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When you are injured due to an auto accident in which road conditions were a factor, your situation can seem complicated and stressful. You were just driving down the road and then you crash, suffering substantial injuries through little or no fault of your own. Would you know what to do and whom to sue?

Identifying the right people and/or entities to sue is an extremely essential part of your case. Choosing the right defendants is just as important as choosing the right causes of action when it comes to giving yourself the best chance of success and a full and fair recovery. This is just one of the many areas where it pays to have the skill and knowledge of an experienced San Mateo injury attorney on your side.

As an example of this kind of accident, there’s the case of M.D., a driver in San Bernardino County. According to Redlands Daily Facts, M.D. was a traveling along an east-west road that had a set of orange cones stretched across part of the road. M.D. drove to the left of the cones and, when he passed the last cone, he shifted right, only to feel his vehicle “drop off” into a two-foot deep ditch. The drop caused the vehicle to overturn and allegedly caused the driver to suffer very serious damage to his neck and back.

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Driving in California can be exhilarating, refreshing, relaxing or awe-inspiring. It can also be downright terrifying at times, with a wide array of circumstances that can lead to an injury accident. Many accidents will be common scenarios like rear-end crashes or left-turn collisions. Others, though, will be the result of very odd facts. Being injured in an unusual accident may pose some unique challenges but, other times, it may open up some unique opportunities. Either way, it pays to have an experienced San Mateo personal injury attorney representing you, who will know how to take your specific situation and guide you to the best opportunity available for success.

M. B.-S. was one of those unlucky drivers injured in a freak way. She was reportedly traveling along a freeway in Los Angeles County when she encountered a most unlikely road hazard – a flying mattress. The driver swerved to avoid the mattress but lost control and crashed into a barrier as a result. Eventually, with the help of information from witnesses, police located the truck whose trailer had allegedly pitched the item.

The injured woman sued both the driver and his employer for negligence. In her case, the woman’s legal team was able to advance a specific kind of negligence argument: negligence per se.

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Whenever you sue for injuries suffered in a vehicle accident, it is important to give the jury all the medical evidence they need to rule in your favor. This may often include testimony from your treating physician, as well as other physicians offering opinions as expert witnesses. These doctors can help the jury understand exactly what happened to you, why that injury is so harmful to you and why you needed the treatment you received and will need more treatment going forward. To help you determine what type of medical expert evidence, and how much, you need to best strengthen your case, be sure you have retained an experienced San Mateo injury attorney to guide you through making this and other vital decisions.

As an example of just how important these medical experts can be, look at the case of V.P., an inmate at a Los Angeles County jail. V.P. who was reportedly injured while being transported by the county when the bus in which he was riding struck a pillar. That impact allegedly caused him to suffer substantial injuries, including one that a doctor concluded surgery was needed to address.

Testimony by medical professionals played a pivotal role in V.P.’s case. He presented testimony from both an orthopedic surgeon and a chiropractor. This testimony from doctors can be particularly helpful if you’ve been involved in more than one injury accident over the years, as V.P. had been. If you’re in that situation, the defense will likely try to argue that the injuries you’ve suffered actually were the result of a different accident. Testimony from your doctors can help defeat that.

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Sometimes, vehicle accidents are the result of the negligence of one driver and one driver alone. Many other times, though, fault in a two (or more) vehicle accident is more complex. One driver may have improperly failed to yield, but the other driver may have been speeding. A front driver may have improperly stopped short, but a rear driver may have been driving while distracted.

So, what do you do if you’re injured in an accident where you were at fault and so was another driver? Does the fact that you were negligent and made mistakes necessarily mean that you cannot recover anything for the harm you suffered? In California, that is definitely not the case! Even if your errors were far-and-away the primary cause for an accident, you can still potentially recover if you can prove that the other driver also was guilty of at least some degree of negligence and that his/her negligence contributed to the crash. If you’ve been hurt in an accident, don’t give up – even if you made some mistakes on the road. Reach out to an experienced San Mateo car accident attorney to find out more about your legal options.

