Truck and tractor-trailer accidents in Newark, NJ and throughout Essex County are all too common. When you’ve been injured in a collision with a big-rig, tractor-trailer, or other type of large commercial truck, the consequences can be catastrophic.
You shouldn’t have to deal with the serious injuries and the financial fallout from a truck accident all by yourself. You didn’t cause this crash, and you shouldn’t be the one bearing all of the consequences.
The Newark trucking accident attorneys at Console & Associates can find out if the trucking company or another party owes you financial compensation. We’ll fight for every dollar you deserve — at no risk and no upfront cost to you.
Need help after a truck accident in Newark, NJ? Call (862) 229-1137 to schedule a free consultation with our Newark personal injury lawyers today.
What are you waiting for? Speak to a Newark truck accident lawyer today, and let us help you get things back on track.
Do you know what to do after a truck accident? Many drivers don’t, and figuring it out can be particularly difficult when you’re in pain and shock from a collision.
Here are the 5 steps you should take after a Newark truck accident.
The first step you should take after a Newark truck accident is to contact emergency services. Getting first responders on the scene is necessary for protecting the physical health of everyone involved in the crash as well as your legal rights.
Reporting the accident to the Newark Police Department — or, if your crash occurs on the highway, the New Jersey State Police — will create much-needed documentation of the collision.
If the officer on the scene tickets the other driver for a traffic law violation, that citation can help show that they — not you — caused the crash.
It’s always a good idea to let emergency medical responders, like EMTs and paramedics, examine you after an accident. If your injuries are serious, these healthcare professionals can rush you to the emergency room by ambulance.
While you’re waiting for first responders to arrive, document as many details of the collision as possible. Take pictures of the damage to your car, the intersection or accident scene, and any visible injuries you have sustained.
Were there any witnesses to the accident? If so, ask them for their names and contact information. If possible, ask them for a brief statement of what they observed. Getting this statement at the time of the accident is better than waiting, because witnesses’ memories of the crash may fade over time (and, unlike you, they won’t be living with the effects of the accident every single day).
Make sure you get the other driver’s name and information, including their insurance information and the name of the trucking company. Find out from the officer on the scene how you should go about getting a copy of the police report.
A brief examination by EMTs and paramedics isn’t enough to get you on the road to recovery. You need to see a doctor as soon as possible.
For severe injuries — even injuries that may be serious — you should go to the emergency department. Even if you don’t think your injuries are serious enough to warrant a visit to the ER, you call your doctor immediately and make an appointment to get checked out.
Some injuries don’t become apparent until days after the collision. If you feel at any point that your symptoms are getting worse or that something just isn’t right, seek medical help. Waiting to get the care you need could allow serious injuries to get worse.
A trucking accident personal injury matter is a serious legal issue. You need a Newark truck accident attorney on your side — the sooner, the better. Your lawyer can investigate the crash and gather evidence to support your claim for compensation while making sure you have access to the care you need to get better.
Don’t worry about the cost of legal representation. Personal injury law firm attorneys in Newark handle claims on a no-win, no-fee basis, so you’ll never pay out of pocket to get help for your legal matter.
Before you can get your claim resolved and get the compensation you deserve, you have to get in touch with all of the insurance companies involved. One thing you need to know is that none of the insurers — even your own — is on your side. Every interaction you have with every insurance carrier gives the other side an opportunity to look for excuses to deny your claim or decrease your settlement.
If you already have an attorney, notifying the insurance companies of the crash is a task your lawyer will handle for you at no additional charge. It’s always better to let your attorney speak for you than to risk making a big mistake that could hurt your claim. If you do talk to any insurance adjustor on your own, be on your guard. Keep the conversation short and to the point: an accident happened, you’re seeking medical care, and you don’t yet know enough to discuss things any further.
Within the 26 square miles that make up Newark, New Jersey, you’ll find 368 miles of roadways, the massive Newark Truck Terminal distribution center, an international airport, numerous other traffic-drawing attractions, and so much more.
That’s not to mention the cars that transport the 280,000 people living in the Brick City and the countless motorists visiting or just passing through.
Have you been injured in a Newark truck accident? Serious collisions in the most populous city in New Jersey are all too common. In fact, 5 of the 10 most dangerous stretches of road in New Jersey are in the city of Newark.
The most dangerous intersections you’ll find in the City by the River are:
A serious truck collision in Newark might send you to any one of the city’s five major hospitals for diagnosis and treatment.
Our attorneys work with clients who have received medical treatment — whether in the ER or inpatient, in a trauma intensive care unit or a regular hospital ward — at all of the following hospitals:
We can also assist you if you sought treatment at one of the numerous urgent care facilities in or around Newark or turned to a clinic or private practice for help diagnosing your injuries and starting the road to rehabilitation.
What makes the city of Newark, New Jersey, so accident-prone — particularly when commercial trucks are involved?
The combination of busy local roads and major interstate highways within the limits of the bustling city makes Newark a major thoroughfare connecting truck routes across the Mid-Atlantic region.
