Experience is Important in Commercial Truck Accident Cases

A great deal of 18-wheeler traffic passes through San Antonio, leading to plenty of accidents. If you or a loved one has been involved in an accident with any sort of commercial truck, then you will need the help of a competent San Antonio 18-wheeler accident attorney to receive the fair compensation to which you are entitled.

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In Bexar County, you can go down to the courthouse, spin a bottle, and it’ll point out an attorney. However, that method rarely paid off at middle school parties, and it’s a foolhardy way to choose an attorney. You need the help of a San Antonio semi-truck accident attorney with significant experience dealing with cases of all kinds.

At Grossman Law Offices, our attorneys have spent over 20 years helping accident victims and their families in Texas, focusing a great deal of the time on commercial vehicle accidents and assisting hundreds of people in securing multiple millions of dollars.

While the immediate idea in your mind’s eye regarding commercial truck accidents may be of an 18-wheeler, there is actually a wide array of trucks with which a passenger car can get into an extremely dangerous collision. In San Antonio, one is nearly as like to be injured in a wreck with a tanker or a cattle truck as any other type of 18-wheeler. Moreover, there’s a vast array of commercial vehicles on the road with which you can get into a wreck: flatbed trucks, farm machinery, construction vehicles, rock haulers, utility trucks, buses, dump trucks, moving vans, delivery trucks, and others. Each of these vehicles has its own characteristics, presenting distinct dangers to other drivers. However, accident cases involving most commercial vehicles share some tendencies:

• Since almost all commercial vehicles are quite large, people in passenger cars and pedestrians who are injured by these behemoths often suffer severe injuries.
• Completely different legal principles govern both lawsuits and insurance claims for 18-wheelers and other commercial trucks than for passenger car accidents.
• Since most commercial vehicles are owned and operated by large companies, there are usually plenty of resources with which to contest personal injury and wrongful death claims.

If they don’t already have a team of specialized defense lawyers on staff, commercial trucking companies have the money to do so when people threaten lawsuits over accidents. Since most commercial vehicle accidents result in serious injuries and some in fatalities, the trucking companies and the insurance companies who provide them policies have every reason to fight the charges. If you attempt to take on these experienced defense specialists on your own, then you stand little chance of securing the restitution you deserve and might end up completely empty-handed. By securing the help of an experienced San Antonio 18-wheeler accident attorney who has compiled a winning track record against trucking and insurance companies, you regain the upper hand. You’re opponents will be eager to settle fairly rather than risk losing more in court.

With over two decades of experience handling 18-wheeler accident and commercial vehicle wreck cases of all kinds, the San Antonio 18-wheeler accident lawyers at Grossman Law Offices give you an excellent chance of obtaining the compensation you and your family deserve. We know you need financial compensation to rebuild your life, and our knowledge and reputation can help you get it.

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In the 20 years that we’ve been handling 18-wheeler accident cases, we’ve come to empathize with the feelings of victims and their families. After the wreck, we understand your confusion and apprehension. That’s why our associates have compiled this information article. We want you to learn more about the legal situation you are in and your various options. We believe that only an informed client can make the right decisions for his or her family. Educate yourself and then head in the right direction.

San Antonio 18-Wheeler Accident Attorney

San Antonio Truck Accident Lawyer Michael Grossman on Texas Big Rig Accidents

• What To Do After a Big Rig Accident
• Identifying all Liable Parties
• Can I Represent Myself in a Truck Accident Case?
• High-Dollar Truck Insurance Policies
• Self-Insured Trucking Companies in Texas

While big rigs and other types of commercial trucks are a necessary and vital part of the structure of America, their continual presence on the interstates and highways in Texas can result in severe big rig wrecks resulting in personal injury or loss of life.

When faced with such an unexpected event, an injured victim or the family members of a killed person may not know who to turn to in order to get the answers they seek. Why did this happen? Who’s responsible? How can I hold them accountable? Do I have legal options? Should I contact an attorney? What am I supposed to do about my medical bills, or my lost wages? What am I supposed to do next? These are all legitimate questions that any person will have after experiencing an injury or loss due to a big rig crash in Texas. San Antonio big rig accident attorney Michael Grossman offers the following information to help inform you of your legal rights in seeking compensation against a liable party or parties for a truck driving accident. Our San Antonio trucking accident law firm can help you pursue justice and seek compensation from those responsible for causing you harm or grief.

What To Do Following a Big Rig Accident

If you’ve been injured in a big rig wreck in San Antonio, or your loved one has lost their life due to the negligence of a big rig trucker, you likely have merit in seeking compensation for your injury or loss through a personal injury or wrongful death lawsuit. In order to pursue such legal action through to a successful outcome, relevant evidence must be gathered in order to construct a strong case on your behalf that will prove how a liable party’s negligent behavior caused or contributed to an 18-wheeler crash resulting in injury or death. Such strong cases are most often built on the obtainment of evidence as soon as possible after a big rig collision has occurred. As time goes by, such evidence can become lost. In some instances, such evidence can even be destroyed of otherwise altered by the liable parties that would rather not be caught. It should also be noted that Texas law allows trucking company’s to get rid of their safety records after a certain amount of time has passed. If no legal action has been taken in order to prevent such records from being destroyed, valuable evidence could be lost through a legal loophole of sorts. As such, there are many reasons to contact a San Antonio big rig accident attorney as soon as possible after an 18-wheeler accident has affected you.

