Indianapolis Drunk Driving (OWI) Accident Lawyers

Nobody gets to walk out on the tab after an Indianapolis drunk driving (OWI) accident when Hensley Legal Group, PC is on the job.

• Holding Drunk Drivers and Enablers to Account — From the drunk drivers themselves to the enablers who overserved them, our firm will hold every liable party to account.
• Exhaustively Investigating Your Accident — Hensley will exhaustively investigate your accident and amass the evidence necessary for an airtight case.
• You Won’t Pay a Dime Unless We Win — You won’t have to pay us a dime unless we achieve a favorable outcome on your behalf.

Drunk driving is incredibly illegal and incredibly foolish, yet intoxication behind the wheel remains a major problem in Indiana, where law enforcement officers arrest someone for OWI (“operating a vehicle while intoxicated”) every 11.98 hours and Indianapolis recorded 223 alcohol-related crashes in 2022 alone.  Alcohol has been linked to 14 percent of recent traffic deaths in the state, though even a non-fatal drunk driving accident could inflict catastrophic injuries demanding prolonged treatment that could stretch the average victim’s finances to the breaking point. 

But if you have been badly hurt by a drunk driver in Indiana’s capital, get in touch with the Indianapolis drunk driving accident lawyers at Hensley Legal Group, PC, a dedicated Indiana personal injury law firm whose experienced attorneys have been fighting on behalf of the wrongfully injured since 1998. In recognition of its achievements across almost three decades, including $25 million for a motor vehicle crash, $5.5 million for a semi-truck collision, and multiple $4+ million settlements for struck pedestrians, Hensley has been named one of the Best Law Firms in the United States by Best Lawyers®, while its attorneys have earned inclusion in the Million Dollar Advocates Forum, Super Lawyers, America’s Top 100 Attorneys, and the National Trial Lawyers’ lists of the Top 100 Trial Lawyers and the Top 40 Under 40. 

For a no-cost case review with a seasoned Indianapolis drunk driving accident attorney, please call us at (317) 472-3333, chat with us online, or fill out our contact form now. 

How Alcohol Affects Your Driving 

Although the legal threshold for operating a vehicle while intoxicated (OWI) in Indiana (what other states call driving under the influence or DUI) is a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of 0.08 percent, the truth is that a small quantity of alcohol could still be an impediment to your driving and lead to a serious car accident.  In fact, 2,266 Americans were killed in 2021 in collisions that involved drivers who had BACs that were between 0.01 and 0.07 percent, and studies have found that any degree of drinking could negatively affect your: 

• Reaction time – Alcohol may slow your reflexes and your responses to sudden changes.  If a vehicle halts abruptly in front of you or if a pedestrian bolts into the road, your brain may not process the situation quickly enough to prevent a crash. 
• Judgment – Drinking can be deeply detrimental to your decision making too, which could stop you from foreseeing hazards and dealing with them in the appropriate manner. 
• Concentration – You have so many tasks to focus on when you drive, such as staying in your lane, maintaining the correct speed, obeying signals, and identifying changing traffic patterns, and the concentration necessary to complete these tasks could be obliterated by alcohol.  
• Comprehension – Your capacity to understand and interpret the barrage of information that may be coming at you from every direction could similarly be compromised when you drink.  
• Vision – Intoxication can blur or double your vision, decrease your control over your eye movements, and impact how you gauge depth and distance or notice peripheral objects.  
• Coordination – The more you drink, the more you can diminish your motor skills, including your eye, hand, and foot coordination, which are essential to safe driving. 

Ultimately, the only amount of alcohol that you should drink before you drive is no alcohol whatsoever, though that may not convince other drivers in Indianapolis not to imbibe and put you in danger.  However, if harm should befall you, our tenacious Indianapolis drunk driving accident lawyers will be ready to hold everyone who is at fault for your injuries to account. 

Indianapolis Drunk Driving Accidents and Dram Shop Law 

Determining who is at fault for an Indianapolis drunk driving accident can sometimes be difficult because of how many defendants there might be.  Aside from the drunk driver and the owner of his or her vehicle (if separate from the driver), others could be liable for “furnishing the alcohol beverage” to the driver under Indiana’s Dram Shop Act.

The Act governs civil suits against those who provide alcohol to people whose resultant intoxication ends up causing injury.  Typically, Dram Shop claims are initiated after drunk driving accidents, though they could be initiated for other kinds of accidental injuries and potentially criminal assaults as well.  Moreover, a wide range of individuals and entities could be defendants in cases of this nature, from restaurants and bars to “social hosts” who serve alcoholic beverages to guests in their homes, assuming that certain conditions are satisfied. 

Specifically, an Indianapolis Dram Shop plaintiff will have to show that: 

1. The defendant had “actual knowledge” that the person being served was intoxicated.  Meeting this standard could require the plaintiff to demonstrate that the defendant actually knew that the person in question was intoxicated, not merely that the defendant should have known.  As such, any evidence of slurred speech, trouble walking or standing, hostile or excessively emotional behavior, or a loss of consciousness could be highly useful.   
2. The intoxication of the person who was served was a “proximate cause” of the plaintiff’s injuries, which is generally believed to be true when those injuries are incurred on the premises where the alcohol was served or shortly after it was served. 

If both of these elements can be proven, a Dram Shop case may be viable, in addition to the cases against the driver and/or owner of the vehicle who struck the plaintiff. 

In light of the sheer number of parties who may share blame for a single incident, it is critical to pursue each of them within the time allotted by law, known as the Statute of Limitations.  The Statute is two years from the date of the collision for most Indiana drunk driving accidents, though it could be significantly narrower in claims against government bodies, with further stipulations that may have to be addressed. 

