Condado de Morris / Rockaway / Accidentes de Auto

Rockaway Car Accident Lawyer Condado de Morris, New Jersey

If you were hurt in Hackensack, James Vasquez fights to get you every dollar you are owed. He has represented Bergen County's injured since 2004, and he knows this county seat's I-80, Route 4 and Route 17 corridors, its historic Hackensack River bridges, and the streets around Main Street and Hackensack University Medical Center.

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Car Accidents in Hackensack

The second collision

$500 Million

Recovered for New Jersey Families

22 Yrs

Serving New Jersey

Every crash involves two impacts. The vehicle strikes something, and then the occupants strike the inside of the vehicle. The law treats the second one as the manufacturer's responsibility to design for.

Manufacturers must anticipate that collisions happen, because crashes are a foreseeable part of driving, and build vehicles that provide a reasonable level of protection to the people inside. Where a vehicle fails structurally, or a restraint or airbag does not perform as it should, occupants suffer injuries that were otherwise preventable. Those are called enhanced injuries, and a claim for them exists regardless of who caused the collision in the first place. New Jersey adds something most states do not. Its model jury directions on crashworthiness recognise the claim and establish a burden of proof that shifts apportionment of damages to the defendant. The injured person is not required to divide an indivisible injury between what the crash caused and what the defect caused. The reasoning traces to a longstanding New Jersey principle that where a tortious act aggravates an existing condition, the culpable party bears responsibility for the whole unless it can show the damages are capable of reasonable apportionment and what those amounts are. The Appellate Division has also held that jury directions in these cases must be tailored to the specific facts and contentions rather than given in the abstract, and that failing to do so was reversible error. James Vasquez has handled New Jersey injury claims since 2004.

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Injuries we handle

Rockaway car accident claims we take on

Where injuries look disproportionate to the crash, the vehicle is worth examining.

yes Accident Facts

Four signs worth investigating

None of these proves a defect. Each is a reason not to close the file without asking.

An airbag that did not deploy

Frontal airbags are designed to deploy in frontal and near frontal impacts above a threshold, and are not intended to fire in every collision.

What it points to: possibly nothing. Non deployment in an undercarriage or low speed impact may be correct performance rather than a defect.

The compartment lost its shape

Roof, pillars or floor deforming into the space occupants were sitting in, particularly in rollovers.

What it points to: structural performance, which is assessed against how comparable vehicles behave in equivalent impacts.

Injuries out of proportion to the damage

Where the vehicle damage suggests a survivable impact and the injuries were far more severe than that would predict.

What it points to: a restraint or structural failure, because the forces that reached the occupant exceeded what the vehicle should have transmitted.

A seat that moved or collapsed

Seat backs failing rearward in a rear impact, which changes occupant position at exactly the moment restraints are meant to work.

What it points to: an occupant protection failure, and it also affects anyone seated behind. The seat itself is the evidence.

In every one of these the vehicle is the evidence, and it is scrapped or repaired within weeks unless somebody stops it.

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How This Claim Works

Four things that make it different

It runs alongside the ordinary claim rather than replacing it.

Fault for the crash is irrelevant to it

A crashworthiness claim concerns the injuries the vehicle failed to prevent. It exists whether another driver caused the collision or you did.

The burden shifts on apportionment

New Jersey's approach places the burden of apportioning damages on the defendant rather than requiring the injured person to divide an indivisible injury.

Only earlier fault counts

In apportioning, courts have addressed that a plaintiff's own causative fault is relevant only to the extent it preceded the second collision injuries.

The directions must fit the facts

The Appellate Division held that jury instructions in these cases must be tailored to the specific facts and contentions, and that failing to do so was reversible error.

The single most important step is preserving the vehicle. Everything in a crashworthiness claim is proved from it, and it goes to salvage quickly. For how car accident claims work statewide, see the car accident practice area page.

An Honest Assessment

Two reasons to be careful before pursuing this

These claims are powerful where they fit and expensive where they do not.

Not every failure is a defect

Airbags are designed to deploy in particular impact types above a threshold, not in every collision. Non deployment in an undercarriage impact, a low speed contact or an impact from an angle the system was not designed for may be entirely correct performance. The same applies to restraints and structures performing at the limit of what any vehicle could withstand. An honest assessment starts by asking whether the component did what it was designed to do, not whether the outcome was bad.

The investigation is expensive

These claims require engineering analysis of the vehicle, comparison against how equivalent designs perform, and medical evidence connecting specific injuries to the failure rather than to the collision. That is a substantial commitment before anything is filed. It is why the assessment should be made properly at the outset rather than pursued hopefully, and why the vehicle must be preserved while that assessment happens.

Know Before You Call

Three rules about vehicle failures

Confirm current authority, because product liability practice develops.

The Crashworthiness Doctrine

A duty to design for foreseeable crashes

Manufacturers must anticipate that collisions occur and provide a reasonable level of occupant protection. A claim for enhanced injuries, meaning harm caused or worsened by a defect during the collision, exists independently of who caused the crash itself.

Apportionment Burden

It sits with the defendant

New Jersey's model directions on crashworthiness establish a burden of proof shifting apportionment of damages to the defendant. The injured person is not required to divide an indivisible injury between the collision and the defect, consistent with the long standing principle that a culpable party bears the whole unless it shows the damages can reasonably be apportioned.

Tailored Jury Instructions

Abstract directions are not enough

The Appellate Division has held that in complex cases of this nature a jury should be instructed on the legal principles in the context of the particular facts and the parties' contentions, and that a failure to provide that tailoring was reversible error.

Personal Injury Protection, the verbal threshold, the two year filing deadline and comparative negligence are covered on the car accident practice area page and the Rockaway personal injury page.

What has to happen immediately

One step matters more than everything else combined.

Do not let the vehicle be released

Not to salvage, not for repair, not as part of a property settlement. The vehicle is the evidence and it cannot be recreated.

Photograph the interior before anything is removed

Restraints, airbag modules, seat positions and contact points. Emergency access and recovery frequently disturb all of it.

Preserve the electronic data

Most modern vehicles record speed, braking and restraint deployment in the seconds around impact, which is central to whether a system performed correctly.

Document the mechanism of each injury

Which injury came from what contact. That connection is what distinguishes enhanced injuries from those the collision would have caused anyway.

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James Vasquez

Antes de que James Vasquez representara a su primera persona lesionada, se sentaba al otro lado de la mesa. Como exfiscal y abogado de defensa de aseguradoras, pasó años aprendiendo exactamente cómo se ganan y se pierden estos casos.

Ahora lo usa a su favor. Cuando los ajustadores y los abogados contrarios se enfrentan a James, se enfrentan a alguien que ha leído su manual, ha litigado en sus tribunales y sabe con precisión dónde se quiebran sus argumentos.

Con sede en Clifton y sirviendo a los condados de Passaic, Morris y Essex, su firma le brinda a cada cliente la atención personal de James, respaldada por un equipo que conoce su expediente a fondo.