San Francisco Bay Area Head Injury Attorney

As consumer safety groups and the insurance industry have pointed out for years, SUVs are at a greater risk for rollover due to their higher center of gravity link. This higher center affects an SUV’s stability, measured according to the formula t/2h where “t” is the distance from the center of the right front tire to the center of the left front tire, and “h” is an SUV’s center of gravity. If the ratio is over 1.2, a vehicle is more likely to roll over in certain situations. When passengers or cargo enters an SUV, the additional weight is added above the center of gravity. This only increases an SUV’s propensity to roll over in an accident.

Additionally, without a roll bar and additional structural reinforcements, the roofs of most SUVs are incapable of supporting the weight of the vehicle in rollover accidents. As a result, SUV rollovers often result in serious head, neck and back injuries. In fact, although rollovers only account for three percent of all accidents, they account for a third of all fatal accidents, killing roughly 10,000 people a year.

What Happens in Roof Crush SUV Accidents

When an SUV rolls over in an accident, the roof of the vehicle is forced to absorb some of the shock of the impact and weight of the vehicle. In many cases, however, SUVs do not have the proper roof support or frame reinforcement to properly absorb the amount of force and weight involved. As a result, SUV roofs cave in, resulting in serious head, neck and spinal cord injuries. In many cases, a lack of proper roof support results in significant intrusion into the head space of passengers, causing brain damage, fractured necks and significant spinal cord injuries.

The Cost of Catastrophic Head Trauma and Serious Spinal Cord Injuries

The long-term consequences of brain damage and spinal cord injuries create significant needs and costs for injury victims and their families. When considering an award or settlement, costs including future surgery, physical therapy, medical equipment, medication, in-home care, lost wages, and pain and suffering must be taken into account. Here, consulting an experienced medical economist and life care planner is essential in order to accurately project future costs associated with brain injuries, paraplegia or quadriplegia.

Contact San Francisco Head and Neck Injury Attorneys

If you’ve been seriously injured in an SUV accident, contact Bay Area car accident attorneys at Weber & Nierenberg today to schedule an appointment and discuss your case. After evaluating your case, we can begin the investigative process, collecting important evidence and locating eyewitnesses in order to ensure important information is preserved

Whiplash injuries have the potential for causing a number of long-term side effects, including chronic pain, back problems, headaches and cognitive impairment. Why this is so becomes apparent once you realize what happens in a whiplash injury — typically, a person’s body is rapidly accelerated forward while their head remains momentarily stationary. This movement forces the head and spine into an unnatural S-shape contortion that overextends ligaments, tendons and muscles of the head and neck while the head is snapped back into place. Since tendons attach muscle to bone and ligaments attach bone to bone, whiplash injuries result in serious soft tissue injury that can take months to heal.

After a Rear-end Car Accident — Before You Accept a Settlement

Insurance companies realize it can take weeks or months to know what the full extent of a soft tissue injury is, especially in cases of whiplash. As a result, don’t be surprised if an insurance claims adjuster tries to convince you to settle now instead of later. In fact, you may be told that you’re likely to receive less money and may lose out on a chance of settling your case once and for all if you go to court.

Of course, insurers realize once you hire a personal injury attorney to represent you they have to talk to your legal representation and avoid contacting you directly. This means they can’t engage in the tactics they use to settle whiplash cases early in order to avoid paying any more than they absolutely have to.

Discuss Your Whiplash Injury with Your Doctor

It’s important to document your whiplash injury as early as possible. Here, your doctor may want to perform a CT scan, MRI or x-ray to determine the extent of your injuries. Documenting your injury in this way also makes it easier to counter claims that your condition is from an earlier injury or is the result of something unrelated to your accident.

Contact San Francisco Bay Area Whiplash Injury Attorneys Weber & Nierenberg

Whiplash injuries can be quite serious, especially if you are older, making it more difficult to heal and return to work. To learn how we can help you recover the damages your deserve, contact San Francisco whiplash injury attorneys Weber & Nierenberg today to schedule a free consultation and discuss your case.

Determining the long-term financial costs of a brain injury is not always a straightforward affair. While it’s easier to quantify most of the effects of a catastrophic brain injury, if you’ve suffered a serious concussion or fractured skull in a car or motorcycle accident there’s no way of knowing now what problems you’ll have in the years ahead.

