In our thirty years as fatal truck accident attorneys, we have seen that many of the accidents occurred due to carelessness on the part of the vehicle driver. Your first thought is that the driver is the responsible party and they are. However, there is more to this than that. There are several firms that go into getting commercial trucks on the road – the trucking firm, the loading firm, the routing firm, and the fleet maintenance contractor. All of these may have had a hand in the details that lead to the fatal truck accident in your lawsuit. Depending on the details surrounding your scenario, construction firms in charge of traffic zones, vehicle manufacturers, and government entities are just some of the other available responsible parties.
As is true in most personal injury lawsuits involving vehicle accidents, the primary legal theory of responsibility in fatal truck accident lawsuits is "negligence." What that means is a party or business entity (the defendant) is negligent if they failed in their duty to exercise reasonable care under the circumstances, and the plaintiff's injuries resulted from that failure. So, a party hurt in a commercial truck accident must show that a defendant (driver, a trucking firm, or other parties) owed the plaintiff the duty to exercise a reasonable degree of care to avoid injury, under the circumstances. This element is almost always automatically met, by virtue of the fact that all drivers on the road owe a legal duty of reasonable care to fellow drivers, passengers, and pedestrians. You must also show that the defendant failed to exercise such reasonable care, or in legal terms "breached" the duty of reasonable care. You have to show in a court of law that the defendant's failure to exercise reasonable care was the cause of the injury suffered by the plaintiff.
There are two smart reasons to file a lawsuit after a fatal truck accident. Most importantly, you deserve justice and the parties that took your family member from you must be held accountable. Through a successful lawsuit, you may send a message to negligent vehicle drivers and trucking firms. You may punish the guilty parties and give them the right incentive to take steps to make sure that no one else has to suffer from their carelessness or callousness. Your loss won’t be suffered in vain because at least you’ll be holding them accountable. You’ll be protecting others by making an example of the responsible parties.
Secondly, our firm knows that coping with the death of a family member is never easy. Besides the absence of that party from your life, there is all that is lost along with that: their companionship, a life together, loss of a mother, father, son, or daughter. There are also monetary losses. There is the loss of income, benefits, retirement funds, the cost of health care fees for survivors if their passing was not immediate. There are also the monetary gains your family member would have earned if his/her life had not been cut off so abruptly. There are your own pain and anguish, depression, and the cost of all the counseling or therapy needed to get you through this. There are also your own health care fees if you were in the accident or that of other surviving family members.
A successful wrongful death lawsuit gives the survivors the potential to recover financially for their losses. Nothing will ever compensate you for the loss of a family member. Obtaining the damages for your loss may assuage some of the costs and damages while allowing you to hold the negligent party responsible. It doesn’t matter whether the responsible party is held responsible in criminal court. Your civil lawsuit would be completely separate in terms of the legal process and its outcome.
If you are involved in an accident where a commercial truck driver was responsible, you may be entitled to receive legal compensation for any physical, emotional, and monetary losses that resulted from the accident. If the accident causes the death of a family member, there are other damages. This is a complicated area of the law because it is always hard to place a dollar value on injuries that include death, paralysis, disfigurement, emotional distress, pain and anguish, costs of health care treatment, lost income, and loss of earning capacity. In assessing and presenting your legal claim, a skilled attorney will consider all aspects of the harm and loss you have suffered as a result of your accident to make sure that you receive proper compensation for your injuries. More on this website
You’re entitled to seek compensation for two different types of damages specific to the death of your family member. These are known as wrongful death damages and survival damages. The deceased’s family – costs, pain and anguish, and the like, incurs wrongful death damages. Survival damages are what would have been incurred by the deceased had they survived the accident. Also, if you were hurt in the accident there are damages for your own injuries and pain.
