November 25, 2013
This article is part of a series on Alaska Tour Bus Accidents. Following is a list of the other currently available articles:
Alaska Tour Bus Accidents – Shattered Dreams and Worse!
Alaska Tour Bus Accidents – How They Happen
The following article describes how the law works and the system that is used to determine how my clients are taken care of.
Pursuing The Claim
Alaska law controls the process of recovering money damages for injury claims occurring in Alaska. Therefore, being represented by an attorney who is familiar with Alaska law is of critical importance to the injured tourists and their family members who are seeking to recover money damages in order to pay the medical bills and provide compensation for permanent injuries and disabilities. Alaska’s law is unique in several respects with regarding recovery of money damages for bodily injuries. Therefore, using a non-Alaska attorney to resolve these cases is a very risky for an injured tourist dealing with an insurance company which it is being advised by attorneys familiar with Alaska law.
Under Alaska law, tour bus operators are required to exercise the utmost care to transport passengers safely from place to place. If the tour bus operator or employee fails to carefully transport their passengers and the passengers are injured, the operator is legally responsible for the injuries and the resulting monetary damages. A “breach” of the operators duty to safely transport passengers can occur in multiple ways. For example, there have been tour bus incidents in Alaska resulting from intoxicated drivers, sleep deprived drivers, improperly trained drivers, inexperienced drivers, unlicensed drivers, worn-out tires, broken suspension systems, improperly maintained brakes and the list goes on. Sometimes these events are simply lapses of judgment and a violation of state traffic laws. But, frequently these “breaches” are violations of federal law governing motor carriers (these cases are still tried in Alaska).
Regardless of the cause of the “accident” the facts need to be investigated and documented and witnesses who can verify the facts need to be located and interviewed for there to be a successful recovery from the bus company’s insurer. Rest assured, the insurer for the bus company will not pay just because a passenger was injured on board its insured’s bus; a claim which can be proven with eyewitness testimony and documented evidence before a jury must be prepared before the insurance company will pay.
Determining and recovering the Damages
The injured tour bus passengers will receive bills from air ambulance services, the trauma doctors, hospitals and other healthcare providers whose services they required after the tour bus accident. These bills almost always are in the tens of thousands of dollars if not in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Even when the injured person has good health insurance, there are almost always unreimbursed expenses; the cost to have family members travel to Alaska to provide moral support during the recuperation process is a prime example of an expense which is seldom covered by a health insurance company.
When injuries result in loss of one’s ability to work and earn income, the economic loss has a huge direct impact on the injured person and his/her family. Similarly, when permanent physical injury occurs which will require ongoing medical treatments, the economic loss suffered from the bus accident will take on a life of its own. Assembling all the facts necessary to compute and prove the damages at trial can be a complex process.
Alaska law pertaining to personal injury damages has unique factors which differ from other jurisdictions. To effectively represent an injured tour bus passenger, an attorney needs to know what damages are compensable, what damages are limited, what damages are not compensable under Alaska law and how attorney fees and litigation costs are handled in Alaska.