From a physiological perspective, there is a limited amount of healing the brain is capable of, especially in cases where important centers of the brain are affected. For these reasons, it’s important to work with qualified medical experts, experienced life care planners and medical economists when determining compensation for brain injuries.

Why Concussions Are Serious Injuries

What happens when a person suffers a concussion? To understand why a concussion is a serious matter, it’s important to keep in mind that the brain sits encased in fluid in the skull — a bit like an ice cube floating in a glass of water. What happens if you’re walking with a glass of ice water and have to suddenly stop? The ice cube, carried forward by your momentum and the water, will bounce against the side of the glass.

In a concussion, the brain is compressed against the inside of the skull in a similar way due to a sudden blow to the head. As a result, the brain suffers bruising and trauma. Depending on the severity of a concussion, a person can experience memory loss, chronic headaches, loss of the sense of taste or smell, and cognitive impairment later in life — especially if they’ve had other concussions.

What is Fair Compensation for a Brain Injury or Concussion?

When evaluating the extent of a brain injury or concussion, a neurologist and medical economist should be consulted in order to determine the scope and extent of your injuries. While you may not initially suffer from memory loss or cognitive impairment, if your injuries involve certain brain centers, the likelihood that you’ll have problems later in life is worth taking into consideration when calculating your compensation.

If a brain injury is catastrophic and involves long-term disability, the need for in-home care, medical equipment and physical therapy should be included in any financial estimate associated with a serious brain injury. A medical economist working from established cost data should be able to extrapolate from known costs and the rate of inflation to provide a cost projection over the course of a brain injury victim’s life.

Contact San Francisco Brain Injury Attorneys at Weber & Nierenberg

Regardless of whether you’re suffering from a concussion or a catastrophic brain injury, we have the resources and knowledge needed to help you recover the compensation you need and deserve. To schedule an appointment and discuss your case, contact San Francisco brain injury attorneys at Weber & Nierenberg today.

Inadequate Security and Premises Liability

Law enforcement professionals and plain common horse sense tells us that certain conditions are attractive to criminals. Darkened parking garages, remote stairwells and an absence of security cameras or security guards are likely to attract criminals intent on mugging or assaulting someone. Areas adjacent to high-crime neighborhoods, highways or vacant property can also attract certain kinds of criminal activity. When building managers, retailers or parking garage owners don’t install security measures to protect their patrons, they’re ignoring dangers and foreseeable risks.

Liability and the Issue of Foreseeability

While it may not be possible to completely prevent crime, if there are certain dangers or risks present that a retailer or property manager should have foreseen as contributing to crime, failure to take steps to remove or minimize those risks may constitute negligence.

For example, customers leave shopping malls and retail stores with items they’ve just purchased, some of them quite expensive. Store owners and property managers should recognize the increased risks patrons face when headed to their cars with shopping bags or electronics equipment. While it’s likely that malls and retailers have cameras and security guards inside stores to protect themselves against theft, they should foresee the existence of a similar threat in their parking lot or garage. Failure to provide cameras, proper lighting or security in the parking lot may be a violation of a duty of care businesses have toward patrons.

Have You Been Injured in a Criminal Assault? Contact Weber & Nierenberg

Even if you’ve been assaulted in your apartment building or place of work, there may be grounds for holding your building manager or employer liable for what happened. At the San Francisco personal injury law office of Weber & Nierenberg, our premises liability attorneys can evaluate your case and determine if you have grounds for legal action. It’s also important to remember that while your physical injuries may heal, there may be emotional and psychological scars that affect your quality of life and ability to function in the world. Working with psychologists and other experts, our personal injury attorneys demand compensation for your medical bills, lost wages, and pain and suffering.

To schedule an appointment and discuss your case, contact San Francisco premises liability lawyers at Weber & Nierenberg today.

Poorly Designed Roads

When roads or highways are constructed, they must be properly graded to allow for water drainage and an even surface between roadway and shoulder. Differences in the level of pavement can cause a driver to suddenly lurch to the right or left. This propensity is especially dangerous when a driver inadvertently or intentionally pulls over onto the shoulder of the road. Alternatively, grading that results in water collecting on the road when it rains can lead to hydroplaning.

