Portland Personal Injury Lawyer Aaron DeShaw on handling personal injury cases involving defendants who are drunk driving and drugged driving:
Oregon Lawyers Experienced in Lawsuits against Drunk Drivers
Despite decades of attempting to stem drunken driving, some people will still drink excessively and then recklessly get into a car and injure or kill someone else.
Our law firm is one of Oregon's leading law firms handling legal cases for people injured or killed by drunk driving and drugged driving. Separate criminal legal cases against these defendants are often referred to as "driving under the influence of intoxicants."
We have the highest personal injury verdict in Oregon history, $77,523,748.93, for a case where a drunk driver hit a man and amputated his leg, leaving him with a lifetime of pain, suffering and loss. His wife received one of Oregon's highest verdicts for psychological injuries when she experienced severe PTSD and Major Depressive Disorder seeing the drunk driver crush her husband by driving his car at full speed into her husband's body and then attempting to run over her husband while he was on the ground trying to crawl to safety.
We've represented countless other clients who have been injured by drunk drivers - some of which have had Blood Alcohol Concentrations over 0.30 - four or more times the legal limit. We've represented people with catastrophic life changing injuries, brain injuries, and those who have lost internal organs because of drivers who drank too much.
Drunk drivign cases often involve horrible injuries, and people can be permanently injured and disfigured by somebody who is recklessly drinking and driving.
Oregon Lawyers Experienced in Dram Shop Lawsuits
Oregon law allows you to file a lawsuit against a bar that overserved a drunk driver under certain circumstances. First, the bar had to serve the person while visibly intoxicated. The injured person or their lawyer must make efforts to determine the bar(s) that served the drunk driver because Oregon's Tort Claim Notice, requires that the injured person or their lawyer notify the OLCC licened person or bar within 180 days of the injury, or upon obtaining information that the OLCC person or business served the drunk driver.
The injured person and their lawyer, must then prove that the drunk driver was served by an OLCC licened person or business while visibly intoxicated by "clear and convincing" evidence during trial. This is a higher level of evidence needed than in a standard civil trial (called a "preponderance of evidence.") For this reason, many personal injury lawyers do not want to accept these cases because of the high cost of prosecuting such a case, and a higher risk of losing.
Oregon Drunk Driving Lawsuits Require Experienced Lawyers
In many drunk driving cases the lawyer must hire an expert witness to calculate the percentage of alcohol that the drunk driver has in their body at the time of incident. Experts such as a toxicologist will be required to talk to the jury about alcohol levels, the amount required to get the drunk driver to that level and how it would decrease over time (in cases where the lab testing isn't taken directly after the crash, as is very common.)
If we get the case quickly enough and can identify a bar involved, we may be able to request the security tapes from the bar that over-served the drunk driver, and be able to bring litigation against both the driver and potentially against the facility where they were over-served in representing you for your drunken or drugged driving case.
Often we have to seek multiple documents in litigation in order to understand where the drunk driver was served, what time they were served in relation to the crash, and how much they were served at each location. In one case we issued subpoenas to every OLCC licensed restaurant, bar and store in a city in order to uncover the bars where the drunk driver was served because he refused to disclose it to anyone.
In many cases we have to obtain bank records from the drunk driver in order to uncover the bars where the drunk driver was served, when they refuse to disclose where they were served alcohol.
In other cases, the books of a bar may tell an important story about the bar's knowledge of the drunk driver's habit of drinking and driving while intoxicated.
These are amongst the steps that our experienced Portland personal injury lawyers use in dram shop / drunk driving cases. Unless the lawyer knows to look for these critical items you very well may miss an important OLCC server and without the last location you may not have a viable dram shop case.
Oregon Lawyers Experienced in Lawsuits Against Drugged Drivers
We've also represented clients injured by drivers who have used methamphetamines, didn't sleep for multiple days, and then seriously injured a client.
Drunk and Drugged Driving in Trucking Cases
Trucking accident cases often involve substances that are prohibited by federal trucking regulations.
Truck drivers have an additional set of requirements in regards to the use of alcohol, drugs and even prescription drugs. There are also unique regulations regarding post-crash breath alcohol testing and blood testing.
Our unique experience here is that our lead lawyer, Dr. Aaron DeShaw, was a certified breath alcohol technician and performed DOT examinations for truck drivers during his time as a doctor, before he was a lawyer. Using the combination of our experience in breath testing, urinalysis, laboratory testing has allowed us to pick up inconsistencies in post-crash lab testing. In one case involving a garbage truck driver who ran over our pedestrian client, the company had accepted a diluted urine sample which Dr. DeShaw recognized because the urine temperature at collection was too low to be a valid sample. The trucking company then split the sample to another lab and didn't run it for drugs.
We've also been hired for this expertise for trucking cases outside of Oregon. In one case Dr. DeShaw found multiple illegal drugs, resulting medical conditions, and disqualifying prescription drugs being used by the commercial truck driver who was driving for one of America's largest trucking companies. The trial resulted in a $35,000,000 (part jury verdict and part settlement), given that a large trucking company put a driver on the road that was clearly compromised by a combination of amphetamines, methamphetamines, causing a seizure disorder (that disqualified him from driving a commercial truck) and resulting in several prohibited prescriptions being used to minimize the effects of the illegal drugs. The trucking company provided a semi to a highly compromised driver despite him being so high he couldn't stand or speak at 7:00 am when he drove directly into rush hour traffic.
If you are injured by a drunk driver or a drugged driver hire an experienced Personal Injury Trial Lawyer
If you are seeking a lawyer to handle your serious injury case caused by a drunk or drugged driver, please contact our office from this web page, or call our office at (503) 227-1233 for a free consultation.