For example, we once had clients who were involved in a catastrophic underride accident with an 18-wheeler. The accident occurred at night as one of our clients was driving a car around a bend in the road when he came upon a tractor-trailer whose trailer was perpendicular to the road, effectively occupying every lane in the road. With just the small, red running lights visible on the side of the trailer, our client had no time and no place to turn to in order to make an evasive maneuver. As a result, his car went underneath the trailer, resulting in the driver suffering severe personal injury. Sadly, his passenger died as a result of the crash. The driver and the passenger’s family both contacted us to investigate the accident. We flew to the scene of the accident, then visited a junk yard where our client’s car had been towed to following the accident. We saw that our client’s car was without headlights; they were not smashed, cracked, or broken, but completely missing from the car. Knowing this to be an anomaly, we secured video surveillance footage from the junk yard’s proprietor and watched as a representative from the trucking company had previously visited the junkyard in order to steal our client’s headlights. Later, the insurance company attempted to blame our client for this horrendous wreck since our client was driving without headlights at night. Armed with video evidence that the insurer was unaware of, we were able to prove that our client had been subjected to unethical treatment. The video evidence that was key to the success of this particular big rig accident case was, like most video surveillance footage, set to delete itself shortly after we had viewed it. In other words, had our clients not contacted us as soon as possible, even in the aftermath of such a cataclysmic wreck, and had we not been able to respond to the accident just as quickly, we may not have been able to procure that necessary piece of evidence to exonerate our client. We tell this real-life story over and over again because it represents many of the reasons why contacting an attorney as quickly as possible is often in a victim’s best interests.

Identifying the Liable Parties in a San Antonio Big Rig Accident

Once hired, we will conduct a thorough investigation into your big rig wreck in order to determine all of the liable parties and their respective roles in contributing to the wreck. 18-wheeler accidents are often vastly different from passenger-vehicle wrecks in San Antonio for a large number of reasons. One of the main reasons is that big rig crashes often involve more than one liable party. A trucker is often the first liable party since he or she was likely, though not always, responsible for some or all of the liability for an 18-wheeler accident. However, since a trucker likely works for a trucking company and the Texas legal notion of “respondeat superior” hold an employer vicariously liable for the actions of their employees while such employees are on-the-job, a trucking company will also often be an additional liable party. Furthermore, since trucking companies in Texas must carry insurance policies on their trucks and drivers, an insurance company will more than likely be involved in any litigation that comes about due to a big rig wreck in San Antonio, TX.

In addition to these three types of liable parties that are most often involved in semi-truck accident cases in Texas, outside parties that were not directly involved at the crash scene may also bear partial liability. For example, some trucking companies choose to employ other companies in order to accomplish certain tasks, like loading and securing cargo onto their trucks. If such an outside cargo-loading company is negligent in their duties and fails to properly secure or load cargo into a truck, and shifting cargo or falling cargo results in a big rig accident causing injury or loss of life, that third-party cargo-loading company can be held liable for the accident. The same type of proximate cause liability can exist in instances where an outside route-planning company is negligent, or when a defective part causes an accident, in which the manufacturer of that part may be held liable. Furthermore, some big rig collisions are the result of drunken driving. In Texas, if a drunken driver became intoxicated due to being over-served at a restaurant or bar prior to an accident, the alcohol-serving establishment could be held partially liable for the big rig drunk driving accident through a dram shop cause of action.

As you can likely tell, assessing liability in a big rig wreck can be quite a challenging aspect to pursuing legal action. However, San Antonio big rig accident attorney Michael Grossman has 20 years of experience in seeking justice against the liable parties involved in big rig accidents. With his years of hard-earned knowledge, he can help you seek out the liable parties so that they can be held accountable for their negligent behavior. It’s also important to properly identify all liable parties since each liable party will be responsible for awarding a victim compensation based on their portion of liability for the wreck. Consequently, a victim will only stand to be fully and fairly compensated if all liable parties are correctly identified. In cases involving multiple liable parties, a unique case will often need to be built against each defendant. Without a wide breadth of legal knowledge and experience, building multiple cases against multiple defendants can prove quite challenging to non-attorneys and lawyers with little to no experience in 18-wheeler accident cases.

Can I Represent Myself in a San Antonio, TX Big Rig Accident Case?

Some plaintiffs that have suffered an injury due to an 18-wheeler wreck mistakenly believe that they can handle their claim by themselves. Maybe they were able to handle an auto accident claim by themselves at some point in the past, leading them to believe that a San Antonio 18-wheeler accident claim will be similar in nature. However, big rig injury claims are nothing like passenger vehicle insurance claims, for many of the reasons that will soon be described in detail. An injured plaintiff who attempts to represent themselves in a San Antonio big rig accident will likely face an increasingly uphill battle in which the odds of success will likely steadily decrease. There are often too many obstacles in these types of personal injury or wrongful death cases in order for a non-attorney, or even a less-experienced lawyer, to be able to see such a claim through to a successful completion. With a large sum of compensation possibly due to you, choosing to self-represent is a risk you likely cannot afford to take.