If you neglect to file a lawsuit or otherwise resolve your Indianapolis drunk driving claim before the Statute elapses, you could be forever barred from full compensation, but you can rest assured that Hensley’s Indianapolis personal injury lawyers will never allow such a careless mistake to take place on their watch. 

Can an OWI Charge Affect Your Injury Claim?

The consequences of getting charged with an OWI in Indianapolis are clearly enormous, including thousands of dollars in fines, months or years in jail, and the temporary or permanent loss of driving privileges.

Yet as bad as an OWI charge can be for the drunk driver who hit you, the success or failure of any personal injury claim you might have against the driver won’t really depend upon the success or failure of the charge.

Basically, you’re going after the drunk driver (and maybe other defendants) for causing the crash that caused your injuries, and the progress of the OWI case shouldn’t affect your ability to start, litigate, or resolve your claim, although some developments in that case could be beneficial.

For instance, evidence may be unearthed that could greatly expand the economic damages available to you (such as punitive damages), to say nothing of the advantages you could enjoy from a guilty plea. As you might imagine, it becomes much tougher for the driver’s auto insurer to deny liability once the driver has accepted it – especially when you have Hensley Legal Group, PC in your corner.

How Our Indianapolis Drunk Driving Accident Attorneys Can Help 

A drunk driving accident can be devastating, burying you beneath a mountain of bills while making it nearly impossible to dig your way out from under them.  Before you know it, you and your family could be teetering on the brink of ruin, and all because of the thoughtless acts of a thoughtless actor. 

Under circumstances as trying as these, you need attorneys with the compassion to support you through your struggles and the wisdom to overcome them, like the Indianapolis drunk driving accident attorneys at Hensley Legal Group. 

If you join the ranks of the thousands of Hoosiers every year who choose to hire Hensley, we will conduct a comprehensive investigation into your Indianapolis drunk driving accident and everybody who may be responsible for it, then establish valid claims against them within the time permitted by law.  We will also move swiftly to amass the materials to construct your case, including: 

• Police reports 
• Citations and dispositions 
• Eyewitness testimonies 
• Receipts 
• Security videos 
• Streetlight and dash cam footage 
• Crash site photos 
• Black box data 
• Phone statements 
• Driving histories 
• Forensic analysis and accident reconstruction 

After assembling an airtight case, our Indianapolis drunk driving accident lawyers will endeavor to negotiate a settlement that reflects the totality of your losses, such as your: 

• Medical expenses 
• Lost wages 
• Pain and suffering 
• Psychological trauma 
• Mobility restrictions 
• Reduced quality of living 
• Scarring and disfigurement 
• Loss of consortium 
• Punitive damages (if relevant) 

And if we do not receive an offer that is worthy of your case, we are not afraid to proceed to trial for a verdict that is, unlike some of our competitors, who rarely, if ever, venture into a courtroom. 

You Won’t Pay Us Anything Unless We Win 

We realize that agreeing to more expenditures is probably the last thing that you want to do at this moment, so you may be pleased to learn that Hensley Legal Group works on a contingency basis.  This means that you won’t have to pay us anything unless our Indianapolis drunk driving accident attorneys win your case. 

You may be reluctant to trust anybody after what has happened to you, but you can trust us to do everything in our power to make you whole again. 

Reach Out to Our Indianapolis Drunk Driving Accident Lawyers 

Hensley Legal Group has been getting justice for the hardworking men and women of Indiana since the firm first opened its doors over a quarter century ago.  If you are reeling from the effects of a collision with a drunk driver in the Indianapolis area, reach out to our Indianapolis drunk driving accident lawyers to explore your legal options.  

You can schedule a free consultation with an accomplished Indianapolis drunk driving accident attorney by calling us at (317) 472-3333, chatting with us online, or filling out our contact form today. 

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the legal threshold for drunk driving in Indianapolis?

Drivers are generally classified as legally drunk in Indianapolis and other cities in Indiana when they have a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of 0.08 percent.

Nevertheless, you don’t need to blow 0.08 on a breathalyzer to be impaired behind the wheel, since studies have shown that drivers with much lower BACs can suffer sharp drops in their core driving skills.

Who can be at fault for a drunk driving accident?

A surprising number of parties might be considered at fault when a drunk driving accident occurs in Indianapolis.

In addition to the drunk driver and the owner of the vehicle being driven (if separate from the driver), any individual or entity caught “furnishing the alcoholic beverage” that intoxicated the driver could be liable under Indiana’s Dram Shop Act.

Is there a difference between an OWI and a DUI?

There’s no meaningful difference between an OWI, the term for drunk driving in Indiana, and a DUI, the term that’s more commonly used elsewhere.

Whereas a driver in another state whose blood alcoholic concentration exceeds the legal limit may be charged with a DUI (“driving under the influence”), an equally drunk driver in Indianapolis would be charged with an OWI (“operating a vehicle while intoxicated”).

Does an OWI case have to end before my claim can begin?

Any personal injury claim you pursue against a drunk driver won’t fundamentally depend upon whatever OWI case the authorities pursue against that driver.

As such, the OWI case doesn’t have to come to end before your claim can begin, and the two actions shouldn’t really affect each other by and large, although certain developments in the OWI case could be beneficial to your claim.

What is the timeline for an Indianapolis drunk driving (OWI) accident case?

The timeline for a drunk driving (OWI) accident case in Indianapolis is primary driven by Indiana’s Statute of Limitations.

The Statute is two years for the vast majority of the state’s drunk driving cases, although it can be shorter in some instances, so you might want to discuss your next steps with a knowledgeable Indianapolis drunk driving accident lawyer.