What Does it Cost to Hire a Car Accident Lawyer in Fresno?

You won’t need any money upfront when you hire a skilled Fresno Personal Injury Lawyer to represent your accident case.

Most qualified Fresno personal injury lawyers work on a contingency basis. This means you don’t pay for attorney fees unless they win your case.

Your attorney will usually also front many of the investigative costs and legal fees for your case. This is helpful for clients because they don’t have to worry about these costs until they’ve received fair compensation from an insurance company. However, these beneficial practices for you add up to a risk for your attorney.

If a case is tossed out on a technicality or new information emerges that makes a lawsuit impossible to win, the attorney can end up doing a lot of work over many months for no pay.

For this reason, attorneys generally get around 33% of any award or judgment earned for a client. Again, they only receive payment if they secure a favorable outcome for the client.

Fresno Car Accident Rate

As reported by the Fresno Bee, Fresno ranks 15th in the nation’s worst cities to drive in, and it ranks fifth in drunk drivers. Aside from those drunk drivers, Fresno ranked 18th for traffic tickets, 24th for speeding tickets and 31st for accidents. That’s not a very good traffic safety record at all for a city that’s just a bit larger than Omaha. Here are just a few of the common causes of auto accidents in and around Fresno:

• Distracted driving.
• Drunk driving, drugged driving or a combination of the two.
• Following too closely
• Speeding.
• Driving too fast for weather or traffic conditions.
• Disobeying red lights and stop signs.
• Sudden lane changes at high speeds.

Fresno Fatal Accidents and Wrongful Death Claims

There’s nothing more heartbreaking than losing a loved one in a terrible accident. It’s especially hard when the accident could have easily been prevented.

When someone’s negligence caused the death of a family member, you are allowed to act on behalf of the close relatives left behind by filing a wrongful death claim. This civil lawsuit would hold an at-fault party’s insurance company responsible for all costs associated with any emergency response provided on the date of the accident. The suit would also ask for full payment for a funeral and burial for the victim.

Families must also protect their futures by requesting help to replace the financial support the deceased can no longer provide through job income. As far as the future goes, the family should receive additional support for loss of the care and guidance a loved one will no longer be able to provide in the years to come.

A wrongful death claim may be filed by a spouse or children of the victim. A Fresno wrongful death attorney may also file this lawsuit on behalf of all close relatives. A skilled attorney would investigate the circumstances surrounding the accident to make sure all at-fault parties shared in the liability. The attorney would confront insurance companies to secure the most support possible while disturbing the family as little as possible to allow them time to grieve.

How Does Liability Work When One Driver Is Drunk and the Other Is Texting?

Drunk drivers aren’t always found at fault in every accident. Texting drivers could strike them from behind and be found fully responsible. However, the drunk driver would still face criminal DUI charges and is more likely to be assigned blame.

There’s also the legal concept of comparative negligence that can factor into any traffic accident. Two drivers involved in a collision can share blame in a crash. A drunk driver and a texting driver could be assigned percentages of the blame for the same collision.

This would happen if an investigating officer felt both drivers contributed to the accident.  Yet, any driver found to be intoxicated is more likely to receive a bigger share of fault or all of the fault.

Texting is generally just an infraction and only becomes a misdemeanor when fines aren’t paid. The violation would generally have less impact on the determination of fault when the other motorist was driving under the influence.