Damages you may claim after a truck accident include medical expenses, pain and suffering, lost income, and vehicle repair expenses. These are only four of many damages you might suffer because of a truck accident. The party or parties responsible for the collision—or their insurance provider—will most likely need to pay the cost of your damages.
You should consider allowing an Athens truck accident attorney to identify your damages, total their cost, and fight for a financial recovery so you don’t pay out-of-pocket for those damages. Completing truck accident cases can be complicated, and winning the case is even more difficult. Accept a lawyer’s leadership so you can put your health first.
Damages Frequently Associated with Truck Accidents
The maximum weight for commercial trucks is 80,000 pounds. With motor vehicles routinely traveling around 80 mph on American roads, the combination of a truck’s weight and speed can make it a devastating destructive force.
When truck accidents happen, victims generally face both:
Economic Damages (Special Damages)
Economic damages, also known as special damages, have a fairly straightforward financial cost. Some common examples of economic damages from truck accidents include:
- Vehicle damage and other property harm: When a vehicle is hit by a truck, there is a significant likelihood that the vehicle will be totally damaged. Other property within the vehicle may also be ruined as a result of the accident.
- Professional damages: Your lawyer will account for any lost income, diminished earning capacity, and other types of professional harm resulting from your truck accident.
- Medical costs: The more serious an accident victim’s injuries are, the more expensive their accident-related costs tend to be. If you need emergency care, surgery, or other high-cost procedures, this will likely increase the total value of your case.
- Certain other economic damages: Each truck accident victim’s profile of damages is independent and unique from others. If you need an electric wheelchair, for example, this can add a significant amount of money to your cost of damages.
Non-Economic Damages (General Damages)
Non-economic damages do not have the same straightforward financial cost that economic damages do. However, non-economic will be just as important to the lawyer fighting for you.
Pain and suffering is the most common type of non-economic damage, not just in truck accident cases but in civil cases in general. Some common examples of pain and suffering include:
- Physical pain, which is all but guaranteed (and can include chronic pain) when a multi-ton vehicle strikes another vehicle
- Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which affects a significant portion of traffic accident survivors
- Emotional anguish
- Psychological distress
- Anxiety
- Depression
- Lost quality of life
- Scarring and disfigurement
Even a condition like lost sleep may entitle you to compensation. You deserve full and fair compensation for all harm resulting from the truck accident, and your lawyer will work hard to secure that compensation.
Damages Are Not Always Obvious and Are Often Complex, Consider Hiring an Attorney
Many truck accident victims know they have suffered harm, but it’s not always easy to pinpoint exactly what that harm looks like or how much it costs. You may consider working with a truck accident lawyer after the collision, as they will:
- Have a general understanding of the types of harm truck accident victims often endure
- Know how to calculate non-economic damages, which are a uniquely difficult type of harm to account for
- Have a team around them to ensure the prompt and accurate calculation of your damages
The list of reasons to hire a lawyer after your truck accident can go on much further. Just know, when it comes to seeking the exact amount of money you need after the collision, hiring an experienced lawyer is a strong start.
How Your Attorney May Determine What Damages You’ve Suffered After a Truck Accident
Your attorney may have their own system for investigating and documenting truck accident victims’ damages. Some ways they may document your losses include:
- Reaching out to your doctors (and getting paperwork): Understanding your accident-related medical conditions will be critical to valuing your case. Your lawyer will secure all medical records, insights from your doctors, images, and other healthcare materials as they determine the cost of your economic damages.
- Hiring a mental health professional: Some might say that pain and suffering is subjective, but an expert can help confirm your account of pain and suffering. A counselor or other type of mental health professional may diagnose PTSD, depression, and other conditions or symptoms related to your truck accident.
- Obtaining relevant financial documents: Invoices for vehicle repair (or replacement), receipts for temporary transportation, and income records from before and after the collision are some types of financial records that may be relevant to your case.
Truck accident lawyers generally calculate non-economic damages (again, pain and suffering) using one of two possible methods. If you are curious, you can ask your attorney how they determine the cost of pain and suffering—either way, you can rest assured they will determine the cost.
What More Can a Truck Accident Lawyer Do for Me?
Your lawyer will document and value the damages you’re facing because of your truck accident, but that is only one portion of how they will assist you.
You should also expect your truck accident attorney and their team to:
Deal with Insurers
Many trucking companies are required to have six- and seven-figure insurance policies, many of which apply to victims injured by truck drivers. The providers of these policies, and your own insurance company, may be the first ones from whom your attorney seeks compensation.
Your legal team will:
- Ensure the accurate and prompt filing of all insurance claims related to your truck accident
- Read, interpret, and mark up all policies related to your truck accident
- Provide insurers everything they need in order to advance your claims, such as details of your injuries
- Help you make all statements to insurers
Insurance companies are necessary. However, you should not necessarily mistake them as friendly or acting in good faith.
