos get trashed and the accident scene physically evolves.
Our 18-wheeler accident lawyer at The Snow Law Firm have spent 20 years perfecting our ability at learning the art of investigating accident scenes. once you hire us, we quickly travel to the accident scene (free of charge to clients) so we can find any evidence that helps our client’s case. We do what’s needed to reach the truth – securing all the main vehicles involved, getting photos, searching for video footage, looking through police records, measuring distance between skid marks, conducting forensic tests, doing witness testimony and gathering any evidence acquired to use later in trial.
You’re probably already far behind the investigative efforts that have been launched by the defense. Many times what happens is that right after a trucker reports an accident, the trucking or insurance company gets their investigators swiftly to the accident scene. The defensive investigators aren’t bothered learning how the accident really happened; they just want to get facts that show your injuries were a result of your own negligence. If you don’t have lawyer on the scene in San Antonio, you’ll have no idea if the defense has tampered with evidence, or done its investigation in an ethical fashion. If they discover evidence that shows you were negligent, then they can get your insurance claim overturned if they can prove you were totally responsible, or lessen the damages owed if they can properly show you were partially negligent.
One recent case we were hired for in San Antonio shows the need for a prompt and thorough investigation. In this issue, our firm was retained by the driver of a regular passenger vehicle after he was injured in a late night accident with a big rig. The trucking company was claiming our client had no headlights in his SUV when the accident took place. Once we were brought on the case, our client’s totaled car had been taken from the accident scene and to a salvage yard nearby. When our San Antonio attorney noticed the SUV at the junkyard, they saw it was really missing its headlights. We were immediately worried about client getting any form of compensation, but our investigators spotted a surveillance camera in the salvage yard and grabbed some video footage. This particular surveillance system was set to record over its memory every 48 hours and we got our hands on the video right before it was erased. The footage revealed an official from the trucking company illegally taking out our client’s headlights and leaving the junkyard with them. In trial, the trucking company’s attempted to argue our client’s car had no headlights, but our physical evidence revealed their deception and got compensation for our client. If our client had made the error of hesitating any longer in hiring us, the video would have been useless, any chance of getting restitution would have ended and the trucking company would have managed to commit felonious evidence tampering.
Our San Antonio attorney deal with lies and deception regularly in San Antonio 18-wheeler accident cases, so you need to hire a lawyer and have quick, detailed oriented investigation begin as quick as you can. Sometimes our San Antonio investigators are still able to spot the required proof long after an accident took place, but the quicker we can begin an investigation, the stronger chance we have of locating the proof needed to obtain the compensation you’re owed. Don’t wait any longer before reaching a San Antonio 18-wheeler accident lawyer.Common Obstacles that Plaintiffs Must Overcome
You may have filed an insurance claim after a regular car wreck, but that doesn’t instantly give you credibility to work your San Antonio 18-wheeler accident lawsuit by yourself. Trucking insurance policies are estimated to be 50 times worth the value of a regular insurance policy. Because of the size of commercial trucking insurance policies, litigation to handle these cases is usually more detailed than what you experience with your car. Plaintiffs who believe they’ll save money on lawyer’s fees through self representation soon realize they’ve cost themselves way more with compensation that’s been decreased or totally denied. People who have no legal background and lawyer fresh out of school are often befuddled when trying to file lawsuits after 18-wheeler accidents because of numerous challenges: showing the burden of proof, the enormity of insurance policies, self-insured companies and lying truckers.Burden of Proof
The law doesn’t demand that the defendant or defendants pay you a cent after you’ve been injured in a San Antonio 18-wheeler accident unless, as the plaintiff, can properly show they need to. If you want to get the restitution you want for your injuries, you’ll have to support your case with strong, factual evidence. While other means of negotiation can be leaned on to settle claims, you still need to find evidence so the defense and insurance workers will need to approach this in good faith. You also must meet these four requirements for a San Antonio 18-wheeler accident case:Duty – The first part in this process is showing the defendant owed you a duty to keep him or her safe by behaving reasonably. The law has established guidelines for the legal duty of care owed for certain circumstances and for each party depending on their relationships. In San Antonio 18-wheeler accident cases, meeting this factor tends to be easy, since all drivers have to operate their vehicles in a way that would ensure the safety of other drivers, pedestrians and passengers on the roads.Breach – If you want to see your case succeed, the next step is showing the defendant or defendants violated the obligation of care you were owed. This usually happens when the