Why You Want Boohoff Law’s Seattle Truck Accident Attorneys on Your Side
Attorney Tatiana Boohoff and her colleagues at Boohoff Law have years of combined experience representing victims of Seattle truck accidents and their families.
Together, they bring a wealth of practical skill, legal knowledge, and Tatiana’s reputation as a star personal injury litigator with a track record of success and a commitment to client service.
A graduate of the top-ranked Boston University School of Law, Tatiana Boohoff focuses her law practice entirely on helping personal injury victims recover the compensation they deserve. Accidents involving heavy trucks are one of her core areas of focus.
About Truck Accidents in Seattle
Truck accidents in Seattle inflict catastrophic damage, as anyone who has watched an evening news report about one probably knows. Still, seeing images of the aftermath on television and experiencing the violence of a large truck accident firsthand do not compare.
Survivors of these accidents feel lucky to escape them with their lives, because many victims do not. Even those who cheat death in a truck accident often contend with devastating and disabling injuries that can cause a lifetime of pain and distress.
Common Causes of Seattle Truck Accidents
Like any form of motor vehicle accident, truck accidents have a variety of root causes. Though some merely amount to freak occurrences that no one could have predicted, a far greater number can be tied back to someone’s poor decisions or lack of care.
Here are some common human-related causes of truck accidents on Washington roads.
Truck driver fatigue. Truck drivers work long hours and irregular shifts. According to IIHS, truck driver fatigue is a known crash risk. Although federal and state regulations dictate the number of hours a trucker can spend behind the wheel, and require careful reporting and record-keeping to prove compliance, trucking is still an exhausting profession.
Even when they comply with hours of service requirements (which isn’t always the case), truck drivers have to contend with the monotony of seemingly endless roads and the sleep-disruptive effects of driving at night and catching shut-eye at odd hours.
Fatigue can have the same effect on a trucker’s driving abilities as being over the legal drunk driving limit, or can result in drivers falling asleep at the wheel.
Speed. We have all been on the road with a truck that seems to be driving way too fast for the road conditions. It’s scary. What’s worse, trucks have a longer stopping distance than smaller vehicles.
A truck traveling at an inappropriately high speed will need an even greater distance to slow down or avoid road hazards.
Unbalanced/unsecured loads. Large trucks frequently haul heavy loads. The distribution of a load can affect how a truck handles. If the weight distribution of a load shifts while the truck is moving, truck drivers can—and often do—lose control.
Even if the load is secure, it can affect the truck’s center of gravity. Unbalanced loads can cause truck rollovers, particularly on highway ramps or other sharp curves.
Blind spots. Tractor trailers have large blind spots on all four sides of the vehicle. Vehicles riding in those blind spots increase the risk for a collision substantially.
Operating under the influence. Truck drivers tend to drive drunk less often than other drivers on the road. But, that does not mean they pose a lower risk of operating under the influence.
Some truck drivers have been known to rely on illegal drugs to keep them alert, which only increases their crash risk. Truck drivers with health problems (not uncommon because of their sedentary lifestyle) also run risks when they take the wheel under the influence of prescription medications.
These are just a few of the more common ways truck accidents can happen. There are many more.
Because every truck accident has its own unique facts and circumstances, it is important for anyone injured in an accident to retain the services of an experienced truck accident attorney familiar with the particular challenges of investigating a truck accident injury.
Common Seattle Truck Accident Injuries
Truck accidents in Seattle result in frequent fatalities. Even when no one dies, however, a truck accident can inflict a wide range of catastrophic injuries. The people particularly vulnerable in truck accidents are occupants of smaller vehicles.
The vast difference in size and weight between a car and a fully-loaded truck can destroy a passenger vehicle while leaving a truck relatively intact.
Some of the most common, and devastating, injuries victims of truck accidents sustain include:
- Traumatic brain injuries;
- Spinal cord injuries resulting in paralysis;
- Crushed or traumatically amputated limbs;
- Burns and disfiguring scarring;
- Broken bones and orthopedic injuries; and
- Severe internal and soft tissue damage.
Some of the injuries above heal in time, but many do not. In seeking damages for injuries sustained in a truck accident, one important task for a Seattle truck accident attorney is to determine the likely medical needs of a truck accident victim into the future, so as to ensure the victim receives adequate compensation from the parties with legal liability.
Who is To Blame For My Seattle Truck Accident?
Figuring out what caused your truck accident is only the beginning of the job an experienced Seattle truck accident attorney does for injured clients.
Equally important is figuring out who may have legal liability to the accident victims. The cause of an accident can give clues to who may have liability for it, but it’s not the only piece to the puzzle.
Below are some of the most common parties with liability for truck accident injuries:
Truck (or other) drivers. Obviously, all drivers on the road may have legal liability if their actions or decisions led to a crash. Truck drivers may especially face liability if they drove fatigued or under the influence.
