Trucks are the backbone of American infrastructure, carrying upwards of 11 billion tons and 10 trillion dollars in freight each year. At any given moment, an estimated 2 to 3 million of America’s 13.5 million registered trucks
Georgia sees its fair share of trucks on its roads as well. In 2020, a whopping 94% – or 294,000 tons – of all manufactured tonnage in the state was transported via truck each day.
Unfortunately, trucks having such a level of road presence, while essential, leads to certain drawbacks. The most relevant of these is the fact that the odds of truck accidents – fatal truck accidents in particular – increase.
In the year 2017, Georgia reported a fatal crash rate of 2 per 100 million vehicle miles traveled. By comparison, the national fatal crash rate that year was a mere 1.42 incidents per 100 million vehicle miles traveled.
The scary part is that while accidents not involving trucks are statistically more common, trucking accidents are far more deadly, with the average motor vehicle fatalities per 100 VMT being a mere 1.23 that same year.
Trucks have greater mass and deliver more force in an accident than the average vehicle. And while truckers do their part to ensure safety on the road, sometimes, all it takes is a single slip-up to lead to a catastrophe on the highway.
Recovering on your own after these kinds of tragedies is not always an option. You may have sustained serious injuries in need of expensive treatment, or you may even have lost someone in the accident.
It might be time to hire a truck accident lawyer.
How Can a Fulton County Truck Accident Attorney Help Me?
A truck accident attorney is a specialist personal injury attorney. As such, they excel in helping clients recover from damages sustained in an accident with trucks.
These damages can be financial or more abstract and non-economic in nature. Either way, a truck accident lawyer in Fulton County grants clients an opportunity to make up for losses and costs incurred as a result of the accident.
How a lawyer accomplishes this usually involves one of two approaches:
Assigning Liability
Georgia is an at-fault state. Specifically, it follows a modified comparative negligence rule, which implies two points.
- The party primarily responsible for an accident owes other parties compensation.
- A party owed compensation will have their claim reduced by their own degree of fault in the accident.
As a result of this system, determining liability – and the degree of liability – in an accident is paramount in order for justice to be served and for a settlement to be fair. Truck accident lawyers typically look for evidence that shows how a truck driver or their company is liable.
Of course, other parties can also be primarily responsible since truck accidents can often involve multiple vehicles. If this is the case, then both you and the trucker may be able to seek compensation from another driver or at-fault party, depending on the circumstances.
Finally, there is the possibility that you are responsible, in which case your attorney can help prove that your liability is not actually as high as even you yourself initially believed. If evidence can show someone else had a greater degree of fault, your lawyer will bring it to light.
Building a Case
From gathering evidence to putting it all together, a lawyer’s true forte is in building arguments that protect the interests of their clients.
Lawyers often have networks that the average person does not. For example, they may be able to contact doctors, psychologists, or other professionals who can give accurate assessments and estimates for the costs of certain treatments and services.
This means truck accident lawyers are almost guaranteed to have access to more evidence in less time than a person opting to go through the claims process on their own. In addition, it also means that any evidence that the other side presents can be thoroughly reviewed and critiqued.
Say, for example, that an insurance adjuster recommends $5,000 to treat a brain injury with a medical partner of their choice. This is a perfectly legal thing to do, and they may say you stand to have extra coverage in reserve for some other damage if you take their recommendation.
However, there is much chance that they are being honest as there is that the recommendation is an attempt to reduce the amount of money they pay out. Your lawyer can defend your right to choose a healthcare provider in your case, even if your choice might be $3,000 pricier.
Negotiating a Settlement Amount
Confronting someone at the negotiating table is no easy feat, especially when the people opposite you have something to lose for everything you gain. Insurance adjusters have years of training in negotiating, and private individuals likely have lawyers who do the same.
Going up against trained professionals on your own rarely results in a positive outcome. In fact, people who represent themselves in a personal injury claim have been shown to only get some form of payout 51% of the time.
Working with a truck accident lawyer drastically increases the odds of getting compensation dramatically, with 9 out of 10 claimants who do so successfully securing a payout. The amounts these claimants get are also up to four times higher, even after deducting lawyers’ fees.
Pursuing a Lawsuit
Sometimes, negotiations fall through. Perhaps neither side could agree on a fair amount, or perhaps there was no clear consensus on who was at fault.
Either way, your lawyer may recommend that you escalate from a personal injury claim and opt for a personal injury lawsuit instead.
Lawsuits rarely make it all the way to court. Between 70% and 90% of lawsuits end in a settlement because, for the most part, people don’t enjoy the court fees and risk of losing in court, and this holds true for both insurance companies and claimants alike.