Sudden sharp curves or bends in a road should be properly marked with signs and reduced speed limits. Entry and exit ramps should be clearly marked and should not include sudden dips or unreasonably sharp turns. Intersections that sit at the bend of a curve or over the top of a hill should be properly marked and may need traffic lights to decrease the likelihood of collisions.

Additionally, lack of guardrails along bridges, slight bends in the road or embankments can lead to serious injury or death when accidents cause cars or trucks to leave the road.

Road Maintenance, Road Construction and Car Accidents

Municipalities that fail to trim back brush or tree branches along roadways may be liable when overgrowth obscures signs that warn drivers of steep grades, curves or dips in the road. Additionally, Caltrans or local counties can be held liable when potholes or broken pavement cause serious accidents. Here, it’s important to work with a personal injury attorney who can immediately take pictures of potholes or obscured signage before maintenance and repair crews fix the problem that played a role in an accident.

In accidents involving road construction, it’s important to determine whether or not construction crews were in compliance with applicable regulations governing road construction in the state of California. If traffic was diverted into an oncoming lane in order to make road repairs, was there sufficient signage warning drivers? If a construction crew was resurfacing an area road, were there grooves, uneven pavement or loose gravel that played a role in causing an accident? Did construction zone workers contribute to an accident by failing to properly use cones and signs to regulate traffic flow through a construction zone?

Contact San Francisco Dangerous Roads Attorneys at Weber & Nierenberg

If your accident was caused or complicated by dangerous road conditions, don’t expect Caltrans or the municipality involved to step forward and take responsibility. Since preserving evidence and gathering eyewitness testimony is crucial in these kinds of cases, it’s important to consult an experienced car accident attorney as soon as possible after your accident. To schedule a free consultation and discuss your case, contact San Francisco defective road design attorneys at Weber & Nierenberg today.

While most serious accident injuries require hospitalization and a period of recovery, most people don’t immediately think of protecting their job after they’ve had a car, truck, motorcycle or bicycle accident. This is unfortunate since a number of problems could be avoided if injured workers simply asserted the legal rights granted to them under the law. While California is an “at will” employment state — allowing employers to fire workers for little or no reason — workers cannot be fired for asserting their legal rights. Under the federal Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and the California Family Rights Act (CFRA), eligible employees have a right to take up to 12 weeks of medical leave without worry of losing their job. If an employer fires a worker for taking leave under FMLA or CFRA, that employer can be sued for financial damages.

Taking Medical Leave After an Accident

Once you are able to speak with your employer’s human resources department, you’ll need to file certain forms and provide information from your doctor regarding when you are able to return to work. (It’s important to remember, however, that companies that employ fewer than 50 employees are exempt from the requirements of CFRA; if you work for a small business with fewer than 50 employees, you should talk to your employer and get any agreement between you in writing.) In order to take medical leave under FMLA or CFRA, it’s necessary that you be employed with your current employer for at least 12 months prior to your request.

If you’ve suffered broken bones, a concussion or whiplash, you may be able to return to work in less than 12 weeks. Here, your employer will likely require a note from your doctor indicating when you are ready to return to work. If your employer tries to pressure you into returning to work before your doctor has indicated you are ready and before your 12 weeks of FMLA/CFRA is over, you should talk to an employment law attorney.

After Your Injuries Have Healed – Returning to Work After an Accident

California and federal law require that employees be allowed to return to the same job after a leave of medical absence. If your job has been eliminated for legitimate reasons, your employer is required to provide you with a similar job or one that pays roughly the same, offers the same kinds of opportunities and involves duties similar to your old one. However, if an employer can prove that an employee would have been laid off anyway or that a comparable job isn’t available, the employee doesn’t have a right to return to work.

San Francisco Personal Injury Attorneys Weber & Nierenberg

If you’ve been seriously injured in a car, truck, bike, construction, or slip and fall accident, we can help you take steps to protect your job while ensuring any employment or medical benefits you are eligible to receive are activated for you. To discuss your case and learn how we can help you, contact San Francisco personal injury attorneys at Weber & Nierenberg today.

Injuries involving soft tissue can lead to a debilitating medical condition referred to as complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS) or reflex sympathetic dystrophy (RSD). Most cases of CRPS involve injuries to the arms and legs that have trouble healing. Overtime, these soft tissue injuries lead to chronic nerve pain, muscle atrophy, loss of dexterity, and eventually disability. While CRPS typically involves serious injuries to the arms and legs – from a car accident, slip and fall, or other trauma – CRPS can also develop due to an infection, bone fracture, or sprain.

