A truck accident settlement is an official agreement in which an injured person accepts monetary compensation provided by the insurance company or legal representatives of the at-fault party to settle legal claims without a complete trial in court. However, what is the real process of determining a particular amount in your case? Is there a formula by which you are calculated?
This blog explains the legal and financial criteria applied to determine the amount of a truck accident settlement in California. The valuation process is based on several federal laws, including the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) and California laws.
Key Considerations that Determine the Settlement Amount
There is no such thing as an average settlement amount, since every case has its own facts and ramifications. A basic calculator will not calculate your settlement to give the final value; a close assessment of various important factors will be needed.
These elements are the basis of your argument, and these include:
The Permanence and Severity of Your Injuries
The nature and degree of physical damage you have incurred are the most significant determinants of the value of your settlement. The consequences of a collision with a fully loaded commercial truck are usually devastating in terms of injuries with prolonged effects.
A case of minor soft tissue injuries, say a whiplash that will heal in a few months, will be appraised in a very different way than one of catastrophic injuries. In case you have suffered a traumatic brain injury (TBI). This spinal cord injury has resulted in paralysis, severe burns, or even amputation of a limb; your claim is going to be significantly valued.
The reason is that such kinds of injuries need lifelong medical treatment, leave you permanently crippled, and completely change the way you led your life before the accident. The settlement should be able to capture not only the immediate pain but also the full extent of this lifetime effect.
Total Medical Expenses of the Present and Future
Your overall medical expenses are directly related to the extent of your injuries and are a tangible, quantifiable element of your claim. Your settlement shall include all the medical costs you have incurred directly caused by the accident. This starts with the first emergency response, which covers ambulance transport and emergency room care. It includes hospitalization, surgery, diagnostic tests such as MRIs and CT scans, and medical specialist consultation.
But an overall settlement does not just cover the bills that you have already received. It should also take into consideration all the future medical requirements projected. If your recovery needs long-term rehabilitation, physical therapy, occupational therapy, or prescription drugs, then these expenses will be included in the overall price.
In the case of permanently disabled people, it can also include the cost of assistive equipment, such as wheelchairs, home modifications to make it accessible, and continuous in-home nursing. It is necessary to ensure that these past and future costs are well documented so that you do not have a financial burden years later.
Lost Income and Reduced Earning Potential
A severe truck crash may severely affect your work and livelihood. The settlement should compensate for this financial loss and is normally covered in two separate sections. The first one is the wages you lost when you could not work and heal up after the injuries. It is a simple calculation based on your working history and salary rate.
The second, more frequently important, element is a loss of earning power compensation. This will apply if you cannot work in your former workplace due to your injuries or inability to work.
If you accept a lower-paying job because of physical or mental constraints due to the accident, the settlement should consider the disparity in your future lifetime income. This loss can be a complicated calculation involving vocational experts and economists analyzing the financial loss incurred in the long term due to your reduced capacity to work, so that your settlement would be the sum of the loss of your future earnings.
Establishing Liability and the Role of Negligence
To obtain compensation, you must first demonstrate that one of the other parties was culpably or negligently responsible for causing the accident. The clearness and vigor of this evidence will directly affect your settlement.
Commercial trucking situations may be complicated regarding liability and not necessarily limited to the driver alone. The trucking company may be liable under a legal doctrine referred to as vicarious liability or respondeat superior, which holds the trucking company liable for the driver's negligent acts, provided that the driver was within the bounds of his or her employment.
Besides, the trucking company may be directly negligent of its own mistakes, including but not limited to hiring an unqualified driver, not providing sufficient training, encouraging drivers to break hours-of-service rules, or not maintaining its vehicles appropriately.
To prove this fault, the legal team will collect necessary evidence such as the official police report, driver logbooks, truck maintenance records, information on the vehicle's black box recorder, and witness testimonies. The greater the evidence of the other party's negligence, the better your bargaining ground is for a complete and reasonable settlement.
