Dunedin Truck Accident Lawyer
Collisions involving massive tractor-trailer rigs and other commercial vehicles weighing more than 10,000 pounds cause serious injury, death, extensive property damage, and emotional trauma. An experienced Dunedin truck accident lawyer is prepared to help people who are hurt or families who lost a loved one in a truck accident to receive compensation for injury, losses, suffering, and property damage. Skilled personal injury lawyers can work hard to help you recover damages for your injuries and help you move forward.
Truck Accident Causes
Causes of big truck accidents in Dunedin include distracted, fatigued, or impaired truckers, excessive speed, poor visibility, bad road conditions, weather, improper truck maintenance such as worn tires and brakes, substandard repair work, and defects in manufacturing.
These rigs do not handle or stop as well as cars and light trucks and the trailers catch a lot of wind which can cause the rig to swerve and cargo loads may shift to one side turning over the rig.
Finding Fault
Most of those faults would make the trucking company liable under Florida’s comparative negligence standard. Comparative negligence is designed to limit damages for parties who have any fault in causing an accident. For example, damages for someone who is 25 percent at fault are reduced by 25 percent.
Negligence is proven by meeting these elements of the law:
- Duty of care: A person has a legal obligation not to cause injury, death, or property damage to someone else
- Breach: Committing an act or failing to act that violates duty of care
- Causation: The breach caused the accident and resulting injuries or death and property damage
- Proximate cause: The breach also caused an unforeseen accident. For example, a tractor-trailer rig hits a car causing it to cross a divided roadway hitting an oncoming car.
- Damages: Actual financial losses must have resulted
Claiming Damages
Those harmed in a truck accident should file a lawsuit seeking compensation from the trucking company. The preparation of the lawsuit and presenting the case is handled by a Dunedin truck accident lawyer who is experienced in these cases.
Arranging for an experienced accident lawyer in Dunedin should be done as soon as possible after a truck accident because passing time can fade memories and evidence could be tainted or lost. The attorney will begin an independent investigation that may include hiring an expert witness to reconstruct the accident. Photographs of the accident scene and injuries will be collected as evidence.
Damages for present and future medical and therapy expenses, wages lost during recovery, pain and suffering, loss of consortium, emotional trauma, and other damages that apply are calculated to fix an amount of damages to be claimed and proof of damages is assembled. If death occurred, a wrongful death allegation could recover a lifetime of lost income.
Role of a Dunedin Truck Accident Lawyer
A Dunedin truck accident lawyer will question under oath the defendant, trucking company employees, attending police officers, and witnesses for testimonial evidence. The lawyer can also subpoena repair and maintenance records of the truck in order to determine if any gross negligence occurred. Once the case is assembled and filed with the court, a date for motions and trial are set. But most civil cases are settled between the plaintiff and insurance companies, which will try to limit damages. A tenacious truck accident attorney can aggressively pursue the damages that you deserve.