Morrilton, AR Truck Accident Lawyer

Accidents involving big rigs, large trucks, 18-wheelers, etc., can leave drivers and passengers in smaller cars with devastating injuries.  Our attorneys seek to help these victims with their injury cases, filing insurance claims and lawsuits to recover the substantial compensation they need.

If you were hurt in a truck accident, you likely have pain and suffering, medical bills, and lost wages to deal with.  Our attorneys can fight the trucking companies, the insurance companies, and their legal teams, all to get you what you deserve in your injury case.

For a free evaluation of your potential case, contact our truck accident lawyers at (479) 316-0438 today.

Holding Trucking Companies Accountable for Truck Accidents in Morrilton, AR

Truck accidents can often be blamed directly on the driver, but the company they work for should share liability in many situations.  Our truck accident lawyers can seek to hold trucking companies responsible in truck accident lawsuits and insurance claims in a few different ways:

Direct Liability

If the trucking company did something to cause the accident directly, they can be directly liable.  In some cases, this might be the main reason the crash occurred, and both you and the truck driver would be victims of the trucking company’s serious negligence.

Trucking companies typically cause crashes because of problems with the vehicle’s equipment.  As the owner of the truck, the trucking company would typically be liable for these issues.  This can include maintenance issues, negligent repairs that their mechanics made, or simply missing equipment that violates trucking regulations.  For example, a truck with low tire tread depth might be in violation of trucking regulations, and it should be on the trucking company to repair these issues.

Trucking companies could also be liable for hazardous materials they loaded into the truck without telling the driver.

Trucking companies might also hire a dangerous driver, making them responsible for what the driver does behind the wheel.  This same logic behind this “negligent hiring” claim can also be used for a “negligent retention” claim if the trucking company kept a driver on staff after finding out that they had a record of dangerous driving, after they caused multiple accidents, or after they violated multiple trucking regulations during their time working for the company.

Vicarious Liability

Trucking companies can also be held responsible in their capacity as the driver’s employer.  Companies are held liable all the time for their workers’ mistakes, given that a company is an entity made up of all of those workers and does not really exist on its own.  In the same way that a spill in a store is the store’s fault instead of the individual worker’s fault, a truck crash is often the trucking company’s fault rather than the individual trucker’s fault.

In these cases, the victim can allege that the trucker’s negligence occurred during the performance of their job duties, and a principle called “respondeat superior” allows us to sue the employer.  This commonly means that, even when the trucker was the one who messed up, we can sue the trucking company to pay the driver’s share of damages.

In cases where the trucking company is liable in both ways, we can ultimately get all payments from them.  If another driver shared partial responsibility, we might only be able to get the parts of the damages attributed to the driver/company from the company; the other driver would share responsibility for their part of the damages.

Note, however, that the truck driver must be an employee for vicarious liability to work.  Respondeat superior does not reach to the “employer” when the trucker is an independent contractor since that makes the driver self-employed.

Insurance

Usually, the trucking company is the one paying for the driver’s insurance.  This means that even if your case were only filed against the truck driver, the insurance policy – which the company pays for – would be how you get your damages anyway.  This ultimately makes the trucking company financially responsible, even if it is in a more informal, indirect way.

Filing Lawsuits vs. Settling Truck Accident Cases in Morrilton, AR

When you are hurt in a crash, you typically start with an insurance claim against the at-fault driver’s insurance.  You can win an insurance claim against the trucker’s insurance and potentially get your damages paid that way, but insurance companies are often unwilling to pay the full damages at first.

Many insurance companies will get back to you with a low-dollar settlement offer that perhaps covers your medical bills and vehicle damage in full but leaves out other expenses, such as lost earnings and pain and suffering.  Getting these damages is important to your case, and our lawyers can help you reject the offer and turn to negotiation with the insurance company to get a better settlement.

Often, one of the best ways to improve your settlement is to file a lawsuit in court.  Just because you started a lawsuit does not mean your case has to go all the way to trial; you can always settle outside of court after filing.  However, the pressure of having a lawsuit on the horizon often pushes insurance companies to provide a better settlement offer to avoid having to go to trial, where they will spend a lot of money on their defense.

Trucking companies and insurance companies often have strong legal teams who aim to shut down cases, and it is important to work with experienced lawyers like ours in your case against them.  We can help you calculate damages and understand the value of your case so that you can avoid taking any low settlements.  When we see a settlement that is fair, we will advise you to take it, but we cannot make that decision for you; you get to decide whether to settle or go to trial.

Contact Our Truck Accident Lawyers Today

For a free case review, call (479) 316-0438 to speak with our truck accident attorneys.