Quirk Accident & Injury Attorneys, APC, represents injured truck accident victims in Oxnard. Our Oxnard truck accident lawyers offer a free case consultation to all victims in Ventura County. Contact our offices to schedule a confidential case review as soon as possible. There’s also no obligation to you or your family for this meeting.
Do I Need a Lawyer After an Oxnard Truck Accident?
If your accident only involves some car damage, you may be fine in filing your own claim. Commercial truck accident insurance companies have standardized the process to get car repairs or a replacement car paid for. But if your accident leaves you or a loved one with a serious injury, you should speak with an Oxnard truck accident attorney about your case.
Something like a chest injury or brain trauma will require more attention than just getting checked out by paramedics. Medical bills can build over weeks or months for injured victims in the hospital. Healthcare costs often trigger insurance companies to start looking for ways to avoid taking the blame for what happened.
What’s more, victims can often hold a truck driver and the truck driver’s employer liable for an accident. But if you must seek compensation from a company or corporation, those large businesses will likely have corporate lawyers who are hired to save their employers money. They try to shift blame to victims and downplay their injuries. Having a local lawyer representing and safeguarding your case could keep you from losing out on the thousands of dollars in the support you need to make a full recovery.
Oxnard Truck Accident Hazards
Trucks zoom along busy routes through Oxnard day and night. A large tractor-trailer can be veering in and out of lanes along Saviers Road. A farm or produce truck might be speeding on Highway 101 with a heavy load, not watching the traffic ahead that may be coming to a standstill.
Truck drivers are usually working to keep everyone as safe as possible, but they travel in giant vehicles that take longer to come to a complete stop. Those big rigs take up more space in a lane and are harder to keep between the white lines. Their shape is also a danger for people in cars and SUVs. In collisions, vehicles can end up underneath big rigs, leaving victims waiting longer on the medical attention they desperately need.
Truck drivers looking at cellphone texts or traveling while drowsy present a danger to every local motorist on Oxnard streets. An impact involving a big rig or a delivery van from businesses like Amazon and FedEx can leave drivers and passengers with traumatic and life-threatening injuries. Fortunately, victims and their families can ask more than just truck drivers for help in paying for medical care. An Oxnard truck accident lawyer can help victims identify other parties that owe compensation.
Who Can I Sue After an Oxnard Truck Collision?
Truck drivers may be owner-operators who own their own trucks. They may be just a one-person business covered by commercial truck insurance. But many truck drivers work for larger corporations. They may work for a national distributor, or drive for Walmart or Amazon.
When a truck driver’s carelessness causes a crash, there may be several parties who actually contributed to the accident and the injuries it caused:
- Owner-Operator Truck Driver — Local truck drivers may work for themselves. They’ll have commercial truck accident insurance for victims to draw from. These individual policies may have low policy limits, leaving victims short of the money they need to pay all of their medical bills. That’s why it’s important to determine every party who may be liable after a truck accident.
- Trucking Company – The truck driver’s employer could be fully liable for your hardships after an accident. A larger corporation will usually have a truck accident insurance policy that has higher limits and that covers more of your damages. Your lawyer might find that a company didn’t do proper background checks on an unsafe truck driver. The trucking business may not have kept up with maintenance on a truck, leading to a collision. The one drawback is that a corporation will have corporate lawyers ready to defend their truck drivers. They hope to limit the support you receive. It’s important to have a truck accident lawyer on your side to fight back against these teams of lawyers.
- Farm or Agricultural Company – Ventura County is home to many farms and ranches. Farm trucks and manufacturing semis all use local roads. Their drivers can get reckless and cause devastating accidents. These businesses can be held liable when their drivers make mistakes.
- Truck Makers and Tire Manufacturers – A malfunction or defect on the truck that caused your accident could make the truck maker liable. If it’s found that faulty tires contributed to your accident, your lawsuit could also include a tire maker. Your lawyer would check on recalls to see if dangerous truck parts were replaced when they should have been.
How Much Is My Truck Accident Worth?
Each truck accident is different and each case would have to be examined by a skilled truck accident lawyer at Quirk Law before an estimate on your settlement check total could be made. Every injury is also different, and people heal at their own pace. The time it takes for victims to recover from their injuries factors into how much compensation families receive.
In general, several details in your recovery help determine the level of support you receive from a truck accident insurance company. These are just a few of the damages your Oxnard Truck Accident Lawyer would be submitting to the insurance company:
- Totals for current medical bills and estimates on future healthcare costs
- Lifetime support estimates for any permanent disability
- Support for the pain victims endure in crashes and through recovery
- Support for the emotional trauma caused by a major truck accident
- Support for a loss of enjoyment of life
- Support for a loss of consortium (loss of intimacy with a partner)
- Totals on the paychecks and benefits victims lost while missing work hours
Frequently Asked Questions
Can my family ask a trucking company for support after losing a loved one in a truck accident?
Yes. Families may file a wrongful death claim against a truck driver and the driver’s employer. This claim seeks help with burial costs and any medical bills built up before death. Families should also get help replacing the weekly income the victim can no longer provide.
How long can I wait to file a truck accident claim?
Two years. You must file your claim within two years of the collision. However, you should act as soon as possible so that evidence doesn’t disappear and witnesses don’t become hard to locate.
What if I can’t afford to pay a truck accident lawyer?
You don’t need to worry about having money when you hire Quirk Law. We don’t accept payment unless we win your case for you. Then our attorney fees are paid out of the compensation you receive.
Contact an Oxnard Truck Accident Lawyer
Schedule a free case review with our Oxnard Truck Accident Lawyers here at Quirk Accident & Injury Attorneys, APC. We can talk about what happened, how it happened, and how it has affected you or your loved one. After that, we will go over all of the legal options available to you and your family.
There’s no obligation for your case consultation and it’s completely confidential. It’s a great way to discover what your injury is worth and how to hold a trucking company fully responsible.