Two kinds of calls reach our office more than any others.
In the first, a driver with minimal insurance caused a catastrophic injury or death, and the policy limits will not come close to covering the loss. In the second, the referring attorney’s own client was the at-fault driver, and there is no one obvious to pursue.
Most lawyers treat both as dead ends. Many of them are not. This post walks through what we look for in each situation, why the vehicle has to be found fast, and what a referral to Langdon & Emison actually involves.
Situation one: the at-fault driver is underinsured
Many drivers carry the state minimum. When one of them causes a catastrophic injury, the available insurance is often gone before the first hospital bill is paid.
That is when we look for additional recoveries beyond the driver. Depending on the facts, those can include:
- A product liability claim against the vehicle manufacturer, if a defect in your client’s car made the injury worse than the crash alone should have caused.
- A road construction or roadway design claim, if the condition of the road, a work zone, or missing safety features contributed to the crash.
- In truck crashes, claims beyond the driver’s policy. Maintenance failures, broker and shipper liability, negligent selection of an independent contractor, and product defects that caused the truck to lose control.
None of these claims depend on how much insurance the at-fault driver carried.
Situation two: your client was at fault
This one surprises lawyers. The client crossed the center line, ran a light, or lost control on ice. There is no one to sue, so the file closes.
But fault for the crash and fault for the injury are two different questions. Your client may have made an error in judgment with seconds to respond. The manufacturer had years to design the car they were sitting in. If a door came open, a seat collapsed, an airbag fired late, or a belt failed to hold, the question becomes whether the defect enhanced the injury. If it did, there is a claim against the manufacturer regardless of who caused the collision.
This is sometimes called a crashworthiness or enhanced injury claim.
We look at every one of these cases closely, because the difference between walking away and a permanent injury is often a part inside the car that no one has looked at.
Does a single-vehicle crash count?
Yes. We get asked this often, and the answer is the same.
One recent referral involved a single-car crash in winter. The driver hit black ice, left the road, went down an embankment, and was killed. She left a husband and six children, the youngest only months old. The referring lawyer did not know what to do with the file. There was no other driver to pursue, and by the time it reached us, the insurance company had already taken the vehicle and destroyed it.
At a lot of firms, that’s the end of a product defect case. We took it anyway, because the family needed help and the referring firm trusted us with it. After a great deal of work, the case resolved in a confidential settlement that will keep a roof over that family’s head and give each of those children the chance to go to college.
Every case is different, and past results do not guarantee a similar outcome. But a single vehicle, and even a missing vehicle, is not by itself a reason to close the file.
Why the car has to be found in days, not weeks
Vehicles involved in serious crashes are destroyed in a matter of days. Insurers total them, salvage yards crush them, and the evidence of a defect goes with them.
When you contact us, we do that groundwork. We locate the car, preserve it, and begin the process of identifying the defects with our experts. You do not need to arrange storage or hire an engineer first. You need to call before the car is gone.
Leave the defect question to us
Some defects are obvious. A seat bent flat. A fuel-fed fire. Many are not.
An airbag that deployed a fraction of a second late, after the occupant was already out of position, can cause a serious injury or death, and nothing about the car will tell you it happened. The proof lives in the vehicle’s event data recorder, the black box, and only shows up when it is downloaded and read. The same is true for an airbag that should have fired and did not, and for a seat belt pretensioner that never activated.
So the screening question for your intake staff is not “was there a defect?” It is “was there a catastrophic injury or death, and was the insurance enough to cover it?” If the injury was catastrophic and the coverage was not, that is all you need to know.
Langdon & Emison will review the case at no cost, help you preserve the vehicle and its data, and put engineers on the defect question. Call 866-931-2115 or visit our Referring Attorneys page.