Accidents can occur anywhere in Newark, and even the best driver can’t always prevent a collision when a careless motorist enters their path. Our truck injury litigation advocates handle cases that arise anywhere in Newark and the surrounding areas.
Accidents involving all types of commercial trucks can occur in Newark, derailing your life in an instant. Our truck accident law firm handles injury matters involving collisions with all of the following types of vehicles:
Legally speaking, it doesn’t matter whether the truck that hit you was a Class 1 light-duty commercial pickup or a fully-loaded Class 8 tractor-trailer weighing in at 80,000 pounds. Injured truck accidents victims in Essex County have the right to pursue compensation from the party that caused their injuries.
A trucking accident in New Jersey can occur in so many different ways, each with the potential for devastating consequences.
Common Types of Truck Accidents in New Jersey
You may be able to sue for a Newark truck accident injury if you are:
To be entitled to compensation, two things must be true:
In an accident with a commercial truck in New Jersey, any injury that has a significant impact on your life and caused you to incur medical expenses may potentially be the grounds for a personal injury claim.
Our Essex County truck accident lawyers have experience handling Newark injury claims involving injuries like the following:
In cases that involve catastrophic injuries or the death of a loved one, pursuing a claim is particularly important for protecting your family from the financial fallout. However, even non-catastrophic, non-life-threatening injuries can put an end to life as you know it. Any injury that has serious consequences may be worth suing over.
Once you determine that your injuries are serious, the next element of a truck accident claim in Newark depends on negligence.
Negligence in a truck crash claim means, essentially, that the truck driver, trucking company, or other defendant failed to exercise a reasonable amount of caution to meet the duty of care they owed you.
A truck accident lawyer in Newark, NJ, can help you hold this party liable, or legally responsible, for the harm they cause and its financial consequences.
Identifying how truck and tractor-trailer accidents in Essex County, NJ occur isn’t always easy.
Commercial trucks are prone to all the same accident causes as typical motor vehicles, including driver errors and equipment failures. Yet they also must contend with unique hazards such as cargo securement, oversized loads, hydraulic brake systems, large blind spots, and wide turns. In addition, the commercial trucking industry involves risks such as fatigued and overworked drivers, poorly maintained trucks, and dangerous routes.
Many things could go wrong during a commercial truck’s route to cause catastrophic truck accidents, including:
Some types of truck driver error include:
A truck accident wrongful death claim is any matter involving fatal injuries caused by a truck accident in which someone other than the victim was at fault for the collision. Families who have lost a loved one have legal rights.
Who can you sue for a truck accident? Is the trucking company liable? The truck driver? Someone else?
Before you can name the liable party in your Newark truck accident claim, you must identify the cause of your collision. You may need to hire a law firm to investigate on your behalf.
The cause of the crash can point to the most likely defendant. If bad brakes caused the crash, for example, the defendant could be the brake manufacturer or the trucking company in charge of vehicle maintenance.
One or more parties may be liable for your damages, including:
Finding out who is liable for your recent truck accident and related injuries may take help from a lawyer. It’s not unusual for truck accident claims in Newark to involve multiple defendants for reasons such as:
Depending on the circumstances of your accident, you may be able to seek compensation from the insurance companies of any or all parties that are at fault for your collision or from your own auto insurance company.
Here’s what you need to prove to have the grounds for a successful truck accident claim:
In other words, the truck driver had a responsibility to others on the road to exercise caution and obey the rules of the road and trucking regulations. The trucking company had a duty to ensure that the vehicle was safe to operate and the truck driver was abiding by the law. The manufacturer had a duty to make sure the parts it produced were not dangerously defective.
This negligence can take many forms. The truck driver may have been speeding. The trucking company may have required the truck driver to meet unreasonable deadlines or neglected to inspect and maintain the truck or trailer. The manufacturer might have cut corners in its manufacturing and quality control processes.
Documenting your injuries and the other harms you have suffered allows you to prove the negative impact of the defendant’s negligence on your life.
Proving negligence on the part of any defendant involved in a complex truck accident matter requires a thorough investigation. Experienced truck and tractor-trailer accident lawyers have the skills and resources — including knowledge of how to use the data from a truck’s “black box” and a network of expert witnesses to call upon — to investigate your accident to the fullest.
A complex patchwork of federal and state regulations governs the trucking industry.
These laws regulate everything from the speeds trucks may travel to the amount of time truckers may drive without a break or for the workday. They also specify requirements for commercial truck maintenance and for logging a driver’s miles and hours.
When truck drivers and trucking companies break these laws and a catastrophic trucking accident results, they can be sued for money damages.
No question about it — a Newark truck insurance claim can quickly get complicated.
This isn’t the kind of case you should try to handle on your own — especially not when you’re seriously wounded, out of work, and drowning in medical bills. You’ve got enough to worry about.
It’s time to bring in a professional.
It’s always a good idea to have a Newark law firm on your side in any legal matter. In a truck accident case, the stakes are especially high.
There’s a data-backed financial reason why you always want to hire an attorney for a serious injury matter. On average, lawyers get their clients 3.5 times more money than claimants without an attorney are able to get for themselves, according to the Insurance Research Council.