Still, the threat of a lawsuit does make at-fault parties more amenable to negotiating a fair offer. In addition to that, if you do make it to court, your truck accident attorney will be more than willing to follow through.
Generally speaking, liability matters in a court case more than it does in a regular insurance claim. This means your lawyer will have to ensure your case is supported by airtight evidence that the other party is liable if they want any chance of winning.
As a result of this, a good lawyer will only threaten a lawsuit against the other party if they are confident they can win.
What Damages Can I Recover From a Truck Accident Claim/Lawsuit?
As with all personal injury cases, truck accident victims can recover compensation for two general categories of damages: economic damages and non-economic damages.
The amount of dollars you get will depend on multiple factors, of course: the magnitude of the damage, available evidence supporting the damage, your ability to put evidence together, the degree of fault each party has, and more.
Luckily, personal injury attorneys get better at computing damages with each case they handle. Having settled dozens and even hundreds of cases, the best attorneys can assign a fair and accurate value to your losses, allowing you to walk away with the money you need.
Economic Damages
These are any and all finance-related losses that an accident victim incurs. Georgia law includes past, present, and future damages under this category.
Economic damages typically include current and projected medical expenses, wages lost to date, projected income to be lost as a result of the injury, property damage, and any monetary expenses that otherwise would not have been incurred had the victim not sustained an injury.
- Medical bills and expenses: These are the most common damages covered by claims. They include hospital stays, doctor’s visits, the costs of medication, and any therapy considered necessary for recovery.
- Lost wages and diminished earning capacity: This includes any income the individual is unable to earn during the period of recovery. In addition, opportunities for future earnings, the loss of which can be traced back to a person’s injuries, may be considered as this type of damage.
- Property damage: any damage to – or complete loss of – items an accident victim owns is considered property damage. This includes the vehicle you may have been driving and the phone in your pocket, but it also includes the value of non-material property, such as data on a broken laptop.
- Hired services: While not always encountered in every personal injury claim, services made necessary by an accident can still be considered economic damages. For example, if a parent is unable to attend to their children for several weeks thanks to a spinal injury, a nanny’s services may be deemed a necessary service to acquire.
The concept of tallying economic damages for a claim is relatively simple: add up the total of all financial losses. However, because future damages are also considered, calculating economic damages tends to be extremely difficult in practice.
Insurance agents and at-fault parties will, of course, attempt to calculate damages based on the raw concept as a result. Your truck accident attorney, however, will ensure that all damages are included in the computation, as you are entitled to, according to Georgia law.
Non-Economic Damages
These are damages that do not have an objective monetary value assigned to them. They tend to be less tangible, more subjective, and more difficult to quantify than economic damages but are nonetheless considered valid losses to the victim either way.
Non-economic damages usually include:
- Pain and suffering: The idea behind this form of damage is that people would not have experienced pain, discomfort, or suffering if not for the liable party. It encompasses both physical pain and emotional distress, such as PTSD.
- Loss of enjoyment of life: This is a consequence of injury that prevents a person from engaging in activities they find fulfilling or enjoyable. For instance, if a runner lost their leg in a truck accident, not only will they be compensated for medical treatment and potential lost earnings (given their career on the track is now over), but they may be entitled to compensation for loss of enjoyment of life as their primary hobby is no longer accessible to them.
- Loss of consortium: Formerly applied only to spouses of deceased accident victims, loss of consortium compensates a family in the event that a member dies as a result of the accident. This does not replace the loss of love, companionship, and emotional support, but it attempts to provide some form of material relief.
- Scarring and Disfigurement: Though aesthetic appeal matters for some more than others, everyone cares about their appearance to at least some extent. Injuries can sometimes alter a person’s appearance and so are considered damages worth compensating.
Non-economic damages are usually proven with evaluation from psychologists or other mental health professionals. Alternatively, they may be proven with the testimony of friends, family, and other people who are present to observe the effects of these damages on the victim’s life.
The CEO Lawyer: The Choice Fulton County Truck Accident Law Firm
You don’t have to bear the full weight of a truck accident on your own. Our professional truck accident attorneys at the CEO Lawyer Personal Injury Law Firm are here to help you get the resources you need to get your life back together after a tragedy.
Through the efforts of lead attorney Ali Awad, the CEO Lawyer has become one of the fastest-growing law firms in the country, having recovered millions of dollars for our clientele. In fact, in our first year alone, we recovered over 1 million dollars in claims.
We are a leader in providing legal aid, instruction, and information to the community of Fulton County. When we aren’t in the courtroom or at the negotiating table, we are reaching out with our social media platforms, providing free and useful legal advice.
The CEO Lawyer serves clients in both English and Spanish. If you are interested in our services, call us today at (470) 323-8779 to schedule a free consultation.
We do not charge until we have won your case or settled your claim.
