Santa Ana Trucking Accident Lawyer
We focus 100% of our time representing injured Santa Ana residents.
Legal Representation for Victims of Trucking Accidents
Some of the busiest freeways in Southern California pass through or right next to Santa Ana. It is therefore not surprising that this area of Orange County experiences a higher than normal rate of large commercial truck accidents. While the average passenger vehicle weighs 3,000 pounds, an 18-Wheeler can weigh up to 80,000 pounds. Due to their massive size, their inability to stop as quickly as passenger vehicles do, their wide turning radius, their significant blind spots, and their weight, large commercial trucks tend to cause serious and even catastrophic damage when they crash.
If you have been
injured in an accident involving a large commercial truck, regardless of whether you were driving the truck in question at the time of the crash, you almost certainly have opportunities for legal recourse available to you. If you were engaging in work-related activity at the time of your crash, you may be entitled to workers’ compensation benefits. If another’s negligent, reckless, or intentionally dangerous behavior contributed to the cause of your crash, you may be entitled to personal injury damages. You are also likely entitled to at least one insurance payout. Navigating the complex financial and legal aftermath of a truck accident is not a task that you’ll want to handle alone. In order to better ensure that you receive every penny of compensation to which you may be entitled, you’ll want to schedule a free consultation with our experienced legal team so that we can advise you of your options.
Trustworthy Representation for Injured Motorists and Truck Operators
Unlike many personal injury firms, our team chooses to represent the interests of both injured professional truck operators and injured motorists and bystanders alike. Developing extensive experience representing both kinds of accident victims allows us to view every accident from as many angles as possible. This approach benefits our clients because we don’t make potentially consequential assumptions that can develop when attorneys only handle one specific kind of injury case over and over again. Our knowledgeable, client-focused, detail-oriented, and time-tested approach has helped our team develop a reputation as a trustworthy, effective, and dedicated group of legal advocates.
We choose to offer free consultations to all injury victims because we believe that everyone who has been harmed deserves to understand their rights, regardless of their ability to pay for a consultation with a legal professional. Attending a consultation with our team will not obligate you to pursue legal action, nor will you be pressured to take legal action. Our job as legal advocates is to inform our clients and to fight effectively on their behalf, not to pressure them. During your free consultation, you’ll simply be invited to ask questions and to receive an objective, personalized case evaluation so that you can make informed decisions about your options.
How Do I Know if I Have Grounds for a Personal Injury Claim?
To successfully file a personal injury claim related to your truck accident, we’ll need to prove that a third party, such as another motorist involved in the accident, the trucking company that employs a truck operator, or a manufacturer of defective auto parts, owed you a duty of care under the law and breached that duty through negligent, reckless, or intentionally dangerous conduct. Additionally, we will need to prove that your injuries resulted directly from that breach.
In order to prove these criteria, we will need to determine the cause or causes of your accident, and whose fault those causes were. Your accident may have resulted from more than one cause and more than one party may be partially responsible for the circumstances that led to your injuries. One or more causes of your accident may have been no one’s fault – such as slick road surfaces caused by a rainstorm – but you likely won’t know “the whole story” behind your accident until our experienced legal team does some investigative work. Truck accident cases tend to be very complex and both fault and causation are not always as they first appear to be.
Can I File a Personal Injury Claim if I’m Partly to Blame for the Accident?
If you are concerned that you may have been partially to blame for the cause of your truck accident and that your conduct may limit your ability to seek legal recourse, there is good news to be had. California embraces the legal theory of comparative negligence. In states that employ the theory of contributory negligence, accident victims are often barred from seeking financial recovery if they have contributed - however insignificantly - to the cause of the circumstances that led to their harm. By contrast, accident victims in California remain entitled to seek compensation against those parties which may be held legally liable for contributing to the cause of their harm directly as well, even if those accident victims are partially to blame for their financial losses. Practically speaking, this means that your compensation could be limited as a result of your partial fault but not barred. Say that the value of your claim is $90,000. You are then assigned 10 percent of the blame for your accident. You would remain entitled to seek up to $81,000 in damages against those who were 90 percent directly responsible (or some fraction thereof) for your injuries.
