Philadelphia Car and Truck Accident Lawyer Blog

A Philadelphia Pennsylvania truck accident case history: Your loved one is injured in a catastrophic accident with a 16-wheeler. An “eyewitness”, another trucker, says he saw the whole thing and your loved one was at fault, because he ran the red light and the trucker, who he says was not speeding, couldn’t avoid the accident.

Years ago, this could have been all the evidence the defendant insurance company would need to win the case and avoid paying a huge damage award. In wrongful death cases depriving the widow, with or without children, of just compensation for their loss.

Modern technology and computers today have changed the rules of the game.

The flight recorders we have heard about so many times and for so many years in fatal airplane crashes also have their counterparts in trucks. In fact, they have been around for a number of years but kept quiet by local and national trucker’s associations, including here in the Philadelphia, five-county area and New Jersey.

But now, the Truck (BUCK) stops here with the skills and knowledge of the Philadelphia and Pennsylvania injury lawyers at Pomerantz Perlberger and Lewis.

Trucking companies are required by the National Safety Boards as well as local authorities in Pennsylvania and New Jersey to maintain records of the mileage, maintenance, inspections, speed monitors, governor settings, time of brake depression, travel distance from the moment of deceleration, and incremental braking data. This enables the experts in the field to prove that the trucker was going too far above the speed limit under applicable road conditions when he began applying his brakes. This computer generated information stored in the “black box” of a truck, will now prove that the witness in our above fact pattern was mistaken or biased in support of his fellow trucker.

In my next BLOG, we will provide an actual case where our Philadelphia car accident attorneys overcame facts strikingly similar to the case history above, reaching a multimillion dollar settlement, despite potentially damaging testimony of three eyewitnesses on the scene.

If you or a loved one is in an accident with a truck in Pennsylvania or New Jersey, you must know that TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE! A prompt investigation must be accomplished quickly before things are “innocently” moved, tampered with or destroyed.

Call Pomerantz Perlberger and Lewis EMERGENCY NUMBER CALL 267 255 7229 anytime day or night. It might save the day for your family.

Haylee Dawn Ledford, a 7-year-old killed in an ATV accident near George Poston Park in Lowell, North Carolina on January 12, 2008, was not wearing a helmet as required by law, Gaston County Police reported this week. The little girl died from severe head injuries, according to an autopsy performed Monday.

She was a passenger on the ATV driven by her mother Diane Whitson’s boyfriend Charles Scott Rollins, 36, who lives near the park at 200 Rhyne-Oakland Road. They were riding in the county park at about 4:40 p.m. when the ATV overturned.

“Right now we know its head trauma that killed her,” said Gaston County Police Sgt.
Christie Rhoney. “She was pronounced dead at the scene. That’s how severe it was.”
“They should have been wearing helmets,” Rhoney said.

Riding an ATV without a helmet is against state law in North Carolina and many other states. Signs posted at the park say riding motorized vehicles there is prohibited, as well.

As of the writing of this blog, Rollins was charged with felony involuntary manslaughter, trespassing with an ATV, and an ATV helmet violation, according to the Gaston County Police Department.

If you or a loved one has been killed in a vehicle accident in Philadelphia or anywhere in Pennsylvania, please contact the experienced vehicle accident attorneys at Pomerantz Perlberger & Lewis today to schedule your initial consultation.

In yesterday's blog, we reported some information about the tragic bus accident on a rural northern California road that injured several and killed ten. New details of the crash indicate that 35 people were seriously injured and eight died.

The driver of the bus has been charged with suspicion of driving under the influence according to the California Highway Patrol, and it was the man's very first day on the job.

The license plate on the bus was invalid as were some serial numbers and the vehicle's registration.

The bus was enroute to a remote California casino when the accident occurred at 6:10 p.m. Witnesses say the bus was swerving right before it went off the road. The driver overcorrected and the bus rolled at least once before landing in a ditch.

The accident is still under investigation at the time of this writing. If you live in Philadelphia and have been injured in a vehicle accident, please contact the lawyers at Pomerantz Perlberger & Lewis, LLP today to schedule your confidential consultation.

Details have emerged in the horrific bus accident that took place on a rural northern California road Sunday evening, and it seems the bus didn’t even have a valid license plate. According to details provided by the California Highway Patrol, the bus was headed from Sacramento a casino when it flipped and rolled into a ditch. Eyewitnesses say the bus "cartwheeled" into the ditch around 6:15 p.m. Pacific time.

At the time of this writing, up to 38 people may have been critically injured and ten are dead. About 12 of the victims were actually ejected from the bus during the crash. The bus driver is alive but in critical condition at this time. The driver was walking around after the crash but had suffered a very serious injury. He was unable to give a statement due to the injury. One report has indicated that the driver is on some kind of medication.

Reports also indicate that the bus was old, had no valid plate and no seatbelts.

If you or a loved one has been injured in a vehicle accident in Pennsylvania, please contact the office of Pomerantz, Perlberger & Lewis today to schedule your confidential consultation.

It has been confirmed that the engineer of the train that crashed near Los Angeles and killed 25 people was texting on his cell phone 22 seconds before the trains collided after he ran through a stop signal.

The NTSB also determined that the brakes on the train were not applied before the collision and that the stop signals were working at the time of the horrific accident, one of the worst in California’s history. The report further states that in two hours while the engineer was operating the train, he received a total of 21 text messages and sent more than two dozen himself. Clearly, the engineer was not paying attention driving this locomotive at the time of the collision.