Protect You
Lawyers are often wary, and for good reason. They have seen how insurance companies:
- Put their own financial interests ahead of the claimant’s
- Use a range of tactics to deny the claimant fair compensation (with denied claims, lowball settlement offers, and hardball negotiations being among the tactics)
- Can succeed in depriving the claimant of fair compensation if the claimant does not fight for their rights
Your lawyer will not take long to spot such bad-faith tactics so they do not harm you or your case.
Help You Make (Potentially Life-Altering) Decisions
You would be right in thinking your lawyer is going to handle the day-to-day responsibilities of your case. However, when it comes to specific decisions that have a monumental effect on your case outcome, you will be the one calling the shots.
Some such critical decisions you may need to make include:
- Whether to accept one or more insurance companies’ settlement offers
- Whether to accept a settlement offer from a liable party other than an insurance company
- Whether to file a lawsuit
- Whether to go to trial
- Whether to continue fighting at trial or accept a settlement offer
Your lawyer will arm you with the information and perspective you need to make these decisions in an informed manner.
Execute the Legal Strategies You Agree to Pursue
Your truck accident lawyer should build a case strategy around you. Expect your lawyer to get your thoughts about the strategy and put the plan into action once you approve.
Communicate Throughout Your Case
Your lawyer will be working persistently to secure the money you deserve. You won’t see them working daily, though, so your legal team will:
- Contact you regularly to keep communication open
- Update you right away when there are important developments in your case (like a settlement offer or claim denial)
- Have multiple ways for you to contact the team with questions or concerns, including by calling your lawyer
Active communication can prevent delays in your case, give you assurance about your case’s progress, and be the means for you and your lawyer to remain on the same page.
Your Lawyer Will Look Over Every Detail of Your Case—Recover While Your Lawyer Handles It All
Truck accident cases are a series of steps. Your attorney will take each step carefully but urgently, as any misstep can diminish the entire case. With help from their paralegals’, experts, and other staffers, your truck accident lawyer will:
Find Evidence of Fault
When something goes wrong on the roadway, it’s typically because at least one person was at fault. We assume this will be the case in your accident, and your attorney will seek indications of who was at fault for the accident.
Evidence of the at-fault party’s negligence may include:
- Witness statements that align with your account of the accident
- Video footage from the truck’s inward- or outward-facing camera
- Skid marks, photographs of damaged vehicles, and other sites from the accident scene
- Experts’ opinions about how the accident happened (which may be based on several inputs)
- Video from traffic cameras and other sources
Truck accident attorneys use the evidence available to them, which is unique to each case. There should be enough proof to prove that someone else caused your truck accident.
Determine Liability for the Truck Accident
Your legal team will need to determine who owes you money for medical expenses, pain and suffering, vehicle repairs, and all other damages resulting from your truck accident. Attorneys are well-suited to make this determination, as they do it in every traffic accident case they handle.
Become an Insurance Policy Student
Your attorney will review all insurance policies that apply to your truck accident, specifically looking for:
- Whether liable parties were insured at the time of the accident
- What kinds of coverages apply to your accident
- Coverage limits on the applicable policies
- All other relevant information related to insurance
Lawyers are immersed in insurance policies and processes regularly, so they will be ready to interpret all policies related to your truck accident.
Prepare a Unique Case Plan
Your lawyer will gather all relevant information so they can form a personalized case plan. They will review the plan with you and may even recommend what they would do in your shoes.
Insurance claims and lawsuits are two of the most central features of any potential post-accident case plan.
Fight for a Settlement
In most truck accident cases, the lawyer will determine whether liable parties are willing to settle. The liable party is most likely to be an insurance company or civil defense lawyer, though the circumstances of each case are unique.
Explain the Next Steps If Liable Parties Don’t Offer You a Fair Settlement
If you do not receive a fair settlement offer from the parties who owe it to you, your attorney will explain any other strategic options available to you. This can include filing a lawsuit and potentially proceeding to court.
Obtaining Fair Money for a Truck Accident Is Not as Easy as It Should Be—Here Is Why
It’s clear that there are many steps in completing a truck accident case. There are also challenges that are not as plain to see—unless you have a truck accident attorney to lead the way.
Some issues that you might run into when handling a truck accident case include:
- Having to obtain evidence from trucking companies (who may make several efforts to avoid providing that evidence)
- Determining beyond a doubt why the accident happened
- Calculating your damages accurately
- Convincing liable parties to pay you fair compensation
- Navigating the legal process (if you need to sue)
These and all other challenges will be your lawyer’s responsibility if you elect to hire them.
Don’t Worry, You Can Afford to Hire a Truck Accident Lawyer
Every truck accident survivor (and those affected by a wrongful death) can afford to hire a lawyer. Due to the contingency fee structure—in which the client does not pay the lawyer any out-of-pocket fee—you can work with a personal injury lawyer without being concerned about the cost of their services. Don’t delay call today.