Trucking companies. Trucking companies that employ truck drivers may have liability for driver decisions if they knew or should have known drivers operated unsafely. These companies may also have liability for failing to maintain safe trucking equipment.
Shippers and warehousers. If a shift or imbalance in truck cargo leads to a crash, the party who loaded the truck could face legal liability. Often, this party is a company that ships or stores goods.
Government entities. Local and state governments have an obligation to design and maintain safe roads. Some road design and maintenance decisions create dangers that can particularly impact large trucks, putting governments at risk of legal liability.
Truck equipment manufacturers. A manufacturer that produces a product that is unreasonably dangerous may have liability to anyone harmed by that product. As we noted above, every truck accident is different. That includes who may have legal liability to victims of a truck accident.
The best way to determine who has liability for injuries you or a loved one sustained in a Seattle truck accident is to retain the services of an experienced truck accident attorney.
Seattle Truck Accident FAQs
Accidents involving large trucks cause chaos; on the roads, for businesses, and most of all, in the lives of the victims injured or killed. In the aftermath of a truck accident, the people affected often have questions about their legal rights and how they can recover compensation for the harm done to them.
Boohoff Law is a Seattle law firm that exclusively represents victims of accidents and tragedies. We help people struggling physically, emotionally, and financially because of an accident to hold those who hurt them accountable.
What should I do After I’ve been hurt in a Seattle truck crash?
See a doctor. Do not wait. Do not pass off your injury as something inconvenient to suffer through or that it’s no big deal. Check-in with a doctor as soon as possible after any motor vehicle accident, even if you don’t think you’re too badly hurt, or hurt at all. Why is seeing a doctor so important?
For several reasons. First, because your health takes priority, and the sooner you see a doctor for any health condition the better off you are.
Additionally, some injuries typical of motor vehicle accidents take days or more to show symptoms, but are easy for doctors to diagnose and begin treating right away.
Second, because not seeing a doctor risks all sort of complications:
- Health complications, from letting an injury go untreated or undiscovered, leading to worse health outcomes;
- Insurance complications, from failing to give your (or someone else’s) insurance company notice of your injury, which could cause you to lose benefits;
- Legal/financial complications, from failing to take the simple, practical steps necessary to protect your rights and to prevent someone from claiming you brought an injury on yourself.
From the legal standpoint, seeing a doctor soon is critically important if you ever hope to prove the truck accident caused your injury, the extent and prognosis of your injury, or the past, current, and future cost of treatment for your injury. Your lawyer will thank you.
What are some steps I can take as a motorist to avoid a truck-related accident?
Sometimes getting hurt in an accident is simply unavoidable. You can drive as safely as possible, but you can’t control how others on the road act.
Still, there are affirmative steps you can take to reduce your risk of getting into a truck accident. Perhaps most important is by avoiding No Zones, the large blind spots that surround tractor trailer trucks. The typical tractor trailer No Zones are:
- 20 feet in the lane directly in front of the truck;
- 30 feet in the lane directly behind the truck;
- One lane-width in the driver-side blind spot extending from just behind the truck cab to mid-trailer; and
- Two lane-widths in the passenger-side blind spot extending the bumper-to-bumper length of the truck.
Not sure if you’re in a No Zone? Just remember: if you cannot see the truck driver in the truck’s rear-view mirror, then the truck driver cannot see you, either.
Other steps you can take to steer clear of accidents with large trucks are to give yourself a safe distance behind trucks on the highway (especially in windy or slick road conditions), anticipate trucks’ wide turn radius, and never pass trucks or cut in front of them on downhill stretches of road.
Whom can I sue for damages after getting hurt in an accident involving a truck?
That’s a complicated question. Without getting into the legal technicalities, who you can sue for your injuries or for the loss of a loved one generally depends on whose actions caused the accident and/or whose actions could have prevented the accident, but didn’t.
Skilled attorneys like the team at Boohoff Law understand it’s not always obvious at first look who those people or companies are in a truck accident matter. That’s primarily because a loaded commercial truck typically has multiple people and legal interests associated with it: the driver, the driver’s employer, the truck and trailer owners (often two separate parties), and the owner of the cargo.
Every one of those parties could have legal liability to anyone hurt in a truck-related accident. So could numerous other parties, like other drivers on the road, car and truck equipment manufacturers, commercial mechanics, and even local and state government entities. Not to mention that some, but not necessarily all, of those parties may carry insurance.
Bottom line: most of the time, you can’t know for sure who you can sue for damages after a truck accident without having an attorney do a preliminary investigation into the facts and circumstances of the accident, and the legal interests of all of motor vehicles, businesses, and people affected.
