Starting Your Truck Accident Case

Some people are intimidated about contacting a law firm. We want to talk to you and make getting the help you need as easy and comfortable as possible. If you call during normal business hours your call will usually be answered by a live person and not a voicemail system. Please understand if we take a little longer to pick up or its one of the times we can’t answer live. We want to talk to you so please leave a voice mail or provide your information through the “Contact Us” form on this site.

At some firms after talking to a receptionist, your call may be forwarded to a screener, paralegal or junior attorney. Your case is important. So at Flick Truck Accident Law in most cases you will speak directly with Lawrence Flick, founder of this firm and not a screener or junior lawyer. He will want to talk with you about how your truck crash happened, your injuries, medical treatment and other information about your case. Mr. Flick also has other responsibilities like court appearances and client meetings. So, if he can’t take your call immediately, please leave a message. He makes it a top priority to return phone calls from potential clients by the next business day.

We work hard to provide high quality legal representation in truck accident cases, deliver the results that you want and have satisfied clients. Part of is to trying to make sure that your truck crash case is a good match for our experience, skills, resources and capabilities. Much as we would like to help everybody, unfortunately some truck accident cases are not a good match for what we can deliver. Please do not take this as any reflection on your claim. If this appears to be the case, we may be able to suggest some resources through which you may be able to locate another truck wreck attorney.

If it appears that your case is a good match we will arrange an initial office conference with you. There is no charge for the initial phone call or office conference. Until we actually sign an agreement where you hire us and we agree to take your truck wreck case, there is no obligation on either side. 

Initial Office Conference

During our initial office conference we spend the time to get to know you and your case. This meeting may take 2-3 hours. This may seem like a long time but taking a time at the beginning  helps us get a much better understanding of your case. We will review the police accident report for your truck crash, assuming it has been obtained, talk with you in depth about exactly how your truck accident happened, what happened immediately before, during and after it. We will want to know if either driver was ticketed and, if so, for what. We will also need information about the insurance in effect for your vehicle at the time of the crash.

Medical Information

We will discuss the specific injuries your truck crash caused, how they happened, your diagnosis, the current condition of your injuries and how they are affecting you. We also need to talk about the treatment you have had for your injuries. This includes whether you were treated at the scene, what happened in the emergency room, if you were hospitalized and follow-up care you have had like doctor’s appointments, surgery, physical therapy and other care. We will also need to talk about additional or ongoing treatment that you are having or are expected to need In the future.

Please bring any medical documentation like emergency room paperwork, documents provided at other medical appointments, medical bills and truck and/or medical insurance paperwork that you have received. 

We need a complete list of medical providers who treated your injuries. As part of your truck accident case, we will need to obtain a complete set of medical records and bills for all care and medications that you received as well as any medical equipment, like wheelchairs or crutches, you used while you recovered. So, the first step in this process is having a complete list of providers who treated you, provided medication or medical equipment.

We will need you to sign medical authorizations  which allow your medical providers to send us copies of your medical records and bills. These authorizations are required by federal law (HIPAA). Under HIPAA, the providers must be specifically listed in the authorization. So having a complete list of all your providers at our initial appointment helps speed up the collection of your medical records and bills.

Unpaid Medical Bills

If some or all of the medical bills for treatment of injuries sustained in your truck crash are unpaid please let us know. Phone calls from medical providers and collection agencies for payment can be annoying. In some cases we can get your car insurance and/or medical insurance company to pay part or all of these bills long before your truck accident injury claim is settled.

VEHICLE Damage PHOTOS

Insurance companies often use the amount of physical damage to your vehicle as one factor in evaluating your claim. In crashes involving minimal to no physical damage to your vehicle, some insurance companies have been known to question how  someone could have been injured in such an accident

Truck crashes often cause dramatic damage to the other vehicles involved, which can be easily seen in photographs. To start to document this aspect of your truck accident case, we will need to see and get copies of any cell phone or other photographs or video that you took at the scene of the truck crash, of the damage to your truck and other vehicles involved.

We may also want to take our own photographs of your vehicle. If your vehicle is safely and legally drivable, bringing it when you come to your appointment will speed up the process by letting us take our own pictures at that time. If it is not drivable we can arrange to obtain photos of the physical damage at other locations.

Lost Income

We will want to discuss whether you have lost time and income from work and if your injuries are likely to limit your ability to do your job. This helps us evaluate whether you have a claim for past or future lost income. If you have lost income due to your injuries, in some cases we arrange for your vehicle insurance company to pay you for some of this ahead of trying to settle your truck accident case.

Work Starts on Your Case

To represent you we will need to sign a written legal services agreement where you hire us and we Agree to represent you. Some of the information covered in this agreement is a brief description of your truck accident claim, the work we will be doing for you, legal fees, case expenses and other items. Once this agreement is signed we will start working on your truck wreck claim.

In most cases one of the first things we do is send a “preservation letter”.  This tells the trucking company and/or it’s insurance company we are representing you and notifies them to preserve a wide range of potential evidence like the truck and trailer involved in the crash, dashcam video, driver logs, records about the truck driver involved in the crash, inspection and maintenance records for the truck involved in the crash, and more. We will typically also begin an investigation of the trucking company involved and can usually quickly obtain information about its record of driving violations, equipment defects and other crashes. These are the first of many steps that we do on your truck accident case.

It is our policy to keep you informed of the status and progress of your case. So you will hear from us and receive documents as your truck crash case moves forward. Of course, if you have any questions as your truck wreck case proceeds just pick up the phone and call us. We are there for you.