If You Have an Accident in Which Someone Suffers an Injury You Should Call a Lawyer
Any accident can be traumatic and overwhelming, especially when you sustain injuries. What you do after you have suffered a personal injury matters to your health and your legal case’s success. If you do everything in your power, you will have a better chance of fully recovering and getting all the compensation you deserve. Further, you also need to avoid making critical mistakes that can damage your legal case before you even file it.
Your primary responsibility should be taking care of your health and getting the necessary medical treatment. In many cases, this is a full-time job, and you do not have the capacity for a legal fight.
From a legal standpoint, the best thing that you can do is hire a personal injury lawyer to represent you. They handle the day-to-day details of your case, giving you tactical legal advice that can ensure you avoid any mistakes that can make the insurance company’s life easier. They are also not afraid to go to bat for you when an insurance company tries to compromise your legal rights. When you hire a personal injury attorney, you do not have to worry about the details, and you know that you have a fighter on your side every step of the way.
Here is what you must do when you have suffered an injury in an accident that was someone else’s fault.
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Get Medical Help
Your health is your absolute priority after you have suffered a personal injury, and it helps to do everything in your power to recover as much as possible. If you do not take care of your health immediately, your condition can worsen. Some injuries, especially those that involve the brain or internal organs, have a limited treatment window. If you miss it, you can be looking at permanent damage.
Help is not just limited to medical doctors. You may be dealing with other aftereffects of the accident, such as depression, PTSD, or other emotional distress. You should also seek treatment from a mental health professional to alleviate your situation.
Getting medical help has many benefits. Aside from helping you physically and mentally, you will also get documentation allowing your attorney to calculate your damages. Your doctor will make treatment notes, and they will give you a prognosis for what you can expect in the future.
In addition, you must mitigate your damages in a personal injury case. If you wait too long to see a doctor or do not follow their treatment recommendations, insurance companies may believe you did not adequately handle your damages. They will look to see how much worse your condition became because of what they view as your own failure to get prompt assistance or to help yourself. You can end up with a settlement offer that does not fully compensate you because your settlement may not cover the full extent of your injuries.
Document Your Case to the Fullest Extent Possible
In a best-case scenario, you did something at the accident scene to begin to get evidence that can prove liability in your case, and you may have had the opportunity to take pictures of yourself. However, it may be unlikely and difficult to do so when you were receiving treatment for the physical injuries that are now the basis of your claim or lawsuit. Hopefully, someone else took pictures for you at the time of the accident. If you have any physical evidence from the accident scene, you need to make copies and keep them safe so you can give them to your personal injury attorney.
Then, it is best to do whatever you can to document the damages you have suffered since the accident. When you eventually file a claim or lawsuit, you will have the affirmative obligation to prove your damages before you can get paid. You can count on encountering skeptical insurance companies who will reflexively try to deny and minimize your damages in the hopes that they can avoid paying you everything that they owe.
Your damages will break down into the broad categories of economic and non-economic. Of course, you will need extensive documentation of your economic damages because these represent your actual financial losses from the accident. Economic damages include things like medical expenses and lost earnings. Save any medical bills and earnings information to give to your personal injury lawyer. They will use this documentation to calculate the amount of money you seek in a claim or lawsuit.
You will also need documentation of your non-economic injuries, and this is where your claim can get challenging. Non-economic damages include things like pain and suffering and emotional distress. These are subjective damages by nature, and insurance companies may not believe what you are reporting because it means that they will need to pay you more.
You should keep a journal of your experiences since the accident, and you can also use treatment notes from a mental health provider if you are claiming that you suffer from depression or emotional distress. The more you have done on paper, the better a personal injury attorney can tell your story.
Hire a Personal Injury Lawyer Immediately
If everything goes your way in a personal injury case, you may have the right to a substantial amount of money. If you prove someone else was responsible for your injury, they should fully compensate you. Usually, it is through their insurance company, but the responsible party may owe you even more if they do not have enough coverage.
The first challenge that you face is proving liability. You must have enough evidence to satisfy an insurance company or a jury, and the legal standard you must meet is proving that someone else was negligent. This legal term means that someone else failed to exercise the required level of care under the circumstances. Since it is always challenging to investigate your own accident, especially when you are dealing with physical injuries, you should turn your case over to a personal injury attorney.