How much is a typical truck accident injury claim worth?
That’s another tricky one. In all honesty: any lawyer who tells you right-off-the-bat what your truck accident injury claim is worth is probably blowing smoke.
At best, it’s an educated guess with a LOT of wiggle room. At worst, it’s just a number the lawyer pulls out of thin air.
What a case is worth, by which we mean, how much money you can reasonably expect to recover in damages for your injury or loss, depends on a huge range of factors, including:
- The severity of the injury or loss to you;
- What maximum recovery from your injury looks like and your probability of reaching it;
- Your age, general state of health, employment status, and income at the time of the accident;
- How badly you’ve suffered physically, emotionally, and financially because of the accident;
- The amount of insurance carried by anyone with potential liability to you; and
- The ability of anyone with potential liability to you to pay damages in excess or in the absence of insurance.
Those are just a few of the relevant factors, mind you. Making definitive statements about the value of a case at the outset is, as we said, not something responsible lawyers like us do (We can, however, point you to our track record of having recovered millions of dollars in total for our former clients, so long as you understand there are never any guarantees: every case is different).
What we can say definitively is that, in most cases, Washington law permits recovery of fixed, knowable, present and future expenses associated with an injury or loss (medical expenses, lost wages, etc.).
Washington law also allows for recovery of subjective pain and suffering and loss of consortium type damages, but only up to a maximum of 43 percent of the average annual wage in Washington (a number set by law) multiplied by your life expectancy at the time of the accident (which can’t be less than 15 years).
How long does it take to recover money for my truck-accident injuries?
You’re probably getting tired of hearing this, but again, it all depends on the facts of your case.
First things first, however. If you carry health insurance, it will typically cover the cost of your medical care after an accident, subject to your policy’s applicable co-pays, deductible, and limits.
If you end up recovering compensation from others for your injuries later on down the road, then your health insurance company will slide in and recover what it paid to your medical providers through a legal principle called subrogation.
You may be thinking: “Okay, but that’s just my medical care. I have other expenses because of this accident, plus I’m out my co-pays and deductibles! How do I get that money, and fast?” We hear you. Generally speaking, aside from your own health insurance coverage, money for injuries and losses caused by truck accidents comes from the defendants’ insurance or from the defendants directly.
How long it takes for those parties to pay out, and how much they’re willing to pay, depends on factors including:
- Whether they recognize their legal liability to you;
- Whether they accept your view of how much money you should receive;
- How much less than maximum damages you are willing to take to get paid quicker; and
- Whether the money is coming from insurance or directly from the defendant.
On one hand, we have seen cases settled for at-or-near insurance policy maximums in a matter of weeks when liability is clear and damages are indisputable.
On the other hand, we have also seen cases take years to resolve when parties dispute liability and the case goes to trial.
At Boohoff Law, we hesitate to predict how fast a case will go or how soon you can recover money (assuming you can recover money at all).
Instead, we promise to work our hardest to get our clients the best available outcome for their cases, and to listen to your needs so that any outcome serves your interests as well as possible.
I was offered a settlement. Should I take it?
We’re going to answer that question with a question. Do you have a lawyer? If your answer is no, then so is ours. In our years of experience, we have never seen a settlement offer made anyone who doesn’t have a lawyer that’s as good as the one they’d get if they did have a lawyer.
Insurance companies and parties with legal liability to you want to minimize their own financial pain. If they recognize their liability and see they could be on the hook to you for a mountain of damages, then they’re going to do what they can to get themselves off the hook for as few dollars possible.
They also bet you could use that money, so they try to tempt you with a quick payment. What do they want in return?
Usually, a full-and-complete release of themselves and anyone associated with them from liability to you forever and always. That includes a promise not to sue them later if you discover you’re more injured than you thought, or if someone else successfully sues them for far more than they paid you.
We understand the emotional and financial pressures to take a fast settlement offer. It feels like free money. But, it’s not. In our experience, a fast, unsolicited settlement offer might as well come with a message reading “These people think they owe you a lot more money than they’re putting on the table!”
More often than not, saying “No, thank you,” and letting an experienced truck accident lawyer take over negotiations from there is your best bet for recovering maximum compensation.
How much does a lawyer cost?
Not as much as you might think. For starters, an initial consultation with the skilled truck accident attorneys at Boohoff law is free, confidential, and comes with no obligation to move forward with us as your attorneys.
For the rest, we almost always represent our clients on a contingent fee basis. Basically, that means we don’t get paid unless our clients do. More specifically, it means we enter into an agreement with our clients that says we receive a percentage of any settlement or judgment our client recovers, and lays out how the other expenses of the case will be paid.
We like this type of arrangement, because it lines up our interests with our clients’. In essence, we put our own financial wellbeing on the line right next to our clients’.
