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Your injury accident may present many challenges for you. The accident may have inflicted a variety of types of harm upon you and your family. When that happens, you need a skilled San Mateo injury attorney working for you to get you an award that covers all of the different types of damages that you have suffered. Whether through judgment or settlement, your knowledgeable attorney can help you get a result that you need.

A case recently reported by the Fresno Bee was an example of that kind of accident. J.S.G. was roughly 15 minutes away from work on May 1, 2017 when his commute ended prematurely. At an intersection in Tulare County, J.S.G.’s passenger sedan and a van collided. By coincidence, the driver of the van was employed by the same company that employed J.S.G. The van was hauling a trailer that was loaded down with ladders and portable toilets, according to the report.

Allegedly, the crash occurred because the van’s driver failed to come to a complete stop at the intersection. He suffered a traumatic brain injury, along with significant injuries to his neck and back. According to the injured driver, he had undergone neck and back surgeries to address those injuries and continued to need therapy, the Bee reported.

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When it comes to legal questions, a very common (and often very wise) answer you’ll get from a prudent lawyer is, “It depends.” That’s because many legal outcomes really do depend on the unique facts of a particular case. For example, in many instances, you cannot recover from a driver’s employer if the driver was using the employer’s vehicle but was dealing with personal matters at the time of the crash. But that’s not always true; sometimes you can recover. In short, don’t assume – seek out knowledgeable advice from a skilled San Mateo injury attorney about the options your case presents.

As an illustration of the “It depends” concept, take the case of R.M., who was hurt while riding as a passenger in a pickup truck that his father was driving. The father was driving down a rural, county-maintained road when the truck left the roadway and crashed down an embankment, rolling over. R.M. was not wearing a seatbelt and suffered serious injuries in the accident.

At the time of the accident, the road was undergoing a resurfacing project but, unbeknownst to the driver, the project had not been completed. The father’s employer owned the pickup truck, but the father was engaged in personal affairs, not company business, when the accident happened.

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When you’re hurt in an accident, there are several questions that must be answered. Do you have a case? If you do, how much is your case “worth”? These are some of the kinds of questions where an experienced attorney can be invaluable on your behalf. Your counsel can help outline for you how you might proceed, what kinds of claims you might pursue and how much those claims might possibly yield in terms of a damages award.

This assessment of the value of your case can be especially critical if the other side makes you a settlement offer. Settlement offers, even modest ones, can be tempting. A settlement payment represents a sure thing and cash in hand. There is no delay and no uncertainty, making a desperate plaintiff prone to accepting, even when the offer is far too low. A knowledgeable San Mateo injury attorney can help you avoid this trap.

Need an example of what we mean? Look at the case of D.A., a maintenance worker for a railroad, which was reported by the Northern California Record. D.A.’s job involved operating a grapple truck. One day, the Southern California worker was struck in the leg, back and head when an 83-pound rail rack fell off his truck and hit him. The worker allegedly was attempting to remove a guard rail when the entire rail rack slammed into him. The worker sued the railroad for the serious injuries he allegedly endured as a result of the accident.

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We all know that law enforcement officers have many responsibilities to juggle, even while behind the wheels of their police vehicles. They are tasked with doing things that private drivers are not expected to handle. However, we also know that all drivers on the road owe everyone else on the road a duty to maintain a proper lookout while driving. So, what happens if you are injured in an accident involving a distracted driver and that distracted driver turns out to be a law enforcement officer? Regardless of the officer’s position, you may still be able to recover compensation for this accident. Whether the driver who hit and injured you was a police officer or a private citizen, be sure you have a skilled California injury attorney on your side to give you the legal help you need.

Having a knowledgeable legal advocate can help greatly when it comes to getting all of the compensation you deserve. Take, for example, the case of a pair of Southern California plumbers. As reported by noozhawk.com, B.S. and J.H. were traveling through the city of Santa Maria when they experienced a jarring and painful event. Their pickup truck was rear-ended while they were stopped in traffic. The driver behind them did not notice the stopped traffic quickly enough. Although he tried to stop, he could not brake in time. That driver, an officer of the Santa Maria police, was distracted, according to information provided at trial.

