How Can a Truck Accident Lawyer Help?

Why Do I Need a Truck Accident Lawyer After an Accident?

Dealing with the aftermath of a truck accident in Pennsylvania can be frustrating, stressful, and devastating. Faced with medical expenses, pain and sufferings, and lost wages, the road to recovery may seem long and hard for both you and your family. What you need is an experienced truck accident lawyer to help you receive the maximum amount of compensation for your losses, in a timely manner, so you and your family can start the healing process.

But how can a truck accident lawyer help your claim and why do you need one? Let’s explain.

A Truck Accident Lawyer Can Help With Deadlines and Evidence

Timeliness is critical when establishing liability and the best possible financial compensation that you are entitled to. Reputable truck accident lawyers understand that timing is crucial to ensure a fair, thorough investigation of an intact truck accident scene. The efficiency that is conducted from the onset of the crime scene and forward is critical. Injuries may be present, and adrenaline and emotions are high; a checklist of “must execute nows” may not be on your radar, when it matters most.

A truck accident attorney’s knowledge, weighted experience, and support can ensure that you are aware of and manage deadlines to file your truck accident claim. Each state has regulations regarding how long you have to file an accident claim. For example, in Pennsylvania, you have two years to file a personal injury claim. If you don’t file a claim within that time period, your claim will be rejected.

A truck accident attorney can also make sure the evidence is properly collected and not tampered with, including truck drivers’ safety logs, black box data, photos, motor carrier reports, and police reports. The law firm’s investigators will also gather information from eyewitnesses; key witnesses can easily forget details if not approached soon after the accident.

Your Truck Accident Lawyers Can Help Build Your Case

You need a truck accident lawyer who will navigate and ensure that the necessary and timely care, consideration, documentation, and recorded detail are used to collect evidence early on. Big companies involved in the accident will often immediately send representatives to handle everything at the scene of the accident in order to limit or mitigate their company’s liability. Trucking and insurance companies’ tactics too often work when people are this vulnerable, especially at the truck accident scene or soon thereafter.

By acting swiftly, a truck accident lawyer can:

• Speak on your behalf to the insurance companies
• Protect and gather evidence from the tractor trailer’s “black box” before it can be destroyed
• Develop a counterclaim to the truck driver’s story
• Build a case against other at-fault parties, such as the truck company or shipping carrier
• Calculate the financial compensation needed to combat the expense of serious injury

Too often, truck crash victims and their families struggle alone. It’s important you have someone on your side early on, to steer and limit your disclosures, to advocate for you as needed, and to recover what you are entitled to. Munley Law Personal Injury Attorneys can ensure you have some control and participation in ensuring your rights and interests are protected.

Truck Accident Lawyers Can Determine Who is Responsible

When deciding who to hold responsible for your truck accident, you need an experienced attorney to look at a variety of different parties and people. Truck accident victims need legal counsel who is familiar with discriminating against responsible parties involved, and with establishing the liability of big companies’ violations of applicable regulations and negligence.

• Truck Driver: This one is obvious, since your truck driver may have most directly been at fault for causing the truck accident.
• Trucking Company: If the driver of the vehicle was employed by a trucking company, they could be held liable. They are responsible for keeping track of driver’s information, including background checks, limiting scheduling for rest periods, and more.
• Third-party brokers: Many commercial transportation companies hire a third-party broker to connect them to drivers and trucks to transport their cargo. This means, if you have been in a truck wreck with a vehicle hired by one of these brokers, your lawyer will want to know if they did their due diligence in hiring, as well as investigate how much control they had over the driver’s schedule and more.
• Truck Manufacturers: If the truck accident was caused by a mechanical failure or some other issue with a part in the truck, you could also widen liability to the truck manufacturer. Beyond that, if the employer or independent truck driver did not routinely get the truck inspected and repaired, they could be held liable for a faulty part as well.

Trucking accidents can be complicated, and if one or more of the above parties can be held liable, you’ll want to know. Truck drivers, their employers, and even brokers, all carry their own insurance policies. This means you could be owed compensation from more than one source.

A Truck Accident Lawyer Can Help You Get Compensation

Damages in most truck accident claims can be divided into economic and non-economic damages. Economic damages cover concrete financial losses like medical bills and lost wages. Non-economic damages are intended to compensate accident victims for the physical pain, mental anguish, and emotional distress they experience as a result of the crash.  Non-economic damages often make up the bulk of a personal injury claim.

• Punitive Damages In rare cases, accident victims may be able to sue for punitive damages. Punitive damages are not intended to compensate the victim, but to punish the defendant for gross negligence and prevent future wrongdoing. In order to sue for punitive damages, you must be able to prove that the defendant knowingly acted with reckless disregard for human life, or otherwise committed willful misconduct.
• Medical Damages Truck accident victims may face astronomical medical bills. Truck accidents often cause serious injuries such as traumatic brain injuries, broken bones, internal damage, amputation, disfigurement, and more. Even those with health insurance can find themselves facing massive unexpected costs and even medical debt.

• Long Term Care Injuries sustained in a truck crash can have lifelong effects. Crash victims may need extended medical care like occupational therapy, and modifications to victims’ homes or vehicles to accommodate a disability.
• Lost Wages After a truck accident, you might not be able to work for weeks or even months. It’s entirely possible that you may not ever be able to do your job again, and will have to find other, less physically demanding work. The damages you collect for lost wages can compensate for the gap in your income, and provide you with resources needed to pay bills, and learn a new skill or trade when you are ready to return to work.
• Pain and Suffering include the physical pain and discomfort that the victim experienced at the time of the accident and in the aftermath.
• Wrongful Death lawsuits can have families sue for damages suffered by
  the decedent, as well as damages suffered by the surviving family members in their loved one’s absence. In cases like these, the victim’s surviving family members can file a wrongful death lawsuit to hold the at-fault parties accountable for their loved one’s demise.
• Loss of Consortium also known as loss of companionship is a special type of pain and suffering that refers to the ways in which the surviving family members suffer due to their loss. Loss of consortium can include loss of care, parental guidance and nurturing, and loss of love and affection. Family members can also sue for the financial value of the services the decedent performed in the household.

Munley Law Personal Injury Attorneys Has Experience and Can Make Things Right

Our truck accident attorneys at Munley Law Personal Injury Attorneys are recognized nationwide as industry experts. Marion Munley was the first woman Chair of the American Association for Justice Trucking Litigation Group, and Daniel Munley served as chair from 2011-2012. Munley Law Personal Injury Attorneys is the only firm in the country to have two of our lawyers lead the AAJ Trucking Litigation Group. Both Daniel Munley and Marion Munley are among the few attorneys in the nation to be board certified in Truck Accident Law by the National Board of Trial Advocacy, a recognition given only to truck accident attorneys who have demonstrated high standards of competence and integrity.

The attorneys at our truck accident law firm have consistently been named Best Lawyers in America (via the legal guide Best Lawyers), Pennsylvania Super Lawyers (Pennsylvania Magazine), Best Law Firms (U.S. News and World Report), and are proud members of the Million-Dollar and Multi-Million Dollar Advocates Forums. Our truck accident lawyers are regarded as experts in the industry, and we are regularly asked to speak about the latest changes and trends in trucking law at events all over the country.

If you were injured in a truck accident and are not sure what your next steps should be moving forward, your first call should be to an experienced truck accident attorney at Munley Law Personal Injury Attorneys. Contact our firm today to schedule a free consultation.