defendant put others at harm either with choices that regular people wouldn’t make or inaction when most of us would be asked to take charge. You’ll have to get evidence that proves the defendant ignored his or her legal duty of care through action or inaction if you want to show this violation. Besides of all that, you’ll need a San Antonio 18-wheeler accident lawyer who is capable of using that evidence in a persuasive manner with a jury and getting them to see the defendant or defendants acted inappropriately.Causation – Along with being able to show the defendant or defendant’s violation of their legal duty to you, you also need to prove your injuries were a result of this breach. Since numerous parties could have caused or played a part in the cause of a San Antonio 18-wheeler accident, it takes very detailed, factual, credible evidence to let a jury see a causal relationship existed between the defendant breaking his or her obligation to you and the harm that resulted. If this isn’t done, the defendant can take down your case by shifting blame to someone else for your injuries. Many times, the defendant or defendant’s best chances of winning is to dodge blame and put it right at the victim for causing their own injuries with their negligence.Damages – Once you’ve demonstrated all three other components of a strong San Antonio 18-wheeler accident lawsuit, you then have to prove the damages owed to you were due to the injuries you had. In the legal world, damages have zero to do with your injuries or property damage, but instead are about the compensation owed to the defendant for the harm that’s been caused. The plaintiff has the chance to seek damages for medical expenses, lost wages, pain and suffering, lost earning income, damaged property and other forms of losses incurred in the accident.
The worst part is that you can’t just demand compensation from the court and think you’ll get it quickly. You must provide factual evidence that points out not just your losses but also how you came up with that value for those damages. What happens then is that defendants will likely fight about the total compensation owed by the plaintiff and then submit their own amount owed, which will likely decrease the overall amount of harm the plaintiff has endured. If you’re wanting to show how the defendant took the sneaky cheap way out, you must present unflappable evidence that prove your numbers are spot on.
What is the true cost of my case? Damages like pain and suffering and loss of earning capacity are very subjective and always up for debate, and they’re also nearly impossible to total for regular citizens. It’s complicated putting a value on pain and suffering or estimate lost earning capacity by figuring the overall value of potential raises and inflation. In trial, you’ve got one shot to compile the amount of equitable compensation you should get. For the past 20 years, our San Antonio 18-wheeler accident lawyer have been totaling damages and we have gained enough familiarity with cases such as yours to learn how to take all your losses and get an estimation of compensation that will assist your family in getting the restitution they desire.
If you can’t show any of these four elements, you’ll probably fail at getting compensation for the harm incurred to you. You need the help of a San Antonio 18-wheeler accident lawyer – especially if you wind up in trial. Countless years litigating 18-wheeler accident cases has helped our lawyer build a strong legal strategy to meet the burdens of proof and get the jury to rule in your favor. Enormous Insurance Policies
Federal regulations require trucking companies to purchase huge insurance policies to guard against wrecks, injuries and potential fatalities that may occur because of being involved with 18-wheelers. Because of this, many assume that they’ll be compensated faster and without complications. Most of the time, that’s just not true. Because insurance policies for San Antonio 18-wheelers can be valued at 50 times more than your coverage for a regular car, the insurance companies usually devote 50 times the effort and manpower to defend those policies.
When you factor in all that’s at stake, insurance companies rely on their shrewdest and most trained insurance adjusters to handle settlement negotiations. While you’re probably inexperienced at working truck accident claims, these adjusters are the best and handle these issues on a regular basis. They are equipped and able to take the accident victim’s initial state of shock and their easy trust in local insurance agents, then twisting it and denying their claims. They provide a fake friendship and try to make the victim believe they want to assist them and help him or her receive their compensation – but the victim has to first answer some quick, simple questions. They don’t care about helping at all; they just want to improve company profits and reject your claim. Following that, they bombard you with tons of questions that are basically twisting the same questions around in an attempt to get you to mess up and say you were responsible for your accident. If they can get you to accidentally cop to your own accident, they can get your claim tossed. The best move here is to have as little contact as possible with the insurance adjuster, which is why you should hire a San Antonio 18-wheeler accident lawyer and let your council deal with the relentless questions from the insurance adjusters. In fact, we tell clients not to talk with any members of insurance companies without a lawyer serving as a buffer. If you retain our firm, our San Antonio lawyer will handle all of the conversations with the insurance company and protect you from any chance at admitting your own liability.