Even when you can prove liability, the fight in your case may only be beginning. Insurance companies can readily concede liability and retrench themselves for the actual battle, which is how much money you may get. There is no such thing as a rounding error in a personal injury case, and you need every dollar you can get in financial compensation.
You may not know how much you may be due in compensation for your injuries. There are legal concepts at play, such as pain and suffering, that you may not understand. A personal injury lawyer adds value by helping you learn the value of your claim.
A personal injury attorney is extremely valuable when they fight the insurance company on your behalf. Insurance companies will look at your claim in a whole different light when they see you represented by a tough attorney who they already know.
Hiring a personal injury lawyer is the first step of the legal process, and it is not one that you can afford to delay. You can only file a claim once your attorney has compiled the necessary evidence and can quantify and prove your damages. Since you do not have to pay anything out of your pocket for a lawyer, it makes all the sense to make the call today.
Do Not Talk to the Insurance Company or Say Anything Publicly
The responsible party will likely have representation from an insurance company (unless they are large enough to self-insure). Insurance companies handle cases differently, but there is one consistent rule: never trust them in any capacity, no matter which ones you deal with. Anything that goes into your pocket comes out of their accounts, an outcome they want to avoid.
Therefore, insurance companies are not above underhanded tactics to undermine your case, and one of their favorite tricks is to try to talk to you when you do not have a lawyer to protect you. They may not even ask you to give a formal recorded statement (which you should never do). The adjuster may try to call you to “check to see how you are doing.” In reality, the adjuster does not care how you are doing and wants to get you on the record, saying something that may contradict what you may say in your claim. Accordingly, you should never speak to insurance companies. If they call you, politely decline to talk to them and direct them to contact your lawyer.
The other thing that you should refrain from doing is posting about your accident or your life afterward on social media. Never assume that insurance companies cannot access or see your posts because they may use your words against you. If they see cheerful posts that detail your activities, they can use them to contradict your claims of pain and suffering and loss of enjoyment of life.
Hold Out Until You Get the Money You Deserve
Try not to focus on getting a quick settlement from the insurance company. This mindset is wishful thinking because that is not how insurance companies operate. They know how to drag out the process for as long as it takes to wear you down and break your resolve. It is up to you not to let them do that to you.
When you hire a personal injury lawyer, they will tell you exactly how low the insurance company’s settlement offer is, and this is where you need some toughness and aggressiveness on your side.
You can negotiate with insurance companies to get them to raise their settlement offer, but you may only know that fact if you have a personal injury attorney. Even if you try to negotiate a settlement on your own, you may have little credibility with the insurance company.
If the insurance company is not offering you enough money, you can and should say no to its proposed settlement. You only get one chance to settle a personal injury claim and suppose you do not receive enough money on that one occasion. In that case, you cannot return to the insurance company for more money because you have released it from any further liability concerning your claim.
You Must Fight the Entire Way with the Help of Your Personal Injury Attorney
Therefore, you should keep fighting until the very end of your case, and if it means you must go to trial, that is the step you need to take. Insurance companies will usually back down from a fight, but you must show them you are ready to go far with them. When you hire a personal injury lawyer for your case, that is the exact message you send to the insurance companies. They know that you have the capacity to fight, and when your lawyer puts pressure on them, they may be the first to back down.
Many people worry about the financial burden of hiring a lawyer, especially after facing medical expenses and the challenges of recovering from an injury. But with the right attorney, you can pursue your claim without worrying about upfront costs.
Personal injury lawyers work on a contingency fee basis, which means they only get paid if they successfully recover compensation for you and will take a percentage of your settlement or award as their fee. This arrangement benefits you and the lawyer, as it aligns their interests with yours and ensures they will work hard to achieve your best outcome.
In addition to the contingency fee arrangement, most personal injury law firms cover the costs associated with your case upfront. These costs can include expenses for medical records, expert witnesses, court fees, and any other fees necessary to build a strong case. The attorney will deduct these costs from your settlement or award at the end of your case. If they do not recover your compensation, you will not have to pay anything for these costs.
Choosing a trusted and experienced personal injury lawyer to represent you is crucial. They will guide you through the legal process, negotiate with insurance companies on your behalf, and fight to ensure you receive the compensation you deserve. Do not wait to seek legal representation—reach out to a lawyer as soon as possible to protect your rights and maximize your chances of a successful outcome.