Auto, Truck & Motorcycle Accidents

The attorneys of Bretz Law Offices have won millions for their clients who have been injured in car, truck, and motorcycle accidents.

This level of success is not by accident, but by smart, diligent, and relentless investigation and litigation. We have won settlements for clients of more than $6,000,000.00 on cases that other lawyers have lost or rejected, resulting in frequent referrals from other attorneys.

Auto Accidents

Every year millions of people are injured in motor vehicle accidents – many very seriously. In order to ensure the best possible results for each client, the practiced attorneys at Bretz Law Offices use their experience to investigate every possible, contributing cause of an accident. To make sure that you receive full compensation for your injuries, we thoroughly evaluate all the facts involved and will take over the investigation so that you can concentrate on recovering from your injuries. In addition, we can assist you in finding medical specialists and we can make arrangements with your medical care providers to wait for payment until your case is resolved through settlement or trial.

Automobile accidents are generally decided using the law of negligence. A person who negligently operates a vehicle may be required to pay any damages caused by their negligence, either to person or property. Generally, people who operate automobiles must exercise “reasonable care under the circumstances.” Failure to use reasonable care is the basis in most lawsuits for damages caused by an automobile accident.

Courts look to a number of factors in determining whether a driver was negligent. Some examples of these factors include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Driving too fast or too slow
• Driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol
• Failing to signal while turning
• Disregarding weather and traffic conditions
• Disobeying traffic signs or signals
• Failing to drive on the right side of the road

A driver may also be liable for an accident caused by intentional or reckless conduct. A driver who is reckless is one who drives unsafely, with willful and wanton disregard for the likelihood that the driving may cause an accident.

School Bus Accidents

A school bus-related crash is a crash that involves, either directly or indirectly, a school bus-type vehicle, or a vehicle transporting children to or from school or school-related activities. Since 1989 there have been about 411,000 fatal traffic crashes in the U.S. Of those, 0.31 percent (1,291) were classified as school bus related. Since 1989, 1,445 people have died in school bus-related crashes – an average of 131 fatalities per year. Most of the people who lost their lives in these crashes (65 percent) were occupants of other vehicles involved.

Drunk Drivers

According to the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, drunk drivers caused more than 1.2 million injuries and deaths since 1989. The law cannot replace a loved one, but it does provide means of recovery for victims. Victims can sue the drunk driver under the general laws of negligence, but often, the drunk driver is either uninsured or underinsured and has few, if any, assets to support a lawsuit.

Even if there is no way to pursue recovery against the drunk driver, in some states there may be a way to pursue recovery against the person who provided the alcoholic beverage to the drunk driver. Liability may be imposed either under specific state laws (“dram shop acts”) or under the general law of negligence. Liability can attach to “social hosts” as well. A social host is an individual who serves alcoholic beverages in a social setting, such as a home or party, or as where an employer serves alcoholic beverages at a company. The social host is not required to make sure that no one is consuming more alcohol than they can handle unless the host can reasonably be aware of a problem and prevent it.

Large Truck Accidents

Accidents involving large trucks are among the most serious and most deadly in the United States. The following represents facts and figures regarding large truck accidents and the serious damage they inflict on our roadways every year. In 2000 alone, 457,000 large trucks (gross vehicle weight rating greater than 10,000 pounds) were involved in traffic crashes in the United States, with 4,930 of those fatal crashes. A total of 5,211 people died, (12 percent of all the traffic fatalities reported in 2000) and an additional 140,000 were injured in those crashes. One out of eight traffic fatalities in 2000 resulted from a collision involving a large truck. Of these fatalities, 74 percent were occupants of another vehicle, eight percent were non-occupants and 14 percent were occupants of the involved truck. Of all injuries that resulted from crashes involving large trucks, 76 percent were occupants of another vehicle, two percent were non-occupants, and 22 percent were occupants of the involved truck.

If you or a loved one has been the victim of an automobile, truck or motorcycle accident, call Bretz Law Office today to schedule your free initial consultation. We look forward to assisting you in any way we can.

Abuse, Injury, Wrongful Death
Injury Law * Wrongful Death * Nursing Home Abuse * Insurance Bad Faith

Wrongful Death

A wrongful death claim may be pursued if the death of an individual was caused by negligent, willful, wanton, reckless or intentional conduct of another. Unlike other injury claims, a wrongful death claim is not brought by the victim or decedent; rather, it is brought by the heirs at law, or family members, of the person who died. In addition to a wrongful death claim, there may also be a survivor's claim. The wrongful death and survivor's claims are pursued in order to recover medical, funeral, and burial expenses, past and future lost wages, loss of consortium, conscious pain and suffering, and other damages suffered as a result of the death of your loved one. A wrongful death claim is intended to provide relief to family members who have been injured emotionally and financially as a result of the family member's death.

Nursing Home Abuse

Bretz Law Offices, LLC has been a leader in protecting our elders from neglect and abuse in nursing homes. We have even been published in the Journal of the Kansas Trial Lawyers' Association related to handling nursing abuse and neglect claims.

It is expected that the field of nursing home abuse and neglect claims will continue to expand given that nursing homes often put profits over patient care, and because our population of elderly people continues to grow.

Currently, in the United States, there are more than thirty-six million people over the age of 65. Statistics indicate that many will need some form of assisted living, whether it is a nursing home, assisted living facility, or other elderly facility.