Many times aggressive insurance adjusters will even try to get accident victims to forfeit their rights to pursue a lawsuit and give them a smaller settlement instead. It’s a good thing to avoid the drama and unknowns that come with a jury trial, but you don’t want to choose an offer than doesn’t properly compensate you for the pain you’re dealing with. Only a San Antonio lawyer with an extensive track record of success can get the insurance company to provide a fair settlement, since they’re worried about losing far more money at trial.
The insurance company will also attempt to avoid liability for your injuries by using a talented defense team that can spot the legal loopholes and procedural challenges that could lead to a plaintiff hurting their chances at compensation. You need an experienced San Antonio 18-wheeler accident lawyer who can stand in with the best defense specialists out there. Our San Antonio attorney have won countless millions from every well-known insurance company in the country, and we’ve learned how to predict every move they will make.Self-Insured Companies can Be More Treacherous
Instead of purchasing normal insurance policies, some trucking companies will set aside a portion of their assets in an account devoted to insurance for when an accident happens. The federal government regulates the insurance company and demands that all businesses be registered, adjusters have licenses and certain practices are followed, but self-insured companies don’t have to adhere to these practices. That’s why these self-insured businesses have developed a reputation for being unethical and impossible to deal with when it comes to negotiations. Many times, if you want to reach a settlement with a self-insured company, you’ll have to work with an official from that company. Since this worker probably gets some of their income from profit sharing, they have every reason to reject your claim. This worker would be handing over their own paycheck if they let you get the restitution you deserve. With their own wages in limbo, self-insured companies will put their own best-interests ahead of the plaintiff’s and will not hesitate to do things like bully witnesses, change or tamper with evidence and threaten victims.
If a self-insured company has attempted to bully you or harass you, then you need this to cease and that can be accomplished with the assistance of a San Antonio 18 wheeler accident lawyer. The moment we’re retained, our San Antonio 18-wheeler attorney can pressure self-insured companies to negotiate properly with threats of legal option a possibility.Truckers Can’t Be Trusted
Most of us believe people are honest and trustworthy, but the trucker who injured you with their negligent behavior has too much motivation to lie. If the trucker is deemed to have harmed others with negligence, then that person will probably be receiving a pink slip in no time, if they haven’t already been fired. Truckers who have been found negligent will have a tough time finding another job quickly with that kind of black mark imprinted on their record. When you consider the job market and the economy, plenty of good, upstanding truckers will have to lie to save their jobs and be able to take care of their families. To get the compensation you need, you’ll have to show the trucker is lying.
Our San Antonio 18-wheeler accident lawyer have learned about investigating and discovering the required evidence that exposes the trucker’s deception. We will ruin the trucker’s credibility with all the necessary evidence that will expose their lies.
Just like insurance adjusters who try to get victims to admit their negligence with all their questions, our San Antonio attorney will form some questions for the deposition, all of them meant to trick the truck driver into confessing his or her own lie. The San Antonio 18-wheeler accident lawyer at The Snow Law Firm have deposed countless witnesses over 20 years and we known how to ask questions just right to catch a trucker in a lie.How we Can Help
If you have been hurt our lost a loved one in an 18-wheeler accident in San Antonio, you need to hire an 18-wheeler accident attorney to guard your legal rights and make sure you get the proper compensation you deserve. From start to finish, our attorney handle every part of your case and make sure you’re updated on any changes as they arise. We also provide these services:
Chances are the defendant has already finished its investigation and case against you. By hesitating anymore in getting an attorney, you’re creating immense damage in getting the restitution you deserve. Call us today to get a free consultation and learn how we can help you like we have countless others in Texas.