With regards to car wrecks, it depends. There are some car wrecks that are very simple. The injuries are not profound or life changing. Personal injury lawyers or trial lawyers handle these cases on a regular basis. At the Segal Law firm, we tend to focus more on serious life-altering cases where people involved in car wrecks have been killed or paralyzed, lost a limb, suffered blindness or suffered a serious head injury which results in them not being able to continue working and providing for their family.
You want to have a lawyer who has not only prepared a car wreck case for settlement but has tried them in a court of law to a jury. You have to look at a lot of factors in a car wreck because sometimes there is evidence that people overlook. You may see someone who is in a rather mild car wreck but they suffer paralysis. Everyone is scratching his or her head saying, “Well, how did that happen?”
But it turns out, when you look under the seat, the seat belts are sheared off. So obviously the force of that particular car wreck may not look like it was a lot but it sheared the seat belts off. And that’s evidence that you need to present to explain to that jury why that car wreck was so severe.
Now, a trucking case is a whole different ball of wax. Due to federal trucking laws, these are very complex cases involving interstate commerce. If you’ve got truckers going through West Virginia to another state or to our state from another state they are going go to be covered by federal trucking regulations.
Those regulations affect the rig, the loads on the rig, how the rig is to be maintained, how the brakes are to be maintained, how the safety systems are to be maintained. Those regulations also affect the driver, how long is the driver allowed to drive. There are laws that say how long a trucker may drive a truck on a day-to-day basis, a week-to-week basis. They have to have logbooks and most trucks are equipped with black boxes. You need an experienced lawyer who knows how to get to that evidence because the black box may reveal a lot about what was going on before our client got hurt. We’ve also caught truckers who keep two sets of books. They have one diary that they show the investigator and they keep another one based on what they get paid on.
I had a case where a young woman and her fiancé were driving to their wedding and because a trucker didn’t check his load a roll of aluminum came off and went through their car, killed her fiancé and permanently changed her forever both physically as well as spiritually. It’s all because the trucker stopped to get a cup of coffee but he didn’t check his load and it had shifted.
So, in those cases you’ve got to have a lawyer who knows that kind of case and knows those regulations and is sure all of the evidence is uncovered that may help your case get to a jury or to a nice settlement, depending on what you want.
If you have questions contact the Segal Law firm at 855-344-9100.