In a truck accident claim, there’s reason to believe the difference between what you could get on your own and what an experienced Newark trucking accident lawyer could get for you is especially pronounced.
Without the benefit of an attorney’s thorough investigation, you would be limited in the evidence you can gather and the types of liability you can pursue. You may be able to prove, based on the police report, that the truck driver was under the influence or failed to maintain their lane. However, on your own, you might not be able to find the evidence an attorney’s investigation might unearth — for example:
This evidence is crucial to getting the full value for your truck accident Case in Newark. With it, you can pursue an insurance claim against a defendant you otherwise wouldn’t have the grounds to sue. This means expanding the amount of insurance coverage available and avoiding a situation where the driver tries to pass the blame onto a party not named in your lawsuit. The amount and extent of your evidence can also strengthen your argument that the defendants were negligent.
For an accident victim, attempting to pursue a claim on your own can be a huge hassle. A lot of work goes into making a claim successful, and you just don’t have the time or energy to devote to this frustrating process.
Fortunately, that’s what we do every single day. It’s what our Newark truck accident attorneys have devoted our careers to. And we provide our services on a no-win, no-fee basis to every client we represent.
Here’s what a Newark truck accident lawyer can do for you:
Investigating truck accidents in Newark, NJ, is no easy feat. It must be done thoroughly, often by drawing on the specialized skills of experts in a variety of fields. And, if you don’t act fast, it could be too late. Hiring an attorney right away can help you preserve evidence while it is still available, before a truck’s black box data is disposed of or the truck driver’s cell phone records wiped.
Hiring a lawyer to handle your Newark truck accident case is a good idea. However, not every attorney is equally qualified to get you the truck accident case outcomes you’re looking for.
Why is it important to hire an experienced Newark car accident lawyer? Your attorney needs to know:
Here’s why you should contact Console & Associates’ Newark truck accident injury attorneys about your New Jersey trucking accident today:
Simply put, we are NJ personal injury attorneys representing victims injured in serious trucking accidents in Essex County and throughout New Jersey. We’ve been doing this for decades — and we have the results to prove it.
When it comes to litigating truck accident claims, experience matters. New Jersey truck accident cases are extraordinarily complex motor vehicle matters. You don’t want to trust your case to just anyone.
Having decades of experience means that we have plenty of knowledge to draw from — knowledge of strategies that have proven to be successful and of the obstacles that can arise in complicated truck injury cases (and how to overcome them). We know the data to look at from a truck’s black box and when the damage and debris found on an accident scene suggest there’s something more going on that requires further investigation.
Choosing attorneys with knowledge and experience in Newark, NJ truck accident cases sets your claim up for success.
At Console & Associates PC, we support truck accident victims in Newark. Our lawyers can take care of a claim against a major trucking company or another powerful defendant on your behalf.
Find out if you have a claim during a free consultation with a truck accident attorney in Newark, New Jersey. Contact us online or call our office at (862) 229-1137 today.
Compensation in Newark truck accident cases is awarded based on your damages. Damages is a legal term that refers to all of the harms and losses you suffered as a result of the accident and your injuries.
Damages can be economic, which means they have a clear financial value, or non-economic, which means that they don’t correlate with a concrete numerical amount.
Economic damages from a truck accident include:
The non-economic damages your Newark trucking accident lawyer can pursue for you include:
In the case of wrongful death matters, the families of truck accident victims can seek both economic damages (medical expenses, funeral expenses, and loss of future earnings) and non-economic damages (loss of companionship, affection, and support).
Recovering damages after a Newark truck accident isn’t a one-size-fits-all situation. Every truck accident case is unique. The only way to really know how much compensation you deserve for your Newark truck accident claim is to speak with an attorney — at no cost — about your situation.
Your legal rights won’t last forever. A legal deadline called a statute of limitations restricts how long you have to commence legal action. In New Jersey, the statute of limitations for truck-related crashes is generally two years from the date of the accident.
Don’t wait until the statute is looming to contact a Newark truck accident law firm. Special deadlines for government defendants and the need to preserve evidence before the trucking company destroys it are just two of the reasons why it’s better to bring in a proven Newark truck accident attorney sooner rather than later.
In 2018 alone, commercial trucks were involved in 4,136 accident fatalities, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. In recent years, there have also been near or over 100,000 injuries resulting from truck accidents annually, according to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.
Auto accidents of all kinds are common in New Jersey, especially and around Newark. In 2018, 278,413 collisions happened on NJ roadways, according to the New Jersey Department of Transportation. Essex County reported 30,078 accidents — more crashes than any other county in NJ.
Our Newark, NJ Law office is located at:
Console and Associates, P.C.
494 Broad Street, #208B
Newark, NJ 07102
“I whole-heartedly recommend him to anyone searching for results and compassion throughout the process. There are so many attorneys out there who don’t care about their clients or don’t really understand personal injury matters. Choosing one of them can really be a huge life-changing mistake. Do yourself a favor and just call and talk to him, and you will see what I am talking about.” D. Brown / Client
Rating: 5/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
D. Brown
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