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My name is Andrew Alex of the law firm of Alex & Associates
in Phoenix-Scottsdale Metropolitan area.
We've been in business now for over twenty-seven years
and
we represent
a lot of victims of
trucking accidents.
We call them commercial vehicle that include
18 wheelers, tractor trailers, big box vehicles.
And, the first
impression
I get every time I represent
a victim of a
trucking accident
is just how much damage these big vehicles do.
Many of my clients
have been hospitalized for a
significant period of time due to closed head injuries,
orthopedic injuries, lots of fractures,
soft tissue injuries,
and spinal injuries.
And, because they're hospitalized
they are more concerned, of course, about their treatment and
getting better.
They don't think too much about their claim.
Oftentimes, of the injuries that they've suffered,
they have residuals for life.
It affects their enjoyment of life,
quality of life, the ability to earn a
living.
And, there's something else, individuals who were injured today and have
broken bones and fractures, facial injuries, head injuries, oftentimes they don't get
better with time. They get worse with time.
Instead of enjoying life in their
fifties and sixties and seventies
they live it with pain. The second impression I get, and it's really an important one...
it's very important today
for individuals who are injured
in a commercial vehicle accident to
retain an attorney.
You have to preserve the evidence. We understand that oftentimes the
injuries in a trucking accident are really serious.
But, a family member can retain us.
A loved one can at least get it started.
What we have learned is if you are
prepared to go to trial
the insurance doesn't want to go to trial. Those are the
cases
that they want to settle.
The law firm that you hire is extremely
important.
You always want to make sure
you hire a law firm that
has a great deal of experience in
tractor trailer, or what we sometimes call commercial vehicle accidents, and that they're
experienced
in terms of filing a lawsuits,
doing discovery that should be done, and prepared to go to trial. If you do that you're going to be in
good hands, and you're going to get a good result, we think.
One of the things that we have to be concerned about these days
is the fact that trucking companies have what they call a "First Responder Team."
Their experts,
their own employees,
oftentimes respond to the scene of a death or
serious accident case
within hours. They fly all over the country. They get there about the same time
as the
state police, or local police are who are investigating the accident do.
They are accumulating evidence themselves.
And, frankly they're talking to the officers,
trying to shape
the way the officer's report is made.
They go and take their own physical evidence ...
and so the trucking company is preparing
their defense
within hours, if not minutes, after the accident occurs.
To keep the playing field level
it's important
that victims of an accident
contact a capable attorney.
A significant number of accidents
are caused by driver fatigue, and
the only way you are going to prove driver fatigue is really through the
log books and documentation.
That information has a tendency to disappear, and if
it disappears,
frankly, it's gone forever.
Loss of documentation can seriously jeopardize our client's case.
As soon as this firm is retained, we write a letter to the
trucking company
informing them that they must preserve the
driver's log books, fuel receipts, weigh station
data, GPS
records, and
on-board computer printouts.
In fact, we request that
twenty-one specific
items of information
be preserved.
It is this information
that allows us to put
together
and reconstruct
what the truck driver has been doing
for eight days prior to the accident.
It's been our experience that a
significant number
of the accidents that occur on the
road
are due to driver fatigue.
Juries respond to victims who are senselessly
injured ... and seriously injured because
the driver was over miles and
over hours.
Our experts reside all over the United States. We hire the very best accident
reconstructionists,
the very best safety experts, the very
best
rehabilitation folks out there and economists.
We put together a team
every bit as good, if not better,
and sometimes we think,
a lot better, than
trucking companies have.
What does all this mean?
If we can preserve the evidence,
meaning, if
retained
early enough
that we can put the trucking company on notice that they have a duty
preserve all the evidence.
The evidence that I discussed, the 21 items
that we request.
And, there's a law that requires them to do it,
once they are requested to do it.
If we hire the very best experts out there, we can reconstruct the accident, we know why
the accident occurred,
and we can present a very powerful case.
I can tell you from personal experience that I think we've done best for
our clients
when we've been retained early... early on in the
process shortly after the accident. If we are
retained six months after the accident
we're always trying to get "caught up." We are always behind the curve.