The Medical Community, CRPS, and Personal Injury Cases

A few years ago, the medical community did not entirely embrace CRPS as an actual medical condition with its own pathology. However, due to research, the medical community now regards CRPS as a neurological condition that can take weeks to develop after an injury. As a result, people injured in car accidents or slip and fall cases don’t always know if they have CRPS when initially treated by a physician. Consequently, settlements offered by insurance companies rarely take the debilitating and serious effects of CRPS into consideration when paying an injury claim. Here, working with an experienced personal injury attorney who understands CRPS is essential.

Do I have Complex Regional Pain Syndrome?

If you experience any of the following symptoms after an injury, consult a doctor to determine if you have CRPS:

• The skin around an injury is sensitive and tender
• The skin around an injury turns different colors – red, blue, or exhibits white patches. The skin may also appear shiny
• The injured area may alternate between sweatiness and clamminess
• The injured arm or leg may suffer spasms, weakness, and muscle loss
• Swelling in the joints, stiffness, and a loss of dexterity

When Hiring a Personal Injury Attorney becomes Necessary

Due to the nature of CRPS, it’s not uncommon for injury victims to run into difficulty with an insurer after they’ve developed the syndrome. While an initial claims payment may have covered hospital bills and loss wages, once CRPS develops additional medical costs and lost wages enter the picture. If an insurance claims adjuster balks at paying a claim to cover costs associated with CRPS, consulting a personal injury lawyer to consider your options may be necessary.

If you’ve developed CRPS or believe you’re at risk for developing CRPS, contact your doctor. Once your diagnosis is confirmed, our personal injury attorneys can review your case and discuss the options available to you for recovering your losses. To learn how we can help you, email San Francisco personal injury attorneys or call 1-866-288-6010 today.

California does not have a dram shop law that holds restaurants, bars, or liquor stores liable for serving people who later injure or kill others in drunk driving accidents (the only exception is in cases where minors are served alcohol.) As a result, victims of drunk drivers – or their surviving family members – often suffer substantial losses that often exceed the insurance policy limits of the drunk driver. However, under California law, victims of drunk drivers can pursue civil damages in order to recover costs related to medical expenses, lost wages, and pain and suffering. Additionally, victims of drunk drivers may be awarded punitive damages when gross negligence or a depraved indifference to the well-being and safety of others is evident.

Recovering Damages from Drunk Drivers

When damages exceed a drunk driver’s policy limits, how, then, can an injury victim recover losses? While each case is different, there may be other sources of insurance coverage an attorney can pursue. For example, if a drunk driver has umbrella coverage, it may be possible to recover damages under that policy. If your losses exceed limits on these forms of insurance, it may still be possible to recover some of your losses through various assets held by the drunk driver. While these may not be options for every victim of a drunk driver, it’s important to discuss your case with a lawyer who can determine how best to proceed with your case.

Making a Case against a Drunk Driver

DUIs are criminal matters in California. It’s not uncommon for a drunk driver’s defense attorney to encourage his client to seek alcohol abuse counseling or attend a driver’s education program in order to convince the court to reduce his sentence. During the sentencing phase of a DUI, the drunk driver – or his attorney – may claim in open court that he is no longer drinking, avoids bars, and has changed his ways.

Your attorney can help build your case by attending these hearings and using various investigative techniques to see if the drunk driver that hit you was telling the truth. In many cases, the drunk driver will be seen going into a bar or liquor store or his attendance will drop off at education or counseling programs after his sentence is handed down. Capturing these facts can help your civil case when you sue to the drunk driver that injured you.

You don’t have to be a Victim – Contact Weber & Nierenberg Today

If you’ve been seriously injured or have lost a family member in a drunk driving accident, you do have options. To learn how we can help you hold the drunk driver that hit you liable for their actions, contact San Francisco drunk driving accident injury attorneys at Weber & Nierenberg today.

Have you ever wondered how an insurance claims adjuster decides how much money to pay you after being injured in a car accident? In the past, a claims adjuster would use his or her experience in the industry and knowledge of medical costs and property loss to provide a claims settlement. Now, a number of insurance companies, including some of the nation’s largest – Allstate, Farmers, MetLife, the Hartford – use a software program called “Colossus”. Using preset algorithms, Colossus functions like a database by providing a baseline or settlement range for injuries similar in kind.