Metrolink, the engineer’s employer, actually bans the use of cell phones on the job, but at this time, there is no federal or state regulation barring the use of cell phones by engineers on moving trains. More than 130 people were injured in this September 12 accident, and the Metrolink engineer was among the dead.

If you or a loved one has been involved in a vehicle accident in Philadelphia or anywhere in Pennsylvania, please contact the attorneys at Pomerantz, Perlberger & Lewis today to schedule your confidential consultation.

In Cottonwood, Minnesota, a school bus and several other vehicles crashed killing four of the students and forcing many motorists to rush the injured to nearby hospitals. The bus and a van collided and then the bus hit a pickup truck and tipped over on its side. At least 14 people were hurt in the collision.

As motorists approached the wreck site, rescue workers asked them to help get injured children to hospitals. The bus driver was handing kids out of the bus doors as fast as he could, and the other children were terrified and screaming. The children were ages kindergarten through twelfth grade, and there were approximately 28 children on the bus at the time of the accident.

At the time this blog was posted, the names and ages of the children who were killed were not available for release.

If you or a loved one has been injured or killed in a vehicle accident in Philadelphia or anywhere in Pennsylvania, please contact the experienced accident attorneys at Pomerantz Perlberger & Lewis today to schedule your initial consultation.

Two people were killed and dozens more were hurt after about 100 vehicles collided into each other on Interstate 90 outside of Madison, Wisconsin in early 2008, according to the Wisconsin State Patrol.

Area hospitals reported that about 54 people were taken to Madison area after the massive pileup in the eastbound lane near the Sigglekow Road to the Badger Interchange. Authorities said that the pileup was actually two incidents, concentrated near the 143 and 146 mile markers on I-90, affecting a roughly five-mile span.

State Patrol officials said on Sunday night the number of cars involved in the pileup included about 100 cars.

Bolch said that the crashes appear to be fog-related. Law enforcement agents and emergency workers are still trying to sort everything out, he said. Authorities said that the crash apparently began as some drivers began to slow down as fog rolled in. Then, other drivers did not see traffic slowing and vehicles began to ram into each other in a domino effect, WISC-TV reported.

About 10 agencies from around the region responded to the crash with nearly 75 to 100 emergency workers, not including police officers. Some emergency workers said that the pileup looked like a war zone.

If you or a loved one has been injured or killed in an automobile accident in Philly or anywhere in Pennsylvania, please contact Pomerantz Perlberger & Lewis today to schedule your initial consultation.

Ever since their 13-year-old daughter Sara was killed when she drove a friend's ATV into a tree, Duane and Cathy Hennarichs wanted to save other children from a similar fate.

A Palm Beach County jury helped their cause on Friday, finding that the family that owned the four-wheeler Sara rode to her death in September 2003 was negligent and ordered them to pay the Hennarichses $3.6 million. The suburban Boca Raton couple said they are hopeful the jury's verdict will spur other ATV owners to realize the perils of letting youngsters ride the vehicles alone.

"We just wanted to make parents realize how dangerous these machines are and that they shouldn't be entrusted to young children without their supervision," Duane Hennarichs said of the lengthy legal battle he and his wife waged since their middle daughter's death. "This was done for Sara," said Cathy Hennarichs, who plans to lobby more actively for tougher regulation via the group Concerned Families for ATV Safety. "She's going to be saving children, and that's important to me."

John Richards, a Fort Lauderdale attorney who represented Roger and Karen Fina and their son Nicolas, now 17, in the weeklong trial, said he disagreed with the jury's verdict, but no decision has been made as to whether it would be appealed.

The Hennarichses claimed that the accident could have been avoided if the Finas had simply heeded the warning stickers on the ATV. The stickers clearly stated that the ATV shouldn't be driven by any one under the age of 16, and that no one should ride with a passenger.

Sara, an eighth-grader at Eagles Landing Middle School in suburban Boca Raton, had borrowed Nicolas' ATV and was riding with another youth when she lost control of the vehicle and was thrown headfirst into a tree in the gated Tierra Del Rey North community. She died of head injuries three hours later at Delray Medical Center. The other youth sustained minor injuries.

If you or a loved one has suffered a serious personal injury or death due to someone else’s negligence in Philadelphia or anywhere in Pennsylvania, please contact the personal injury lawyers at Pomerantz Perlberger & Lewis today to schedule your initial consultation.

The mother of a 6-year-old Massachusetts boy who was killed by a tractor-trailer earlier this year has filed a $30 million lawsuit against the driver and the Canadian trucking company that employed him.

Brendon Mahoney was killed when the tractor-trailer, driven by Francis Hammond, 41, jackknifed, striking the vehicle that Kimberly Kyle, 27, was driving. The tragic accident happened as the vehicles were approaching a traffic backup caused by a snowstorm that hit the night before. Highway workers were still clearing snow from the road when the accident occurred.

The lawsuit alleges that Kyle was traveling at about 20 mph in a southbound lane of Interstate 93 when Hammond lost control of his tractor-trailer, which contained forty tons of plywood. Hammond was allegedly driving 30-40 mph, too fast for those driving conditions.

According to the lawsuit, “Brendon was deprived the joys, pleasures and accomplishments of life, was caused to suffer the excruciating and humanly unbearable conscious pain and suffering.”

If you or a loved one has been injured or killed in a truck accident in Philadelphia or anywhere in Pennsylvania, please contact the experienced truck accident attorneys at Pomerantz Perlberger & Lewis today to schedule your free, initial consultation.