According to the report, the driver was not tweeting or surfing Instagram or texting. He was responding to a call and was checking his in-dash computer for suspect information displayed there when the crash occurred. Nevertheless, the officer was distracted and that state of driving while distracted led to his rear-ending B.S. and J.H., the injured men argued in their lawsuit. The city admitted liability.

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Your knowledgeable California injury attorney can help in a great many ways after you’ve been hurt in an auto accident. One of the very vital ways in which an experienced injury attorney can assist you greatly is by employing his/her past experiences to help you determine just how much liability each of your opponents has, or how much you might reasonably expect to obtain in compensation from each defendant.

Your attorney can also help you get the information you need to determine whom you should pursue, and how aggressively, when you’re faced with a circumstance where more than one party may be liable for your harm. This information can be imperative, especially when it comes to weighing whether or not to accept a settlement offer you’ve received from an opposing party.

Consider the case of M.A. (Los Angeles Superior Court Case No. BC600875,) who was hurt in a three-vehicle intersection crash in Cerritos. M.A. was on the east-west road, traveling westbound. S.H. was on the same road but headed eastbound. J.E. was moving northbound on the intersecting street. S.H. and J.E., with each alleging that he/she had a green light, passed into the intersection and collided.

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If you watch many TV courtroom shows, you’ll likely see at least one or more moments when the action reaches a peak of tension or drama. This often involves some groundbreaking reveal discovered while a witness is testifying in open court, which shifts the odds and allows the just outcome to be reached. Rarely, if ever, will you see your favorite courtroom show build to a dramatic crescendo around attorneys arguing over what jury instructions the judge will read to the jury. Yet, in the real world, it is details like these, and getting them right, that can make all the difference between success or defeat, whether you’re in criminal or civil court. To make sure you have the representation you need when it comes to “sweating the small stuff,” be sure you have an experienced San Mateo injury attorney on your side.

To see how important these things can be, look at what happened in the case of U.S.G., an injured pedestrian. In the city of Salinas, there is a shopping mall whose driveway meets a public road at a “T” intersection. A crosswalk runs along that driveway. The crosswalk was situated on public land, and was the city’s responsibility when it came to maintenance. The city originally painted the crosswalk’s white lines in 1997. Those lines were never touched up or repainted at any point after the original 1997 paint job.

These unfortunate facts came to matter a great deal for U.S.G., who was crossing the driveway inside the faded crosswalk one day in 2013 when a truck turned left off the public road and onto the driveway. The truck slammed into the pedestrian, seriously injuring her.

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When you think about an auto accident injury lawsuit, you may imagine an injured person suing the person who rear-ended them or who improperly turned in front of them. In reality, though, auto accident injuries can occur in a wide spectrum of situations. If you are injured in a more unusual way, you may, very understandably, feel unsure about how you should proceed legally. Whether your circumstance was highly unique or very ordinary, it pays to have legal representation from a skilled California injury attorney in your pursuit of compensation.

As the Santa Maria Times reported, A.L.S. was a man injured in one of those more unusual ways. Certainly, no one wants to find himself detained in the back of a police car, but that’s where A.L.S. found himself in 2016. He was in the back of Officer E.I.O.’s cruiser, being transported to a police substation when a terrible accident happened. A teen, who allegedly was intoxicated, slammed a 2001 pickup truck into the police car in a head-on crash. Allegedly, the officer tried to avoid the oncoming pickup by swerving, but wasn’t successful. The officer, upon regaining consciousness after the impact, helped move A.L.S. to safety as the cruiser emitted smoke, according to the report.

In an accident such as this, you may assume that the injured passenger in the police car can seek recovery against the teen driver for negligence. You might also assume that the injured passenger has only that lawsuit against the teen driver as his sole source for recovery.