A recent crash in Sacramento County is a clear example of how multiple drivers can potentially be at fault in the same accident. According to a Galt Herald report, the two-vehicle accident tragically left one man dead and several injured. Witnesses indicated that the deceased man, F.G., approached and intersection and began turning left, failing to stop at the intersection’s stop sign. A pickup truck on the intersecting road crashed into F.G.’s sedan.

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If you’ve driven around San Mateo or anywhere in the Bay Area, you know that traffic jams can be a headache. With traffic jams, in addition to stop signs and traffic signals, there are plenty of circumstances where you’ll be stopped in traffic, and situations where you’re at risk of being injured in a chain reaction or other rear-end accident. When you find yourself in that painful and stressful situation, be sure to reach out promptly to an experienced San Mateo car accident lawyer about your situation.

Recently, one Northern California chain reaction accident, which was reported by NBC Bay Area, occurred on Highway 12 in Fairfield and claimed the life of one traveler. Before the accident, four eastbound drivers stopped at a red light. The eastbound driver of a Mercedes van did not. The van rear-ended a Volkswagen, which rear-ended a Honda, which rear-ended a BMW, which rear-ended an Audi. The driver of the Volkswagen did not survive.

In any kind of chain reaction accident, there are several keys to determining fault and putting oneself in a position to succeed in court. When it comes to assessing blame, the central question generally is, “Which driver caused the first accident?” That driver, generally speaking, will be the one at fault. In the Fairfield crash, based on the news reports’ description of the crash, the drivers of Volkswagen, Honda, BMW and Audi all followed the rules of the road and operated their vehicles safely. The driver of the Mercedes did not, and that driver’s negligence potentially was the sole cause of all damages that occurred, if the evidence supported the description published in the news.

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Motorcycle accidents often are seriously harmful or even fatal for the motorcyclist involved. If you’ve been hurt while driving your motorcycle (or a loved one has been killed on his motorcycle,) you have certain legal options and you need to be sure that your legal advocate is a knowledgeable San Mateo motorcycle accident attorney who thoroughly understands the unique aspects of a motorcycle crash and the peculiar needs of a motorcyclist.

P. R.-V.’s accident, which occurred in 2017, is a story that is all too familiar to motorcyclists. According to a NBC 7 report, the man was driving his motorcycle down Main Street in Chula Vista when the driver of a SUV failed to see him and pulled out of the driveway of a storage facility. The SUV pulled directly into the motorcycle’s path and the two collided. According to at least one witness, the woman driving the SUV “stopped for 10 seconds,” but subsequently took off. The 30-year-old motorcyclist died at the scene.

The police eventually found the SUV after a few days and, several weeks after that, apprehended the hit-and-run driver. This man’s wife and child were fortunate that law enforcement officers were eventually able to track down the driver who collided with the motorcyclist. If the driver had never been located, it would have been vastly more difficult for the widow to obtain a successful outcome in court.

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Often times, when one thinks of personal injury litigation in an auto accident, one envisions an accident that involved at least two vehicles. It might be tempting to assume that if one is injured as a driver in a single-vehicle accident, then there is no other driver to sue and therefore no chance of recovery. That’s not necessarily true. There may be a variety of sets of facts that may allow you, as a driver in a single-vehicle accident, to sue and secure a much-needed judgment or settlement. To be sure you go about this kind of action in the most effective way possible, be sure you have an experienced San Mateo injury attorney on your side.

There are certain road or highway issues that can affect some drivers more acutely than others. For example, potholes in the road might do damage to your car, truck or SUV, but are less likely to cause you to suffer personal injuries. As a motorcyclist, you risk is much higher. As is the case in so many motorcycle accidents, the biker is at an elevated risk of injury from anything that would cause the biker to be thrown from the bike, as that would result in him/her striking the ground with significant force.

