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Personal Injury Law

: Des Moines Personal Injury Lawyer

Rain storm, rear-end collision, no escape - Negligence? Factual investigation is required.

By Steve Lombardi

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Question: I'm the mother of a young driver who was involved in an auto accident. We live in in the southern United States and have contacted an injury/accident lawyer and a criminal/accident lawyer both with no good news. Brief description of accident: she was single occ. restrained driver on 2 lane highway traveling south(2 lanes N also). Severe thunderstorms. She was in the right lane traveling approx 50mph on 55mph road. Small 4 door car. In front of her large SUV in right lane. She saw SUV suddenly cross to left lane and then noticed people standing down embankment on right side then in front of her a disabled vehicle with no hazard lights, flares, etc. She attempted to stop and hydroplaned. Sudden decision not go off road to right due to people there she check her left blind spot to get to left lane but collided with empty, disabled vehicle and landed in grass median. Both airbags deployed she sustained injuries to her face, arms, chest, abd. Nothing life threatening but did require EMS ride to ER and dc'd that day. My first concern of course is my insurance company finding her at fault. Later that day law enforcement issued her a ticket for failure to reduce speed to prevent an auto accident. Both lawyers have said they can handle the ticket (have it dismissed), my frustration is we've lost a car that we still owe money on, and our insurance rates will now go up. To me the guy who left his disabled vehicle in the roadway is at fault. Piece of info, his vehicle was disable due to another vehicle pulling out in front of him which he rear-ended, that other vehicle ended up in the ditch/embankment on right side of road. Please help, my daughter is crying a lot not feeling this is her fault.

Answer: The PI lawyer is probably saying "No go," because of the weather conditions and the fact that your daughter's car ran into the other car. Experience tells me she will be found partially at fault, and without knowing NC tort law I can't say what that would mean.

Tendencies for everyone is to focus on the weather; and perhaps draw the conclusion the first car was disabled due to the weather. But that's the one unknown that needs to be the focus of the investigation. What was wrong with the first car causing it to have trouble and stop running? How old was it? How had it been maintained? Did the emergency flashers work? If not why not? If so why weren't they on? Did that driver have flares available? If so why weren't they lit? If at trial the lawyer can change the focus of attention to the car's owner for failure to maintain it with proper maintenance and then to take proper emergency precautions, then your daughter's case has a better chance of being successful.

And the first collision, that driver can hardly cry foul over your daughter doing exactly what he/she did in crashing into the rear of the other vehicle. That driver will in all likelihood support your daughter's claim.

Let's get back to the speed of your daughter's car. She needs to be ready to defend her speed. Rain is rain and we've all driven in a rain storm without reducing our speed to much more than the speed limit. What she did up to the point of the actual emergency is important to be ready to discuss and must be dissected. Nothing unusual up until the vehicle in front veers left. She needs to be ready to testify, although it was raining up to that point there was nothing unusual or hazardous requiring a further reduction of her car's speed.

In a rear-ender, speed alone is never analyzed alone. Speed is always coupled with distance between the two cars. How many car lengths were there between the front of her car and the rear of the vehicle in front?

What other distractions did she have? Radio? Smoking a cigarette? iPod? Cell phone? If she had a cell phone in the car you might get the next bill and see if that phone was being used at the exact time of the accident. That is an important fact that has to be analyzed.

Litigation costs are another consideration. Not everyone can afford to drive a Porsche, so many people drive a Volkswagen, a Jetta or a Focus. Like your choice of car and what can happen in an accident, litigation costs drive the "ride" and with the inability to hire accident reconstructionists and spend a lot of money on expert evaluation the risks of loss increase. That's okay you just need to know the limits of what any lawyer will be able to do. Don't expect the lawyer to spend thousands of dollars in case analysis on a case that will never be worth more than $10,000.00. The economic feasibility isn't there.

Make sense?

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Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Steve Lombardi

Full post as published by Des Moines Personal Injury Lawyer on June 11, 2008 (boomark / email).