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When you decide to cross a street, there are certain things you can do to enhance your safety. You can choose to cross with the light and you can choose to cross inside the crosswalk. When you do those things, you likely have certain expectations, like not being run over by a large vehicle. Regrettably, these kinds of pedestrian accidents do happen all too often. If you’ve been hurt (or a loved one was killed) in this type of pedestrian-versus-truck accident, be sure you reach out to a knowledgeable California injury attorney about your situation.

Unfortunately for one 69-year-old southern California woman, she allegedly did all those safety-related things right as she cross a street in Alhambra, but still met with a tragic end. She reportedly had a walk signal and she was inside the crosswalk when a cargo van that was turning left crashed into her. She suffered injuries to her brain and to her cardiovascular system. Those injuries ultimately proved fatal, according to the Pasadena Star-News.

When that happens to your loved one, there are certain things you should know. It is fundamentally understood that no amount of money can take the place of a beloved family member. However, what is also undeniably true is that the unexpected loss of a loved one can cause massive harm to the family members left behind, both emotionally and, sometimes, financially.

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The law in California clearly obliges property owners/occupiers to keep their properties “reasonably safe.” As part of that duty, the law requires property owners/occupiers to inspect their properties and ascertain the condition of those properties. If a dangerous condition exists that would have been discovered as a result of a reasonable inspection, then the property owner/occupier is required by the law to fix it or to warn users of the property of its existence. If the owner doesn’t, and a guest on the property is injured, then that may give the injured person the opportunity to obtain compensation through a premises liability lawsuit. To learn more about this and other legal options possibly available to you, make certain you to contact a knowledgeable California injury attorney.

While many premises liability cases are slip-and-fall or trip-and-fall accidents, those are not the only varieties. For example, take the case of C.S. The facts that led to C.S.’s lawsuit sound like something that might come from a Hollywood horror movie. C.S. was out on a Napa County golf course in June 2013, taking a lesson from one of the club’s instructors. The golfer was preparing for a shot on the fifth hole when a swarm of yellow jackets attacked her. The instructor tried to swat the insects away, to no avail. The pair ran the length of one and one-half football fields before the yellow jackets stopped chasing and attacking. All told, the golfer got stung in excess of 50 times.

C.S. was transported to a nearby fire station. On the way, she began losing consciousness. Paramedics met her outside and gave her a shot. One paramedic declared that C.S. had been “within fifteen seconds” of dying. She spent the night in a hospital ICU and missed five weeks of work.

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In any type of personal injury case, you must present several things in order to achieve a successful outcome and obtain the damages award you need. One of these items is proof that the person or entity that you sued had a legal duty toward you. When it comes to a duty, it is important to understand how such a duty can arise. Some people always have certain duties toward others, in accordance with established law. Other times, a person or entity can develop a duty based upon the actions they took. In many situations, an entity maybe liable not so much because they started out owing the plaintiff a duty but because once they undertook an action, they became legally duty-bound to do that act in a non-negligent manner (but failed to do so). If you have been injured and think it was the result of someone else’s negligence, be sure to consult an experienced California injury attorney.

As an example of how this can work and how an injured person can achieve a valuable result, there’s the case of E.Z., which was reported by the San Francisco Chronicle. E.Z. was a 36-year-old woman taking her two daughters out for a walk one August day in 2016. The trio headed to San Francisco’s North Beach district and, specifically, to the playground at the historic Washington Square Park. The large park offers many benefits to guests, but unfortunately offered peril to this mom. As she and the children walked, a 50-foot pine tree shed a 100-pound branch. The branch fell several feet before crashing into E.Z. The mother suffered a fractured skull and a severed spinal cord. The severe injuries she suffered resulted in permanent paralysis from the waist down, the Chronicle reported.

In E.Z.’s case, she asserted that the city and county were negligent in the pruning and maintenance of the park’s trees. Specifically, she asserted that the method of pruning the city and county used tended to lead to “large, weakly attached branches” growing back, according to the report. She had evidence that there were problems with similar large falling branches in 2008. In 2010, an assessment concluded that the parks department only took action after reports from the public, and never engaged in pro-active maintenance. All that, along with E.Z.’s other evidence, was enough to build a viable case of negligence against the city and county.

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