Oregon Commercial Dump Truck Crash Lawyers
The following is a case study in which our law firm represented a client as Oregon commercial dump truck crash lawyers.
Our client was a 26 year old who was driving his vehicle when a metal recycling dumptruck pulled out in front of him. He sustained a traumatic brain injury, facial lacerations, damaged temporomandibular joints bilaterally, injuries to his lip, mouth, neck, back, knees, legs, left hand, shoulder and wrist. He has permanent facial scarring, which impacted him as a salesperson.
The client had extensive lacerations and bruising on his face and he was hospitalized for some time.
This law firm client's brain injury symptoms included: nausea, headaches, dizziness, difficulty concentrating, short term memory loss, difficulty multitasking, reading problems, difficulty finding words, forgetting numbers, sleep disturbances, decreased smell, decreased taste, loss of appetite, physical fatigue, blurred vision, photophobia, vision changes, behavioral changes, withdrawal from friends / family, disorganization, tinnitus, phonophobia (noise intolerance), and loss of balance.
We were referred to due to our combined experience as Portland truck crash lawyers and as Portland traumatic brain injury lawyers. It is common that doctors and other lawyers refer highly complex injury cases to our office. (While an average personal injury case involves 150 pages of medical records, our cases often involve 1,000 to 150,000 pages of records. (We've also handled insurance class action cases with hundreds of millions of pages of records.)
This client demonstrated PTSD symptoms from the crash, including concerns about losing his life in the crash, anxiety, flashbacks to the crash scene (mainly while driving), and intrusive thoughts of the crash. He noted that after the crash he would get abnormally emotional, feeling that he had almost died in the crash.
State and Federal Regulations in Dump Truck Cases
We notified the metal recycling company's insurance company of the facts of the case:
"[Driver] was focused on wiping off his left side mirror and then slowly pulls out into traffic directly in front of my client’s vehicle, which is traveling in the closest lane of cross traffic. Neither federal, nor state trucking statutes governing interstate and intrastate trucking would allow for such an unsafe entry onto a roadway where the truck isn’t even out of the parking lot before the cross traffic reaches the point of departure. 49 CFR 383.117(c)(4) addresses the issue of ensuring there is no approaching cross traffic before entering the roadway, and Oregon’s CDL Manual (provided legally binding effect by the federal code) prohibits accelerating into oncoming traffic in both §2.2.1 and 2.2.6. Similarly, no driver’s training manual (Delmar / Alice Adams, JJ Keller, Smith System, Salt), or company truck driving training manual could support pulling out into cross road when a car is as close as my client’s vehicle was in this case. The screen capture below demonstrates that the end of the dump truck is still in the parking lot at the point of impact."
Dump Truck Company Hires a Lawyer Rather than Settle
Rather than make a settlement offer, the trucking company's insurance company hired a lawyer. So, we were forced to file a lawsuit on behalf of the client.
The crash was caught on a security camera which we obtained through litigation. The video showed the driver cleaning his side mirror at a stop before pulling out directly in front of our client's vehicle.
This case helps demonstrate the importance of hiring an experienced truck crash lawyer or commercial vehicle crash lawyer with expertise in topics important in trucking cases, education specifically on how to handle truck crash cases, and experience in handling commercial vehicle and dump trucks cases.
As an award-winning trial attorney and member of the Academy of Truck Accident Attorneys (the leading association for trucking attorneys in the United States), Aaron DeShaw is widely regarded as a lawyer who is highly experienced in trucking litigation in Oregon state. We are so well respected in commercial vehicle and truck crash lawsuits that we are hired as trial counsel for serious injury commercial vehicle cases outside Oregon and Washington.
To speak to our office about representing you in a trucking accident claim, contact our office or call to schedule a free case evaluation: (503) 227-1233.