Frequently Asked Questions About California Semi-Truck Accidents
After a serious truck accident in California, your compensation amount is based on the resulting financial hardships you endure. A California personal injury lawyer with experience in trucking accidents will know all of the damages to anticipate. Some of these include:
- Medical bills (present and future)
- Missed time from work (present and future)
- Property damage
- Travel time to see doctors and specialists
- Emotional hardships for you and your family
Getting into an accident with a commercial truck or van may leave you filing an insurance claim with multiple parties. This can include both the driver and the trucking company.
Truck drivers may work for themselves and will carry commercial auto accident insurance. Your attempt to get insurance support for your hospital bills and your lost wages may only involve the driver.
The truck driver may be an employee or a contract driver for a local company or a national corporation. In these cases, the employer may also have to accept full or partial blame for your accident. The chances they’ll face responsibility increase if it’s revealed they’ve hired an unsafe driver with prior safety violations.
A third party, the truck’s manufactuer can also be targeted in a lawsuit if it’s proven a design flaw or defect contributed to your accident. A recall may have been issued but not repaired on the truck.
It’s important to turn your case over to a skilled California personal injury attorney. Your attorney will quickly determine every party that should be included in an injury claim. That attorney also makes sure you receive everything you need to pay for recovery, even if that means suing the driver and his or her employer.
A criminal trial will be separate from your civil lawsuit. Your claim for damages doesn’t have to wait for a criminal trial to resolve. A truck driver may be facing DUI, Hit-And-Run, or other misdemeanor or felony charges, but your civil claim for damages can proceed separately.
No. Insurance agents from any of the at-fault parties may call you asking for a statement on what happened. Tell them you won’t make a recorded statement. They are hoping you’ll make a mistake and say something that hurts your claim. Let your attorney handle these calls.
A reputable personal injury lawyer won’t ask for any money from you until you earn a monetary victory in either an insurance settlement or in a court judgment. This means your attorney doesn’t get paid for his or her work until they win your truck accident case.
This is called working on a “contingency basis.” The attorney fee is taken out of the compensation you earn hopefully earn from an insurance company.
This share is often around a third of your award, but you should always discuss how much your personal injury lawyer will receive and when before you hire him or her.
Personal injury lawyers tie up a lot of their own time and money in your case and can have to wait months or even a year or more to hopefully get paid. They can end up investing months of energy and funds only to receive nothing in the end. They must require a suitable portion of any award earned to make the risks they take worth it.
To prove the truck driver was at fault and was distracted during your accident, you can collect several pieces of evidence. On the scene, you can talk to witnesses who might have seen the driver behaving carelessly. They may have seen drivers with a phone to their ear.
You should also scan the scene for the possibility of security cameras mounted at local businesses or homes nearby. This footage may show the truck driver engaging in distraction.
At the very least, swap information with the driver involved, getting driver’s license information, insurance details, and a phone number. Your attorney should be able to secure cellphone records that to help prove the driver was distracted.
Jackknifed big rigs are a common occurrence on California freeways and highways. The truck driver often loses control through carelessness or recklessness and the truck’s load swings around to form a V-shape in the road.
These accidents are usually the fault of the truck driver, but insurance companies for truckers and trucking companies don’t always readily admit that fault. You may be behind or beside a truck when it jackknifes and draws you into a crash. You or a passenger may be seriously injured and in need of substantial financial support as you heal.
It’s important to avoid talking to a representative from the trucking company or the company’s insurance. They look to get recorded statements from you they can later twist to falsely accuse you of causing your own injuries.
Instead, tell a qualified personal injury lawyer about what happened to you. Your attorney will go to work immediately gathering evidence that clears you of fault in an accident involving a jackknifed truck. Your truck accident lawyer will also aggressively work to make sure the insurance companies involved provide every cent of support you need to heal and rebuild your life.
Motorists who rear-end other cars, SUVs, or trucks often receive the blame in an accident. But there are exceptions to this general assumption of fault.
In California, all drivers are required to travel at speeds reasonable for conditions no matter the posted speed limit. In many circumstances, this means drivers coming up from behind are assigned fault in a crash no matter how suddenly someone stops in front of them.
Where trucks are involved, there are arguments you may make to shift blame. For example, the truck could have had a brake light out and left you without warning of a sudden stop.
In California, accident victims can also share the blame in an accident. Under comparative liability, you may be assigned 50% of the blame and another driver could have to accept 50% or any other combination of percentages.
Seeing a big rig in your rearview mirror can be a frightening sight, especially if you are suddenly forced to stop quickly. Can that big, heavy truck behind you stop in time?
If you are injured in a collision from behind, you should be able to file an insurance claim with the truck driver’s commercial insurance and perhaps the trucking company the driver works for.
The drivers of vehicles who collide with the rear-ends of other vehicles are usually found at fault. That’s because all drivers are responsible for traveling at safe speeds for conditions, no matter what the posted speed limit is.
This applies to truck drivers because they can be behind the wheel of an 80,000lb vehicle that requires much more time and distance to stop. Drivers need to travel at a reasonable speed and pay attention to the road in front of them, allowing them to brake in time to avoid a collision.
The vast majority of truck accident injury cases are settled before ever reaching a courtroom. In fact, some experts maintain that 10% or fewer cases end up before a judge and jury.
The goal for your personal injury lawyer is to negotiate for a fair settlement offer from an insurance company. However, any offer must cover every physical, emotional, and financial cost you’ve paid during recovery. If it leaves you paying for some of your damages out of pocket, your attorney can reject the offer for you and demand more.
Insurance companies will do almost anything to avoid a lawsuit and having to appear in court, so they often work to make you an acceptable offer. If they won’t do what’s right, your attorney will be prepared to file a lawsuit and drag them into court. The good news is that you can still reach a settlement agreement while waiting on a court date and even after the trial has started.
