ResultsHead-On Truck Accident

On February 16, 2011, lawyer, George Patterson obtained a verdict for $1,576,747.00 in the Circuit Court for Montgomery County. The Rockville truck accident verdict represented the maximum amount allowed by law for non-economic damages plus the complete medical bills for the survivor of a severe head-on truck accident. The truck driver knocked their van off the roadway, and it rolled over. The client sustained fractures to his leg, pelvis, neck, back and elbow in the car accident. The client, a resident of Damascus, Maryland battled severe infections from the surgical wounds to repair his badly fractured leg. The antibiotics he was given resulted in a Clostridium difficile (C-diff) infection of his colon that necessitated the removal of his large intestine.

George Patterson also obtained a verdict of $150,000 for the passenger that had less than $8,000 in medical bills. The unusually high award was based on the pre-impact fright of the passenger plus being trapped upside down in a van next to her critically injured husband for over 30 minutes.

The force that causes injury to occupants in a car crash derives from the change in speed and the time that it takes for the change in speed to occur. The greater the change in speed the greater the force exerted on the body of the car accident driver. The shorter the duration in the change of speed the greater the injurious force is to the occupant of the car.

A head-on collision with a truck results in a greater change of speed over a shorter duration than a moving car hitting a stopped car. When a car hits a stopped vehicle from behind the striking car does not come to a stop immediately but continues forward as the struck car is moved. A head-on collision with vehicles traveling at a similar speed results in a more rapid change in speed. The change in speed is even more rapid if the car strikes a much heavier moving vehicle such as a commercial truck.