Articles Posted in Automobile Accidents

I  am a saleswoman for a office products company.  I was driving from one customer’s place of business to see another customer when  I was in car wreck.    The other driver ran into me at 45 miles per hour as I was stopped in traffic.  My car was totaled and I spent three days in the hospital.  What are my rights?

You have two potential claims.  First, you have a worker’s compensation claim because you were injured in the course of employment (assuming your employer has five or more employees).  Under Tennessee worker’s compensation law, you have a right to have your medical bills paid and to receive a portion of your wages paid while you are unable to work.  If you have a permanent impairment as a result of your injuries you are entitled to a payment for the extent of disability caused by that impairment.

Second, you have a claim against the driver of the other car.  This is called a "tort" claim.

Here is a list of things you should do (or should not do) after a automobile or truck accident:

1)  You should call the police.  Ignore any request by the other driver to "let the insurance companies handle it" or "keep the police out of it – I can’t afford a ticket."

2)  Tell the police officer(s) the truth about what occurred.  Do not guess or try to fill in facts.

I was involved in a car accident in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.  It was not my fault.  Will my insurance company help me settle my personal injury claim against the at-fault driver? 

No.  In fact, you may actually find yourself in an adversary position with your insurance company.

How can that happen?  If the driver that caused the wreck does not have sufficient liability insurance to pay you what you deserve for your personal injury claim, you may have to make a claim for uninsured or under-insured motorist insurance benefits.  

I was involved in a car wreck in Davidson County, Tennessee.  I am thinking about filing a lawsuit, but really don’t want to go to trial.  Will my case be settled or tried?

Well, if you have a valid case, you have a great deal of whether the case is settled or tried.  Insurance companies usually make an offer of some amount in every case with merit.   The issue is whether you will be offered a fair amount given your injuries and losses.  You can always accept less than a fair amount, but sometimes you have to go to trial before you can get the justice you deserve.

It is true that less than 10% of all personal injury and wrongful death cases in which a jury trial is sought result in an actual trial – in Davidson County or elsewhere in Tennessee.  But it is difficult to say whether any particular will or should be tried.

I was driving on a country road late a night.  I came around a sharp curve at a reasonable speed and there was a black horse standing in the middle of the road.  I swerved to miss it, but hit it and then hit a rock wall on the side of the road.  My car was totaled and I was injured.  The man that owned the horse lived on the adjoining property.  Can I sue him for my injuries?  That horse should not have been on the road.

 You can sue him, but you will have to prove that he was negligent in controlling the horse.  Under the law  of Tennessee the horse must be fenced in but if there was a fence the landowner will claim that the fence was adequate and you have to prove the landowner was negligent.   

It will be important to hire an experienced personal injury lawyer as soon as possible to investigate this matter.  It will be important to document the condition of  any fence and to learn how the horse was able to escape.  It will also be important to learn with the horse or other farm animals roamed off the property in the past. 

I was in a car accident on Interstate 24 near Murfreesboro a few weeks ago.  I was in the hospital for a few days and when I got home I had to miss several weeks of work.  I was playing around on the Internet to see if there was anything on there about my wreck (traffic was messed up for two hours) and I discovered a lawyer had written about my wreck.  My name wasn’t used but all of the other details were there.  Why is he doing that?

This lawyer is doing two things.  First, he is hoping that you will Google your accident, find his post, and then hire him to help you (or the other driver) with all any potential lawsuit.

Second, this attorney  is trying to put something on his blog to keep it current in the hope that it will rank higher in search engines like Google.  Google likes new content.  So, rather than write something substantive that actually will do readers some good, these lawyers write about accidents.  In fact, some of these posts are not written by the lawyer at all.  Some lawyers hire ghost-writers to write blog posts to create "content" and make Google think that their blog has some substance.