Note that if you are eligible to receive workers’ compensation benefits, you may not directly sue your employer as part of your personal injury action. California limits employers’ liability for work-related harm. Therefore, if you were engaging in work-related activity at the time of your collision and you’re eligible for workers’ compensation benefits, you can sue a third party other than your employer via a personal injury claim but you won’t be able to sue your employer directly for any responsibility they may have had for causing your harm.
Whether you are partially to blame for the circumstances that led to your accident or not, if you are eligible to receive workers’ compensation benefits, or you’re entitled to receive these benefits as long as you were engaging in work-related activity when the crash occurred, you were not drunk or high at the time, and you did not crash your vehicle on purpose. Workers’ compensation is a no-fault system. As a result, eligible employees are entitled to receive benefits in the wake of a work-related crash, regardless of what caused the accident in question.
If you are unsure of whether you’re eligible for
workers’ compensation benefits, chances are good that you are eligible for these benefits if you are classified as a full-time or part-time employee of your company. If you are classified as an independent contractor and this classification has not been made in error, you are not entitled to receive workers’ compensation benefits in the wake of your accident. If you are unsure of your worker classification or you think that you may be affected by a worker classification error, please let our legal team know during your consultation so that we can advise you accordingly.
Do I Need to Work with an Attorney if I Don’t Want to File Legal Action?
As previously noted, truck accident cases tend to be particularly complex legal challenges. Oftentimes, even if an injury victim is uninterested in filing a personal injury lawsuit, they must deal with multiple insurance companies, one or more settlement offer contracts, and/or the workers’ compensation claims process. As a result, it can be significantly beneficial for injury victims to speak with an attorney even if they are uninterested in pursuing compensation via the personal injury claims process.
Insurance representatives and workers’ compensation claims adjusters are both trained to look for loopholes which will allow them to pay the minimum amount owed on a claim. Similarly, many of these representatives are trained to reject claims whenever possible. This approach isn’t usually evidence of malicious business practices. It is simply a reflection of the reality that every dollar paid to an accident victim means a little less profit for the businesses and organizations responsible for handling these claims. As a result, it is important to have an attorney skilled in insurance negotiations, workers’ compensation claims, and settlement matters review your case. Allowing our team to negotiate on your behalf with those involved with your accident aftermath will better ensure that your claim or claims are paid fully, valued fairly, and are not subjected to unnecessary delays.
Can Exploring My Legal Options Wait?
You may be understandably tempted to “hold off” on exploring your legal options until you’re feeling better. The aftermath of a truck accident can be physically taxing, emotionally stressful, and mentally disorienting. As a result, the thought of adding one more potential stressor to your “plate” may feel like too much at the moment. This is understandable. However, it is important to, at a minimum, attend a consultation with our legal team as soon as you possibly can. Our firm has extensive experience representing the interests of truck accident victims. Therefore, we are keenly aware of just how time-sensitive the process of preserving critical evidence related to a victim’s case can be. Evidence that may ultimately impact the outcome of your case could be compromised in the hours, days, and weeks following your accident. Alerting us to your situation will allow us to begin preserving evidence and protecting your legal options, even if you aren’t yet sure which options you’re interested in pursuing.
Additionally, you may be surprised at how quickly the financial consequences associated with your accident may begin to affect your family’s budget and overall financial wellbeing. Acting quickly will help to ensure that you remain unburdened by financial challenges related to your accident. Too often, injury victims wait until financial challenges stemming from their accidents have become unmanageable to seek legal assistance. The process of obtaining compensation takes time. Acting quickly will “get the ball rolling” in your favor.
Finally, it is worth noting that California law only permits accident victims to file claims within a certain window of time. If you’re filing personal injury action, you likely have up to two years to file a claim although, again, it is important to remember that the strength of this claim may rest upon our ability to preserve critical evidence now. By contrast, if you’re in a position to file a workers’ compensation claim, you likely have to take certain actions within the 30 days following your accident or you may be barred from receiving benefits. In short, no, the process of exploring your legal options can’t wait.
Contact Our Firm Today for a Free Case Evaluation
If you haven’t yet scheduled a free consultation with our firm in order to explore your legal options, please do so today. These confidential meetings are offered to all accident victims free of charge and with no strings attached. Our firm embraces this approach because we believe that everyone is entitled to understand their rights under the law. We look forward to speaking with you.