While the costs of recovering from a serious 18-wheeler collision could seem insurmountable, Washington state law affords victims the right to hire a Washington truck accident attorney and bring a legal claim against every entity that caused or contributed to the accident.
How Semi-Truck Accident Attorneys Help Their Clients Obtain Justice
Accidents involving commercial vehicles are mercifully rare. However, statistics are scarce comfort to victims: when semi-truck crashes do occur, they often leave devastation in their wake.
Even simple injuries—such as broken bones or a low-grade concussion—could keep victims away from work for weeks at a time, unable to put food on their table or keep a roof over their families’ heads.
While Washington state empowers victims to take a negligent truck driver or transportation logistics company to court, securing the right amount of compensation could prove challenging.
The insurance company might be obliged to make amends for your damages, but they may still try to devalue your settlement, doing everything in their power to preserve their own profits.
An experienced Seattle-area semi-truck accident attorney could help you reclaim your independence by:
Determining Who Is Liable for Your Accident
Semi-truck accident claims are almost always complex. While you might believe that the semi-truck driver should be held liable for your injuries, the driver might not be the sole party at fault.
The defendants in a personal injury lawsuit could include:
- The semi-truck driver
- The trucking company
- The cargo shipping company
- A vehicle parts manufacturer
- A truck manufacturer
- A municipal corporation or other government entity
Your semi-truck accident attorney will investigate the circumstances of your accident to determine who should be held accountable for your damages. Since the interstate trucking industry is governed by strict rules that are set at both the state and federal levels, these crashes often involve oversights that go far beyond the truck driver’s personal misconduct.
Investigating the Causes of Your 18-Wheeler Collision
The interstate trucking industry is a multi-billion-dollar business. Even small trucking outfits often have a lawyer on standby—and if they do not, their insurer almost certainly does. Since insurance companies are for-profit entities, they will typically go to great lengths to ensure that they pay the smallest settlement possible. In a worst-case scenario, this means that victims are forced to pay out-of-pocket for an accident that was not their fault.
In order to secure the compensation you deserve, your semi-truck accident attorney will collect the evidence needed to fulfill the following components of a personal injury claim:
- The semi-truck driver and other defendants owed you a duty of care.
- The semi-truck driver and other defendants acted negligently.
- You were injured.
- The defendants’ negligence caused your injuries.
- The court can award damages for your injuries.
While preparing your case, your commercial vehicle crash lawyer will rigorously investigate the causes of your accident, amassing the evidence needed to show the insurance company and the court that you deserve compensation. On your behalf, Max Meyers Law will:
- Identify all potential defendants
- Collect evidence from the crash site
- Interview eyewitnesses
- Subpoena the trucking company’s maintenance records, violations history, and safety procedures
- Review your medical records
When we accept a new case, we do everything in our power to advocate for our clients’ best interests—even when it means standing up to unscrupulous trucking companies and pushing back against the insurance adjuster’s bad-faith settlement offers.
Calculating Your Compensation
Semi-truck accident victims could be entitled to compensation for:
- Economic damages. Economic damages are damages that are easily quantifiable and typically associated with a set dollar amount, such as your paid medical expenses or physical therapy bills.
- Non-economic damages. Non-economic damages are damages that are comparably subjective and harder to quantify, such as emotional pain and suffering or loss of enjoyment.
Max Meyers law can help you obtain compensation for both your economic and non-economic damages. Your recovery could include compensation for the following:
- Your past, present, and anticipated medical expenses
- Physical rehabilitation
- Prescription medication co-pays
- Long-term or continuing care
- Assisted living
- Lost income from work
- Diminished earning potential
- Permanent or temporary disability
- Emotional pain and suffering
- Loss of enjoyment
- Disfigurement
- Wrongful death
Washington state does not currently cap the damages that semi-truck accident victims could receive from a personal injury lawsuit. However, the Evergreen State does have a strict statute of limitations: if you wait too long to contact an attorney, the statute of limitations could lapse, forcing the court to throw out your case on a technicality.