If You Are Partially To Blame For The Accident
It is a universal fear when accident victims fear that their own actions would disqualify them from compensation. Nevertheless, the fact that you are partially at fault does not mean you will not be entitled to a settlement. A legal principle of comparative negligence guides a majority of states.
This rule allows you to damage even when you were partially at fault, but your ultimate compensation will be less by your percentage of fault. As an illustration, when a jury finds that you incurred damages of $100,000 in a collision but also that you were 20 percent at fault in the accident, your award would be 20 percent less, which would entail $80,000.
You should also know what version of this rule is followed in your state. There are also those states with a modified comparative negligence system, which prevents you from recovering any damages when your portion of fault is over a specific level, usually 50 or 51 percent.
A few states continue to follow the much more severe rule of contributory negligence, in which case you are simply not entitled to receive any compensation when it is determined that you were even 1 percent at fault. A competent lawyer can assist you in knowing the applicable laws in your state and how they may be applied to the circumstances of your case.
Your Type of Coverage
The at-fault party's insurance coverage is a viable and valuable aspect that may restrict the size of compensation that you can receive. The FMCSA makes it mandatory that trucking companies take out ample liability insurance coverage, the minimum being determined by the nature of the cargo they carry. In the case of trucks with a weight above 10,000 pounds with non-hazardous goods, the federal minimum is $750,000. The minimums may be as high as five million for those who carry hazardous materials.
These sums are enormous, but the expenses of a disastrous truck crash can easily surpass these sums of money. If the amount of damages you have exceeds what the insurance company offers, the insurance company will only cover the insurance policy limit.
Under these circumstances, getting the rest of the compensation is harder. If you have it, it can be suing the trucking company's corporate assets directly or finding other possible recovery sources, including your underinsured motorist (UIM) insurance. That is why it is paramount to determine all the potential insurance policies and compensation sources at the earliest stage.
Understanding Economic, Non-Economic, and Punitive Damages
Once you have settled on the main elements of your case, the settlement calculation progresses to classifying your losses into specific categories of legal damages. These categories give you a framework for ensuring that all areas of your misery are covered in financial compensation. Your damages will consist of both economic damages, which are your actual and calculable financial losses, and non-economic damages, which are the payment for your intangible and personal loss that you have suffered. There is also a third type of damages called punitive damages, which in sporadic cases may be granted not to compensate you but to punish the defendant because of unusually careless conduct.
Calculating Your Economic Damages
The simplest element of your settlement is economic damages since they are associated with real and recorded financial losses. These are the out-of-pocket expenses and losses you have suffered due to the accident, and they can be substantiated by way of receipts, bills, and even financial statements.
Your economic damages consist mainly of your past and future medical bills, starting with the ambulance ride to the estimated lifetime cost of care. Your lost wages in the past and your loss of earning capacity in the future should also be classified in this category, in case you can no longer work in the same way you used to.
Lastly, economic damages are the money to fix or purchase another car and other personal items destroyed during the accident. Preparing detailed documentation of all these losses is necessary to develop a solid case to claim.
Valuing Your Non-Economic Damages
Non-economic damages are meant to pay you back the enormous personal, non-financial cost the accident has imposed on your life. These losses are subjective and do not carry a price tag; hence, they are harder to quantify. This category is also known as pain and suffering and is the physical pain, emotional distress, anxiety, and psychological trauma caused by the accident and your injuries.
It also covers a loss of enjoyment of life, which covers the fact that you can no longer engage in hobbies, activities, and relationships that previously gave you pleasure. Loss of consortium is another element and can be brought by your spouse when claiming the loss of companionship and support.
To monetize these non-monetary losses, lawyers employ the "multiplier method." Under this method, your cumulative economic losses are multiplied by a figure, usually 1.5 to 5. The multiplier depends on the severity of your injuries, the level of your pain, and the long-term effects on your life. More severe, permanent, and life-altering injuries are given a higher multiplier.
Punitive Damages In Truck Accident Cases
Although they exist, you must understand that punitive damages are uncommon in truck accident cases and are not given as a form of ordinary negligence. In contrast to economic and non-economic damages, which are meant to reimburse you for the losses, punitive damages are intended to punish the defendant due to outrageous conduct and discourage others from doing the same in the future.