Whether a caregiver fails to meet the needs of the senior, physically or mentally abuses a resident, nursing home abuse is common. It is important that we do our best to prevent it. Common types of injuries associated with nursing home abuse:

Insurance Bad Faith

When an insurance company fails to honor the obligations of your insurance contract, or fails to perform some other responsibility to you pursuant to the insurance you purchased, you may have a case against the insurance company for “bad faith.” Bad faith cases may only arise from disputes between you and your own insurance company. Another driver’s insurance company refusing to pay you money is not bad faith since there is no contract between you and another person’s insurance company.

A bad faith claim may be filed against an insurer when an insurance company intentionally and unreasonably denies, fails to process, or fails to pay a claim. Examples of bad faith may involve any kind of insurance from health and dental to automobile and homeowners. Other examples may include failure to provide for a defense as required in the event you are sued, or failure to follow contractual procedures in the event of a dispute as to the amount of compensation to be provided to you under your own coverage after an accident.

Interpreting Insurance Contracts - Insurance law routinely provides that should there be an ambiguity or uncertainty in a policy, an uncertainty in choice of wording or ambiguity would be resolved in favor of the policyholder and against the insurer. In the absence of a misrepresentation regarding coverage or exclusions, if the language of the policy is clear and explicit, the clear meaning will be enforced.

Duty to Deal Fairly - Every insurance contract contains an unwritten, invisible, or implied term referred to as the covenant of promise of good faith and fair dealing. This is a promise imposed by law upon an insurance company to always act fairly towards its insureds in handling their claims. Whether or not such a clause is included in the policy, judges will read the policy as if it were there. Carriers must meet the reasonable expectations of the policy holder and an insurer must always give as much consideration to the financial interests of its insureds as it does to its own financial interests.

Slip and Fall

The attorneys of Bretz Law Offices have won two of the biggest premises liability verdicts in Kansas History - Foster v. Wal-Mart and Herrell v. National Beef, and are recognized as leaders in this field of law.

“Slip and fall” is a term for personal injury cases that arise when injury is caused when a person slips and falls as a result of a dangerous or hazardous condition on someone else’s property. Inside a building, dangerous conditions, such as torn carpeting, abrupt changes in flooring, poor lighting, narrow stairs, or a wet floor can cause you to slip and hurt yourself. Outside a building, you may slip and fall because of rain, ice, snow, or a hidden hazard, such as a gap or hard to see pothole in the ground. Slip and fall accidents can occur on commercial, residential, or public property. Regardless of where they happen, all property or building owners have a certain level of responsibility ("duty of care") to make sure an environment is safe.

Slip and fall accidents are the most common type of “premises liability” cases, which center on the question of a property owner’s duty to care for the property. Injury by fire or other accidents resulting from defects in the conditions of buildings also fall under this category.

Slip and fall cases are governed under negligence law. To win a premises liability claim, an injured victim has to prove either that the defendant created the hazard that led to the accident or that the defendant knew or should have known about the danger and had it removed or repaired. This can often be difficult to prove, since proving when a given hazard first appeared can be challenging.

Slip and fall accidents can also be caused by structural defects, weather-related accidents, or comparative negligence.

If you feel that you or a loved one has been a victim of wrongful death, nursing home abuse, insurance bad faith, or a slip and fall accident, please call Bretz Law Offices today.

Spinal Cord & Traumatic Brain Injury

Spinal Cord Injuries (SCI)

Spinal cord injury (SCI) is damage to the spinal cord that results in a loss of function such as mobility or feeling. Frequent causes of damage are trauma (car accidents, gun shots, falls, etc.) or disease (polio, spina bifida, Friedreich’s Ataxia, etc.). The spinal cord does not have to be severed in order for a loss of function to occur. In fact, in most people with SCI, the spinal cord is intact, but the damage to it results in loss of functioning. Almost 11,000 people in the U.S. sustain a traumatic spinal cord injury each year, resulting in temporary or permanent sensory deficit, motor deficit, or bowel or bladder dysfunction, and 200,000 people in this country live with paralysis caused by SCI. More than half the people who sustain an SCI are between 16 and 30 years old. More males than females sustain this type of injury – the ratio is more than four to one. The most common cause of SCI is motor vehicle crashes, accounting for at least 36 percent of these injuries (broken down as follows: no restraints used, 20%; restraints used, 13.7%; motorcycle, 7.4%; accidents involving pedestrians, 5.2%; other, 2.1%). Violence-related SCIs have been steadily increasing over the past two decades, and today, violence is associated with 29 percent of SCIs. Falls and sports cause 21 percent and 7 percent of SCI cases, respectively.

Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is the term used to describe the damage to the brain suffered as a result of a sudden physical force. The human brain consists of billions of microscopic fibers, suspended in cerebrospinal fluid. While the exterior skull is smooth, the inner surface contains ribbing and pronounced bony structures. Impact with these inner surfaces of the skull causes tearing and bruising that results in brain damage.

Injuries occur when momentum of the brain causes it to impact against a skull that has been decelerated. Typically, TBI is caused by the impact of a head with an object, the windshield or dashboard of a car, for example. In such cases the injury is considered to be a closed head injury. Closed head injury may also occur when the brain undergoes a severe forward or backward shaking. Examples of this could be seen in mishandled infants or whiplash victims. TBI can also be caused by a penetrating head injury, whereby an object such as a bullet penetrates through the skull and into the brain. Closed head injuries present unique challenges in litigation since they often will demonstrate no obvious external symptoms of injury, even thought the damage to the brain can be severe. TBI does not refer to brain injuries or defects that are hereditary, congenital or degenerative, or induced by birth trauma, toxic substances, or disease producing organisms.

If you or someone you love has suffered from spinal cord or traumatic brain injury, please call Bretz Law Offices today. Remember, hospital and home visits are available and your initial consultation is completely free of charge. Please call today.