That was what happened to a motorcyclist in San Pedro, according to his lawsuit. The motorcyclist, P.R.A., crashed in October 2015 after he hit several potholes along Western Avenue, according to a Patch.com report. In the crash, the motorcyclist hit his head and suffered a severe traumatic brain injury. The injury left the man with permanent brain damage and meant that he faced a lifetime of never being independent again, with caretakers required to meet many needs that most of us take for granted.

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Almost anyone who has ever lost a close loved one in an accident will very plainly state that there’s no amount of money they wouldn’t trade to have their loved one back. Nevertheless, wrongful death civil lawsuits that seek monetary compensation serve a very important purpose for the family members left behind. Your loved one was priceless, but you still have to pay many expenses – like funeral and final expense costs, along with the medical bills your deceased loved one racked up in that final accident – and those payments require money.

Additionally, there’s the income that your loved one brought in. Your loved one may have been a primary earner, or even a sole earner, for your family. The loss of his/her loss income may represent a severe and immediate financial crisis for your family. A successful wrongful death case can help you reduce that financial emergency. To make sure that you are getting the total amount of compensation that you and your family deserve, be sure to reach out to an experienced San Mateo wrongful death attorney about your case.

Wrongful death cases can be challenging ones for juries because, at some level, they require the jury to take a profound, and in some ways incalculable, loss and convert it to an exact dollar figure. That means that you may face, if you and your family take on a wrongful death case, a defense that argues that, because your loved one earned a modest income, the damages amount of his/her loss should be set at a low number. That was what one Fresno-area widow faced recently in her case, according to the Fresno Bee.

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When you are injured as a pedestrian, you may recognize that you have an opportunity to seek compensation in court, but you may not know the best way to go about getting the full and fair recovery you deserve. You know to sue the driver who hit you, but the facts of your case could indicate that there are more people or entities who owe you compensation. That’s why, whenever you’re hurt in a pedestrian accident, it is well worth your while to retain the services of an experienced San Mateo injury attorney.

One tragic case where that issue (of multiple at-fault parties) was a factor was the fatal accident that claimed the life of K.P., a Cal State East Bay student. According to a Mercury News report, K.P. was out for a jog around noon, just five blocks from her home, when the accident took place. Two men who had been street racing crashed into one another. The crash sent one of the vehicles, a Nissan Altima, careening off the road. It bounced off some utility trucks and then slammed into the jogger, pinning her against a tree, according to the report. She died at the scene.

Certainly, the driver who struck and killed K.P. would be liable to her family for the harm that he was proven to have caused. However, in a circumstance like this, the extent of liability doesn’t stop there. The other driver (the one who did not directly hit the jogger) is also liable for his negligent or reckless conduct.

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For many people who undertake civil lawsuits after they’ve lost a loved one due to another’s negligence or misconduct, the lawsuit is an important means to an essential end. The deceased may have been a primary, or even sole, income provider for an entire family, and a civil judgment or settlement may be necessary to pay outstanding medical bills and final expenses, as well as to avoid a financial crisis from the loss of the deceased’s earnings.

Sometimes, though, the money from a judgment or settlement isn’t as much of a need. Whether it is due to insurance payouts or other financial reasons, the deceased’s death, while undeniably taking an incalculable emotional toll, may not have created as much of a financial hardship. Even in that latter scenario, there may be very important reasons for undertaking a civil lawsuit and seeing it through to a judgment. Whether it is seeking closure, seeing justice done or some other reason, these reasons are just as valid, require just as much diligence, and are cases just as much in need of a thoughtful and experienced San Mateo wrongful death attorney as any other.

There are cynics among us who say, “Even when they say it’s not about the money, it’s about the money.” Here’s a case, reported by keyt.com, that disproves that notion. The victim in the case was a popular Southern California assistant principal, who was out jogging when he was struck and killed by an intoxicated driver, who was reportedly high on Xanax and marijuana at the time.

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