San Antonio Drunk Driving Accident Lawyer

Do You Need Compensation After a Drunk Driving Accident? San Antonio Drunk Driving Accident Lawyer Michael Grossman Can Help.

If you have been injured in a drunk driving accident in San Antonio, TX, you may be wondering how to recover compensation for your medical bills, lost wages, and pain and suffering.

Grossman Law Offices can help you understand what is involved in a liquor liability lawsuit in Texas and file one if necessary. Alcohol-related personal injury lawsuits are even more complex than typical lawsuits and require skilled attorneys to obtain due compensation.

Dram Shop Laws in TX

Texas dram shop laws cover any situations in which a bar or server plays a role in their patron causing a drunk driving accident. The legislature instated these laws in order to motivate bars and alcohol-serving establishments to be careful about their alcohol-serving practices and to ensure that victims of drunk driving accidents receive adequate compensation. Before dram shop laws, bars and restaurants were more likely to serve copious amounts of alcohol to people as long as they kept ordering because they made more money that way than if they stopped at a certain point in the interest of safety. Now that bars and restaurants know they, and not just the drunk driver, could face a lawsuit in the event of a drunk driving accident, they are more wary about serving excess alcohol to patrons.

What Do Dram Shop Laws Entail and How Can I Know if They Were Violated in My Case?

Alcohol-serving establishments can obtain a license to serve alcohol only if they meet certain standards for serving alcohol responsibly. For instance, bars must keep track of the number of drinks each patron has ordered and they must ensure that no patrons actually become intoxicated in their establishment. Public intoxication is a crime in Texas, and bars and restaurants that served too much alcohol to people who commit this crime can be held liable.

People are imperfect judges of when a person is intoxicated, particularly because people do not always exhibit outward signs and can become intoxicated from differing amounts of alcohol. Nevertheless, if the bar does not recognize that a person is intoxicated until it has already happened, they must still have a contingency plan. They can prevent a person from leaving the establishment and putting other people at risk, or even call police to handle the situation.

If a drunk person leaves a bar, regardless of whether that person plans to drive, both that individual and the bar have broken the law. If that person hits someone with their vehicle, that person is clearly liable for resulting injuries or deaths, but so is the bar.

Winning Your Drunk Driving Case

It is important to understand that while these laws all seem clear and straightforward, the way a lawsuit plays in real life is dramatically different and far more complex. In the face of complicated procedures, ferocious attorneys, a liable third party, a fickle jury, and a money-obsessed insurance company emboldened by tort reform, a victim without an attorney has almost no chance of securing compensation. Fortunately, San Antonio drunk driving attorney Michael Grossman at Grossman Law Offices has years of experience handling all of the above complicating factors and getting victims the compensation they need but could not obtain on their own.

The Judgment of the Jury

Laws never state how much various claims are worth; that job is up to a jury and could vary wildly. Juries will not necessarily be swayed by an attorney’s demonstration of the applicable laws, presentation of evidence that gives credence to the claim, or explanation of any other objective drunk driving technicalities. Juries may often make their assessments based on subjective feelings, or they might not understand the Dram Shop Act that implicates bars and restaurants as well as the drunk driver. They often tend to believe that drunk drivers should go to jail as adequate punishment, but may be reluctant to go beyond that by forcing the driver (and much less an establishment whose role they may view as merely tangential) to pay money to the victim.

For a liquor liability case to be successful, the jury must come to understand that bars have as much power to allow people to become endangered as to protect them from harm. When they act irresponsibly by serving too much alcohol, they need to be held accountable for their actions. The jury also needs to be made to understand the serious extent to which these accidents can devastate people’s lives and that victims will need considerable compensation to recover fully from their injuries or loss. Our attorneys understand these deep-rooted perceptions juries have and the arguments it often takes to open their eyes to these realities.

Specialized Defense Attorneys

Since the inception of the Dram Shop Act, few attorneys have been willing to defend bars or restaurants guilty of irresponsibly serving too much alcohol to a patron who later causes serious damage to an innocent person. The small group who do usually come to focus on defending dram shops exclusively and they become some of the most experienced defense lawyers in the field. A non-attorney has little to no hope versus such a foe.

However, Grossman Law Offices has a proven ability to defeat these attorneys. We have won cases against nearly every major insurance company in the country. We too have litigated hundreds of these cases and are committed to using our experience to protect victims from defense lawyers to get our clients the compensation they deserve.

Involvement of a Third Party

In most intoxicated driving accident cases, the other side’s attorneys will assert that only the drunk driver caused the accident and the bar or restaurant is not guilty for the driver’s actions. While the driver did commit the act of colliding with the other vehicle, the bar still contributed to his level of intoxication. If they had cut the patron off as required by law, the victim more than likely would not have been injured or even lost their life. Our San Antonio drunk driving accident lawyers know how to communicate this fact in a way that a jury will listen to. We will work with you toward seeing that all responsible parties might be proven guilty and that you may receive comprehensive damages in your case.

Defense attorneys may serve the interests of a huge, multi-national insurance company that wants nothing more than to deprive the victim of any compensation whatsoever. In Texas, defense attorneys have a major upper hand in that no one is allowed to say in court that an insurance policy is even involved in a drunk driving accident case. Thus, insurance companies can use sneaky, nefarious tactics to deny a claim, and nobody is allowed to bring this to the attention of a jury.

Moreover, liquor laws in Texas have changed in ways that are advantageous to insurance companies. Insurance companies will now bring cases to court they would previously have settled without litigation. This leeway has made them far bolder, and you will need an experienced San Antonio drunk driving accident lawyer to rein them in and make them pay you the compensation you deserve.

We Can Help

Our Texas dram shop attorneys have 20 years of experience with liquor liability law and have successfully resolved hundreds of cases in that time. We are dedicated to getting each client the full compensation they deserve, which means identifying all parties responsible in each case and bringing them to justice. While the responsibility for your accident lies primarily with the driver, the law is clear that the bar who served them negligently is liable as well. We can help you overcome the hurdles you will face filing a dram shop cause of action or file a lawsuit if necessary.

Because of our history of success, many insurance companies recognize they have little chance against us in court and will comply with our settlement demands instead of meeting us in a courtroom. The San Antonio drunk driving accident lawyers at Grossman Law Offices can help you get the compensation you need if you have been injured in a drunk driving accident. Contact us to discuss your case and learn more about how we can help in a free consultation.