How does Colossus Work?

First, information regarding settlements and verdicts is entered into Colossus. Afterwards, a claims adjuster enters in information that is more specific to your case, including medical costs, lost wages, what kind of accident you were injured in, and other variables. Here, the result generated will depend on what information is entered into the program. As a result, future medical costs, pain and suffering, or specific aspects of an injury may not figure into the estimate provided by Colossus. Consequently, a claims agent relying on Colossus could inadvertently lower your compensation according to what he or she enters into the program.

Entering an Injury Type – Issues with the use of Colossus

Colossus uses what are known as “value drivers” when estimating claims. Value drivers involve the kind of injury suffered, treatment, duration of hospitalization, and a number of other factors that combine to determine the value of a claim. If hospital records indicate you suffered “head, neck, and back injuries” the claims adjuster can make a separate entry for each injury or simply enter “head and back injury.” Alternatively, if you suffered a broken collarbone, the claims adjuster may enter, “broken collar bone” and ignore the pain radiating down your arm or back.

Since the entry of each injury results in a number of questions that interface with various value drivers, failure to accurately reflect a car accident injury and its consequences can artificially lower the claims amount estimate generated by Colossus.

Colossus – Designed to Provide Conservative Estimates

In recent years, insurers have been increasingly challenged on their use of Colossus. Many claim Colossus is simply a tool they use when calculating claims. However, as evidenced by the manual that accompanies Colossus, the program is structured to generate more conservative estimates. Additionally, individual insurers can tweak Colossus to limit its baseline of personal injury case settlement amounts to within a certain range of payouts.
For example, suppose there were ten whiplash injuries in a city outside of San Francisco ranging in payouts of $2,000 to $10,000. When payouts for all ten injuries are taken together, the average payout might be somewhere in the $6,000 range. Instead of taking this figure as an average baseline, an insurer can tweak Colossus so that the bottom 20% or 30% is taken as the baseline. In this hypothetical scenario, this might mean a baseline payout of $3,000 or $4,000 if the bottom half of all ten payouts are added together. However, when a car accident victim is told the insurer’s cost-analysis indicates a payout of $4,000 for whiplash injuries, the methodology and parameters used by Colossus are not revealed by the insurer to the injury victim.

San Francisco Bay Area Car Accident Injury Attorneys Weber & Nierenberg

If you’ve missed worked and incurred medical bills due to a car accident, truck accident, motorcycle accident , construction accident, or slip and fall, contact San Francisco, California personal injury attorneys Weber & Nierenberg today. We’re experienced personal injury attorneys who are intimately familiar with the tactics of insurance companies and the use of Colossus.

For more information regarding our practice or to speak with one of our attorneys for a free consultation, call Weber & Nierenberg at 415-788-3900 or email us and we will contact you shortly.

In an age where people rely more and more on machines and computers, such as cell phones, GPS and other high tech devices, wouldn’t it be nice to have a high tech device that would help us avoid accidents? That day may not be far off!

Ford Motor Company is working on new technology that will utilize radar to detect similarly equipped cars that are approaching an intersection and will alert you of a potential situation that could result in a traffic accident or traffic fatality. The new technology will also utilize GPS technology and traffic signal network technology to assist you in avoiding accidents at intersections.

We have seen cars and other vehicles that utilize camera and sensor technology to avoid getting to close to an object in front or behind the vehicle. Ford’s new accident avoidance technology utilizes wireless sensors to alert the drive of potentially dangerous situations in a 360-degree radius.

However, until this technology is wide-spread, you find yourself on the wrong end of an accident or you may lose a family member due to another driver’s negligence. Even utilizing the new accident avoidance technology doesn’t guarantee you will avoid all accidents.

If you, or a loved one, have been involved in a car accident, you may be entitled to compensation. An experienced attorney can provide you counsel, information and assistance in analyzing whether you have a personal injury or wrongful death claim as a result of an auto accident, including car accidents at dangerous intersections.

With more than 25 years of experience, the attorneys at Weber & Nierenberg give every case personal attention from the day of your first consultation until the day your case is resolved by way of settlement or trial.

For more information contact a personal injury lawyer at Weber & Nierenberg by calling 1-866-288-6010 for a free consultation.