After an accident that leaves you with serious injuries and expenses, you should get legal help. There may be insurance that can cover some of these damages, but navigating an insurance claim and researching what your case is worth – all while recovering from an injury – is a huge burden to bear.
Our attorneys can research your case, use our legal experience to help us make the right moves, and advocate for you throughout your case. We can help you find out what your case is truly worth and go back and forth with insurance companies to seek a fair settlement that covers your needs.
Call The Carrion Law Firm to review your case with our personal injury lawyers today by dialing (718) 841-0083.
What Do I Need for a Personal Injury Case?
Knowing whether you have a case or not – and how strong it is – can be difficult without professional legal help. Our attorneys know what it takes to file and win a case, and we can put that to work for you.
These are the basic things you need to form your case:
Someone to Sue
You cannot bring a personal injury case unless you have someone to file it against. Often, this will be the person who actively injured you or otherwise set up the conditions to let you get injured.
For example, in a slip and fall case, you are not at fault because you “hurt yourself” in a fall. Instead, it is up to the property owner or operator to keep that area safe. The fact that they failed to warn you of the dangers or clean/repair them makes them the person to sue.
Other cases involve someone who directly injured you, like a driver who hit you, a doctor who misdiagnosed you, or someone who assaulted you.
Elements
In assessing whether that person can be held at fault, our personal injury attorneys look for four legal elements to make out a “negligence” claim:
- Duty – the defendant owed the victim a duty under the law
- Breach – the defendant violated that duty
- Causation – that breach of duty caused the injury
- Damages – you suffered damages a court can order paid back.
The duty and breach elements often come from a legal violation, such as speeding or building code violations, where the law was meant to keep people safe.
Although many harms are irreversible because you already experienced the pain or perhaps suffered an amputation, money damages can be paid in place of reversing the harm. Otherwise, economic damages are reimbursed so that you end up back where you were before the injury.
Evidence
You need evidence to have a case. While many cases involve photos of the accident scene, expert reports, and maybe even security footage, not every case has as much evidence. Even if you think you have nothing, we can always look to your testimony about what happened, medical records that match the injuries you claim, and other evidence like this to build your case.
Do I Need a Lawyer to File a Personal Injury Claim?
Technically, you do not need a lawyer to pursue a personal injury case through an insurance claim or even through the courts. However, it helps.
You might not have the legal experience to know how to write a complaint, format a brief, or argue a motion. Our lawyers can do all of that for you.
We have also handled cases that are probably quite similar to yours before, given our extensive experience in personal injury law. This means we know what evidence to look for, what arguments sway a jury, and what cases should be worth.
When you go into a case without a lawyer, you are the one acting as your own attorney. This means you are expected to know all of this; the judge cannot answer legal questions or help you with your case. Even worse, the defense and their attorneys will likely try to take advantage of the fact that you do not have a lawyer, trying to push your case out quickly or trick you into settling for a low value.
How Do I Know What My Case is Worth?
Most injury victims do not know what their case is worth without having a lawyer examine the facts and evidence they have. Many claims are worth far more than you think because of non-economic damages – something insurance companies like to downplay or inaccurately calculate.
Economic Damages
First, your case will be able to pay you back for any expenses the injury caused. That means things like hospital bills, vehicle repairs/property damage, expenses at home, and lost wages.
Non-Economic Damages
On top of that, you can get compensation for the mental, emotional, and physical effects of the injury – things money cannot reverse. These “non-economic damages” need to be properly calculated, or else your case is undervalued.
How Insurance Calculates Offers
Insurance companies often fail to take these into account at all, and they may not even look at your evidence or bills when calculating damages. Instead, they opt to offer settlements based on what it would cost for them to defend the case.
This often means insurance companies offer very low settlements, and you should never accept them without speaking to our personal injury lawyers about your case first.
How We Calculate Damages
Economic damages must cover all of the expenses and lost earnings you face, including prospective future damages.
To properly calculate non-economic damages, we either need to apply a multiplier to your other damages or set a per-diem value. In either case, the value is set by the severity of your case, and either method often means getting at least as much in non-economic damages as you would for the other damages in your case.
How Long Do I Have to File?
Most personal injury claims have to be filed within 3 years under the statute of limitations for personal injury in New York. Some cases must be filed within different limits, such as 2 years and 6 months for medical malpractice claims and 2 years for wrongful death cases.
