DC Metro Lawsuits Filed Too Soon?

Posted on June 26, 2009 by Greenberg & Bederman

 

The immediate aftermath of an accident might not seem to be the best time to be patient. After all, the hospitals certainly aren’t patient when sending out their medical bills, nor does the bank holding your mortgage note seem very patient about not getting its monthly payment because you couldn’t work.

But it is important to understand that hardly any accidents are simple affairs. Even a car accident can take a long time to unravel. One driver will swear that the accident occurred a certain way while the other will swear something different happened, and in the meantime there are multiple witnesses who are all contradicting each other.

There are also other things to consider. What condition were the roads in? Was it raining? Did the accident happen at night? Was it a driver error or a mechanical error?

These are all aspects of an accident that should be determined with great certainty before moving forward with an injury case. While it might seem to be a good idea to move forward in the immediate aftermath of a highly publicized accident, filing a lawsuit before all the facts are in could prove very detrimental to your case.

For instance, if you are at a stoplight and a car slams into you from behind and injures you, your initial thought would be to sue the other driver. But if you file the lawsuit immediately and it turns out that the reason the car slammed into you was because a mechanic did a poor job on servicing the brakes, the opposing counsel could successfully have the case thrown out before it even gets to the jury stage.

 

We are bringing this up because there have been some local attorneys who have already filed lawsuits against the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority on behalf of a few of the injury victims who were on the DC metro train. While we have no doubt that their hearts are in the right place, we think it is unwise to initiate lawsuits before all the facts of the case have been fully uncovered.

According to the initial results of the National Traffic Safety Board, it seems increasingly likely that one of the main causes of the accident was a system failure rather than negligent behavior on the part of one of the drivers. We also know that the engineer of the second car that slammed into the first was not travelling at an excessive rate of speed, and in fact she vigorously applied the brakes in an attempt to avoid the accident. This doesn’t seem like negligent behavior on her part.

With that in mind, we have to wonder what will become of the lawsuits that have already been filed in which negligence on the part of the driver is mentioned as the primary cause of the accident.

At Greenberg and Bederman, we are already representing some of the victims of the Red Line Metro Crash, and while we have no doubt that the other attorneys are fully committed to getting the best possible results for their clients, we are advising patience for ours. We believe that we will be able to serve our clients more effectively once the NTSB has completed its investigation, after which we will move forward vigorously.

If you or a loved one was involved in the Metro crash at Fort Totten on June 22nd, contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free legal consultation today.

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