A woman has been killed in a traffic accident between a car and a garbage truck on a city street in Louisiana. The crash happened at 4:15 p.m. on Dec. 12 in the Metairie section of Jefferson Parish.
According to witnesses to the wreck, a garbage truck failed to heed a stop sign at the corner of Harvard Avenue and Wabash Street and went into the intersection, striking a gold Chevrolet Malibu that had been nearby. There were at least three people inside the Malibu, and the collision proved fatal to one of them. An 85-year-old woman who had been in the back seat was pronounced dead at the scene. Two other passengers in the vehicle escaped serious injury, as did the driver of the truck.
The 46-year-old New Orleans man who had been driving the garbage truck agreed to a sobriety test in order to demonstrate whether or not he was impaired. Reports do not indicate any charges of intoxication against him. The investigation was still ongoing at the time of the last reports.
If a family loses one of their kin to an accident that was not their fault, then they may sue to recover their damages with a wrongful death lawsuit. The accident could have been on the highways of Louisiana or for any other cause, from toxic exposure to workplace trauma, so long as the fatal accident was caused by error, illegal action or malfeasance of another. An attorney may be able to assist the family as they attempt to enumerate the precise economic harm that has been done to their clan by the loss of their loved one and translate the details of their financial bereavement into the proper terminology required by the law for a civil suit.
Source: WAFB, “Woman dies after car hit by garbage truck in Metairie”, December 13, 2014