Who Decides Fault in a Personal Injury Claim?
When you file a personal injury claim as an insurance claim, it leaves the decision about fault to the insurance company. Unsurprisingly, this can be bad for you, given that the insurance company is deciding whether their own customer is at fault and how much they should pay.
When you go to court, the playing field is leveled. Instead of having one party decide, the jury decides.
The judge actually does not decide the facts – who is at fault, how much the case is worth – when you go to a jury trial. That is exclusively the jury’s decision. The judge typically only makes decisions in a bench trial where there is no jury.
If you settle the case, then there technically does not need to be any determination about fault. A settlement means you stop pursuing the case in exchange for payment for your damages, meaning no determination is actually made. Sometimes businesses settle so there is no on-the-record decision against them.
What Types of Personal Injury Cases Do You Handle?
Our attorneys handle all kinds of personal injury cases, from car accidents to slip and falls to wrongful death claims. When it comes to work injury cases and car accident cases, we often have to determine whether a lawsuit is allowed, given that insurance rules sometimes block lawsuits.
If you are concerned that your case is too small or that we do not handle that particular area of injury law, just check with us as part of a free case review when you call our law offices.
Can I Still Sue if I Was Partially at Fault?
In an ideal case, the defendant will be 100% responsible for your damages. However, most real-life cases are not this clean and easy.
If you were partially at fault, New York law does allow you to still get compensation for the defendant’s share of damages. In cases where you are close to 50/50 fault, this can be complicated, but the law technically allows you to sue even if you were 99% at fault.
In most cases, the split will not be this severe. Defendants may be found 5% or 10% at fault and still recover most of their damages. However, our lawyers can fight to get your percentage of share knocked down or eliminated entirely, forcing the defendant to pay the full damages.
Who Covers an Injury Case: My Insurance or the Defendant’s?
In most injury cases, the insurance company involved is the defendant’s insurance company. People often have “liability insurance” to cover the accidents and injuries that happen on their property, at their place of business, or in the course of their work. This is the insurance company we are usually concerned with negotiating with and getting damages from.
For example, if you slipped and fell in a store, the store’s insurance should pay.
The major exception to this is car insurance claims. Drivers in New York have to have no-fault insurance. This means your insurance covers you first, and only when your case is serious enough can you go after the defendant’s insurance.
However, just because you might be using your own insurance does not mean you can trust them. They may still undervalue claims or try to block coverage entirely, potentially even in bad faith.
No matter what insurance company you are dealing with, do not talk to them without a lawyer, do not sign anything they give you without a lawyer, and do not accept any money before having your lawyer review the value.
What Should I Do After an Injury?
After any kind of accident, you should make a report to the relevant parties. At work or in a store, this means reporting it to the business. Car accidents should always be reported to the police.
From there, you should get medical care. If you need an ambulance, call 911 and go directly to the hospital for treatment. That will create medical records and prevent anyone from saying you delayed treatment or that your injuries “weren’t that bad.”
You should collect as much evidence as you can. If you are too injured to stay and take photos, focus on your treatment first. Otherwise, get the names and contact info of witnesses, license plate and insurance info for car accidents, and other relevant information.
From there, call a lawyer. Never try to handle these cases on your own.
When Do I Get Paid for My Injury Case?
After a case is decided, it usually takes less than 30 days to get your payment. If you are receiving a lump sum, it will be paid in one amount, whereas annuities will be paid monthly in most cases.
However, many cases do not get to judgment and are instead settled. When you get the funds will be a part of the settlement agreement, so it will vary from case to case. Sometimes insurance companies come with the check in hand to entice the victim into settling.
In any case, the time it takes to get from the injury to payment will depend on the facts of your case. Negotiating a quick settlement is possible in many cases, and victims will often get compensation within a few months. More serious cases with more complex issues may need to go to trial, which can take upwards of 6 months.
How Strong is My Case?
Our lawyers cannot tell the strength of your case without getting deep into the details. However, we can attest that most “strong” cases have clear evidence that proves each of the four elements of a negligence case. The more evidence you have, the stronger your case usually is.
This is especially true if all of your evidence is consistent and agrees with your story rather than being contradictory.
Call Our Injury Lawyers in Bushwick Today
If you were injured in Bushwick or anywhere in Brooklyn or NYC, call our personal injury attorneys today at (718) 841-0083.