To obtain punitive damages, you have to demonstrate that the defendant was grossly negligent or malicious or that he or she had a willful and reckless disregard for the safety of others.
In a trucking case, this may be where a trucking company has been determined to have deliberately falsified the logbooks of its drivers to compel them to drive much further than the law would allow, or a driver who had a history of drunk driving violations but was knowingly hired by the trucking company, who then caused an accident when he was drunk.
Because the standard of proof is so high, punitive damages are reserved for only the most shocking and outrageous misconduct cases.
The Truck Accident Settlement Process
The settlement process is structured, which may seem overwhelming when one has to navigate the aftermath of a truck accident. This understanding can be used to demystify the future and to manage your expectations of the timeline and what each phase involves.
From the moment you recruit an attorney to the time you get your compensation, every step aims to develop your case, prove the worth of your claim, and achieve a final solution. Although most cases end in a negotiated settlement, the process is ready to go to court if a fair agreement is not made.
Research and Demand Letter
The initial step in your claim is an in-depth investigation. Your legal department will start immediately to collect all the evidence you need to establish liability and record the full scope of your losses.
This includes gathering the police report, getting your full medical history, interviewing witnesses, and getting necessary evidence from the trucking company, including driver logs, vehicle maintenance records, and information from the truck's electronic data recorder.
After a clear picture of the case is formed and your medical condition has become stable enough to comprehend the long-term prognosis, your attorney will write a thorough demand letter. This official document is forwarded to the at-fault party's insurance company.
It presents the facts of the case, explains the legal basis of their liability, gives extensive documentation of your damages, and settles at a certain amount.
The Negotiation Stage with the Insurance Companies
The negotiation process starts once the insurance company has read the demand letter. You should be ready to accept the truth that the first offer of the insurer will definitely be a counteroffer, which will be much lower than what you have demanded. Insurance adjusters are conditioned to pay as little as possible, and their first offer is a strategy to test whether you will take a hasty and incomplete settlement. Here, the art of your lawyer is most important.
Your attorney will have a back-and-forth negotiation with the adjuster. They strategically tear down the insurer's arguments through the evidence collected during the investigation to prove why you deserve the full amount of your claim. It may take weeks or months as both parties share information and present their arguments until a reasonable settlement is reached.
Filing a Lawsuit When Negotiations Fail
Most personal injury cases, including truck accident cases, are settled by a negotiated settlement and never proceed to trial. Nevertheless, when the insurance company is unwilling to make a reasonable offer and the negotiation process comes to a dead end, the backup plan is to sue them in a personal injury case.
You need to know that when you file a lawsuit, it does not automatically mean your case will be in a court of law before a jury. Instead, it takes the process to the formal litigation stage. This exposes potent weapons of the law, such as depositions, where your lawyer can interrogate the truck driver and company executives under oath.
In many cases, the added strain of litigation and the evidence found in this discovery process will return the insurance company to the bargaining table with a more reasonable offer, and the case will be settled before a trial is required.
Get the Compensation with the Help of a Truck Accident Lawyer Near Me
Settling a truck accident in California is complex, filled with the big insurance companies' legal standards, bargaining, and offensive maneuvers. Valuing your claim involves carefully accounting for all the physical, emotional, and financial losses you have suffered.
Navigating this process on your own as you attempt to recuperate from your injuries can compromise your right to the full and fair compensation that you require to put your life back together. The most important thing you can do is empower yourself with expert legal advice to secure your future.
You do not need to cope with this challenge alone. By enlisting the services of a professional for a no-obligation assessment of your case, you can clearly understand your legal rights and the value of your claim. A qualified legal team will battle to ensure that all the damages are considered and that you are never coerced into accepting an offer that is not up to the mark of what you are owed. To have a free, confidential consultation regarding your truck accident case, call Truck Accident Injury Attorney Law Firm at 888-511-3139 today.