The Inclusion of High-Dollar Insurance Policies in Big Rig Accident Cases

Since trucking insurance companies are required by Texas law to have insurance coverage on their trucks and drivers, an insurance company will most likely be involved in any litigation against a truck driver or trucking company. These trucking insurance policies are often worth more than 50 times the amount of a normal auto insurance policy. This is reasonable since the insurance must be able to cover the immense damage that a big rig can cause, both in terms of property damage and bodily damage. As a result, the insurance adjusters sent to work 18-wheeler claims will likely be well-experienced at working to ensure that their company’s bottom-line isn’t severely adjusted by having to pay out compensation to an aggrieved party. Such adjusters will work to have a claim denied by attempting to place a majority of blame for a big rig accident onto the victim. If such blame cannot be passed, they will work to have as much blame shifted from their client onto any other liable party so that the amount they’re held responsible for paying is much less than the amount requested. As such, having an aggressive San Antonio truck accident attorney on your side that is familiar with these particular types of trucking insurance adjusters can prove beneficial to your 18-wheeler accident case in Texas.

Ready-to-Respond Defense Attorneys

Since trucking accidents happen with a certain regularity in Texas, trucking companies and their insurers are often ready to move at a moment’s notice after a big rig accident has occurred. With defense attorneys likely on speed-dial, these insurers can have lawyers and accident scene specialists on site, sometimes within a matter of minutes. They hope that this lead time will afford their attorneys an advantage in procuring evidence that could help exonerate their client. This is yet another reason why contacting your own legal help as soon as possible in the aftermath of a big rig crash is a vital step toward ensuring that your interests are being looked after through an exhaustive investigation conducted on your behalf.

Self-Insured Trucking Companies in Texas

Some trucking companies may not have insurance coverage provided by a traditional insurer. Such companies that choose to set aside a portion of their financial assets are known as self-insured trucking companies. However, these types of trucking employers can be prone to acting unethically when a claim is brought against them. Since they do not have to maintain the same standards as traditional insurers, they sometimes attempt to work a claim to their advantage, even if it means stepping across certain ethical boundaries. For example, our big rig accident law firm in San Antonio has been contacted in the past when a victim was attempting to seek compensation on their own against a self-insured trucking company. We were contacted after the victim had been treated unethically and couldn’t make any head-way at all against the negligent company. Such unethical behavior can take various forms, ranging from witness badgering to evidence deletion. Once we get involved, we will pursue legal means in order to compel the trucking company to begin treating our client ethically. Once the legal playing field is leveled, then we help our client pursue full and fair compensation from such a company. While we’re happy to assist clients that have become mired in such a mess with a self-insured trucking company, such clients could have saved themselves much time, effort, and frustration by contacting us before attempting to seek compensation on their own against these particular kinds of trucking companies.

Validating a Big Rig Driver’s Story

Lastly, a common issue in commercial trucking accidents that cause severe personal injury or death is the record of events as presented by the liable truck driver. Since such a driver may stand to lose their job or even their livelihood as a result of a severe or fatal big rig accident, they may attempt to cover up certain details of a wreck, or they may even blatantly lie about their involvement in a crash. As such, evidence obtained through a thorough investigation of the 18-wheeler accident site and the application of careful deposition techniques can often work in tandem to validate a truck driver’s story. With 20 years of experience in listening to truck drivers tell their version of events, the San Antonio trucking accident attorneys at Grossman Law Offices know when to press for more details, or when relevant evidence may suggest that something other than the truck driver’s version of events has occurred.

Contact San Antonio Big Rig Accident Attorney Michael Grossman

Did You Know?

Michael Grossman has been fighting for 18 wheeler accident victims` rights for over 20 years. Call Mike to discuss your case. 1-855-393-0000

The common obstacles and challenges that arise in 18-wheeler accident cases are too much too handle for a non-attorney, or even a lawyer with little to no experience in litigating 18-wheeler accident cases. With the possible inclusion of multiple liable parties, the existence of a high-dollar insurance policy, the aggressive methods of insurance adjusters and defense lawyers, and the necessity for an in-depth investigation to be conducted at the accident site, a non-attorney simply does not have the knowledge, experience, or resources available to him or her in order to see such a claim through to a successful completion.

San Antonio big rig accident lawyer Michael Grossman has built a career on helping clients just like you. With ample legal knowledge, two decades of relevant experience, and a well-earned reputation for assisting his clients through difficult times, Michael Grossman and the big rig accident lawyers at Grossman Law Offices are ready to help you pursue compensation and seek justice for an injury or loss you may have experienced as a result of a big rig accident in San Antonio, Texas. Contact us toll-free at 1-855-393-0000 for free legal advice. We’ll answer any further questions you may have and apprise you of your possible legal options. We want to help you hold the negligent parties accountable so that they can’t cause future harm to others, while also assisting you toward possible compensation that can help you with medical bills, lost wages, and other financial losses you may have already experienced.