When you or a loved one suffers injuries in a crash, hiring a Virginia truck accident lawyer can play a crucial role in your physical and financial recovery. Your lawyer will protect your legal rights and fight to secure fair compensation based on your accident and injuries.
Virginia truck accidents often have unique challenges. A personal injury lawyer familiar with commercial vehicle crashes will know how to navigate the process to recover the money you deserve. We will handle every aspect of your case, giving you peace of mind and a good chance at a strong financial recovery.
Our team provides a FREE claim review so you can learn more about what a truck accident lawyer does and how it can benefit your case.
Understanding the Steps a Truck Accident Attorney Takes to Manage Your Case
The steps that truck accident lawyers may take to handle a case include:
Protecting Your Rights Against Insurance Companies
Insurance companies frequently try to minimize or deny claims. From the day you hire a truck accident attorney from our firm to manage your case, you can count on us to protect your rights by countering the insurance carrier’s tactics. Your lawyer will know how insurance adjusters attempt to shift fault or downplay the severity of crash injuries.
In fact, our founder began his career representing insurance companies, so he knows all their tactics and how to protect you and your rights.
Investigating the Accident
Your 18-wheeler collision lawyer will also conduct a thorough investigation into the circumstances that led to your crash. Our team will get started immediately, working to preserve all possible evidence. This is essential since the trucking company—a potentially liable party—often holds a lot of this evidence.
Your attorney will collect evidence, including police reports, witness statements, photographs of the crash scene, and video footage. They will also analyze data from the truck’s electronic logging devices (ELDs) and black boxes, which can record critical information such as speed, braking patterns, and hours of operation.
Using this evidence, your injury lawyer will begin the process of identifying the potentially liable parties. This could include the driver, the trucking company, maintenance companies, manufacturers of defective parts, and more.
Determining Liability
Liability in Virginia truck accidents is often complicated. Unlike most car accidents, commercial vehicle accidents involve vicarious liability. This means the employer is often legally responsible for its driver’s negligence.
Determining liability in one of these cases requires proving negligence occurred—usually on the part of the driver—and determining who else might be held accountable for the accident and injuries. Trucking companies or other corporations that employ truck drivers are the most commonly liable party.
Documenting Damages
Our truck accident lawyers will document your extensive damages, including both economic and non-economic damages. We can also work with experts to estimate future expenses and losses to seek fair compensation for them, too. You can count on your attorney to:
- Assess Economic Damages: This includes medical bills, lost income, future earning potential, rehabilitation costs, and ongoing care and support needs.
- Evaluate Non–Economic Damages: These damages include “pain and suffering” and inconvenience, emotional distress, and diminished quality of life.
By carefully documenting these damages, your lawyer ensures that we demand compensation that reflects the effects the accident had and continues to have on your life.
Fighting for the Compensation You Deserve
There are two primary ways truck accident lawyers win compensation for clients: negotiation and litigation. Our truck accident attorneys use proven negotiation skills to get fair offers for their clients. This is the most common way law firms win cases for truck accident victims.
If the insurance company refuses to settle fairly, your lawyer will be ready to sue and take your case to court. Our team will present expert testimony, accident reconstruction reports, and other evidence to compel the judge or jury to issue a verdict on your behalf.
Our Truck Accident Lawyers Have Specific Knowledge About These Cases
Truck collision cases, and many others involving commercial vehicles, can be more complex than a typical car crash case. There are several reasons for this, and each one requires the attorney handling the case to have specific knowledge and experience to navigate the necessary steps. This includes:
Handling Catastrophic Injury Accidents
Truck accident victims often suffer catastrophic injuries. The size and weight of these trucks are much larger than any passenger vehicle. Life-altering spinal cord injuries, traumatic brain injuries, burns, and limb injuries are common. Attorneys who handle these cases must understand how to document extensive damages and estimate future care and support costs.
Determining Liability Based on Respondeat Superior
Respondeat superior is the legal doctrine that allows us to hold trucking companies vicariously liable when their workers cause collisions. Understanding when this doctrine applies and what it means for the case is crucial to identifying all liable parties and fighting for the compensation you deserve.
Considering Federal and State Trucking Regulations
Truck accidents often involve federal and state laws, including those set by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA). Your Virginia 18-wheeler accident lawyers will need to understand whether the driver involved was compliant for hours of service, if the trucking company followed safety inspection and maintenance schedules, and if the truck was overloaded or improperly loaded, for example.
Your Truck Accident Attorney will Ensure You Meet the Applicable Deadlines
One key to protecting your right to recover fair compensation is ensuring you meet all applicable deadlines. These cases have a statute of limitations that sets a deadline for filing a lawsuit. In Virginia, you generally have up to two years to file the complaint in the appropriate court under Va. Code § 8.01-243.
Contact Our Team Today to Learn More About Your Case
At the Parrish Law Firm, PLLC, we provide a FREE claim review. Contact our truck accident lawyers today to discuss your case and learn how we can help you seek and secure the compensation you deserve. Call us today to get started.
Call or Text 571-229-1800 or Complete a Free Case Evaluation form