Why hire a lawyer after an accident?

Statistically, it’s been shown that having an attorney will – a client will net, I don’t know, I think it’s two and a half to three times more than handling the case on their own. The client has no real experience in most cases dealing with an adjuster or confronting legal issues which they are totally unfamiliar with. There’s really no reason why you would not hire an attorney. Most attorneys, us included, accept cases on a contingent fee basis, which means if we don’t make a recovery, you don’t owe us anything. If you try to handle it yourself, you’ll be low-balled, and you will not get what was coming to you.

When Should I Call A Lawyer for an Injury?

You call a lawyer anytime you think you might have a case, because there are some times that a person would not know, particularly if the person, for example, was in the grocery store, dropped a bottle of milk, and then slipped in it. If that person caused the situation by spilling the milk, she wouldn’t have a case, but you don’t know if you don’t contact a lawyer. It may have been that the milk carton was defective and then leaked all of a sudden, and you didn’t know it, or you didn’t realize it. Every case has to be looked at by a professional. Attorneys have been trained to look for the issues which might arise that would give a good claim for liability. An important thing for an attorney to do, and I do it quite often, is to take time to be patient, to explain to a client why you do not have a claim. I just reviewed a personal injury death claim where a young lady was on a dirt bike, had a collision with another dirt bike, and she was killed. We looked at the records and made a determination that if there was negligence, it was negligence on both the decedent’s part as well as the other party’s. They were both teenagers. It was a very tragic situation. Some law firms just look at that and say we’re not interested. I normally try to get the client in, sit down with her and him and explain why there’s not a case, because sometimes people are just looking for closure and trying to understand why there’s nothing I can do for having lost my child. That’s a very hard situation to be in, but I think it’s important to answer those questions.

Should I Call My Insurance Company?

Yes, you should notify your company, particularly because if your car has been damaged, sometimes you can get your car repaired sooner using your own company. They will then contact the other driver’s insurance company and recover what they’ve paid you, but you get your car fixed quicker and you have more control over it.

What Is “Negligence”?

Negligence is an absence of care. Every homeowner, every property owner has some duty to maintain the premises in a safe condition. If you’re injured in a department store or a grocery store or somebody else’s home and it turns out that they have not kept the premises safe, then you could show negligence. Everybody knows what negligence is. If you get T-boned when somebody runs a red light, other personal injury cases are a little more difficult and establishing negligence can be hard. We also do legal malpractice. Legal malpractice is a very unique area of the law. It’s when a lawyer misses a deadline, fails to present evidence that he should have presented, there are a number of different ways that a lawyer can breach the duty of care. That’s really what it comes down to. You have to show that the other party has a duty to provide a safe environment or to perform his work up to a certain standard. If he does not meet that standard or if the premises are not kept safe, then you can establish negligence.

What Is Products Liability?

I had a case once where a young man had gone to Sears and bought a chisel and tapped it a few times with a hammer and the tip flew off and knocked his eye out. We had to get the expert in metals. He took and tested the metal and it turned out that the production of that particular chisel was defective. They had failed to follow the industry standards. In a products liability case, like any other case, you’ve got to first find out what caused the injury, then we find out what caused the injury, we have to determine if there was a failure either in the manufacturing, the design, or the production of the tool or whatever it is that you contended hurt you. Sometimes it can be a loss of fingers or hands where the employer has not put a safety guard on some type of machinery. If you can show that safety precautions have not been followed and that the risk of injury was greater than it should’ve been under the circumstances, then you can prevail. You usually have to use expert witnesses to testify to establish what’s called probably cause, and proximate cause, and then of course, the theory of negligence.

What Should I Do After A Car Accident?

Police officer first starts by getting all the relevant information from the other driver. The plaintiff should go to the emergency room or to the hospital right away to be checked up. It’s not unusual for a person injured in an automobile collision not to realize that they’ve got injuries the first day. You have shock. Sometimes the injury takes a little bit of time to materialize, particularly if it’s what we call a soft tissue injury. Obviously, if you’ve got a broken bone, you’re going to know about that right away. If you’ve got some internal injuries or a soft tissue injury, you may not know about it. Still, it’s very important that you go to a provider as soon as possible and have a checkup and then bring in the results of that checkup. You may have to follow up with physical therapy. It’s important that you keep all of your doctor’s appointments, that you do what the doctors tell you to do, and you keep records of how much it cost you, the billing.

How Is Pain and Suffering Demonstrated?

Pain and suffering is always the most difficult aspect. It’s easy to prove the medical bills. It’s easy to show a broken bone by x-ray. Pain and suffering is often not readily accepted by the insurance companies. Anyone who has ever had an injury will know that you can suffer for a long period of time after the accident. It doesn’t show visibly. You can have pains that people can’t see. Nobody can really see pain. You have to explain that to the adjustor. You have to figure ways to quantify that. One of the ways you do it is you ask the client what is it that you cannot do now that you used to be able to do. I once had a – I pulled a muscle in my back and it was really painful. I could not get into and out of my vehicle as easily as I used to because I had low back pain. The housewife may not be able to pick up the toddler. The grandmother may not be able to go out in the backyard and weed her garden like she’s used to doing. The reason she can’t do that, she’s got pain every day and it just keeps her confined to the rocking chair, to the sofa, or even in bed. You have to educate your clients and teach them how to articulate what it is they cannot do because of the pain they’re experiencing.

Murder vs. Manslaughter

Murder is when you intend to take someone’s life with either malice or forethought. That means you’ve planned it or you did it by the reckless disregard of the person’s safety. Manslaughter is – you have two levels. Voluntary manslaughter is when you take a life during the commission of an act that would be illegal but was not intended to be murder. Involuntary manslaughter, you were doing something legal and the person got killed. Maybe you were driving your car and you lost control. You might have been going too fast, hit a tree, and your passenger was killed. They could charge you with involuntary manslaughter. If you took the car and you were racing and the person you had the accident the person was killed, that could be voluntary manslaughter because you engaged in a high-speed travel.

How Much Is My Accident Case Worth?

The general rule of thumb used to be a personal injury case was worth – the value of the case was three times the amount of the hard medicals. Insurance companies don’t give a lot of credence to chiropractic bills or some physical therapy bills, depending. There are some medical facilities that have sprung up across the country, not just in Chatham County, that they will provide services at an inflated rate, knowing that they’re going to reduce the bills down the road. We try to send our clients to reputable physicians. Generally speaking, if your medical bills are somewhere in the neighborhood of say $30,000, you can expect a settlement of somewhere between 60 and 90,000, depending. A lot depends on the nature of the injury. Once again, you can run up a lot of bills on a soft tissue injury, but if you don’t have any permanent disabilities, and the case is not worth as much as someone who’s got a broken arm or a broken leg and will have probably plates or screws inserted. They have to take into account that they’ll probably develop arthritis in those areas down the road. There’s a lot to evaluate before you can really determine the true value and the amount of damages to expect in a personal injury case.

Do These Things First After A Slip And Fall Accident

You should contact an attorney and ask them if they have experience in slip and fall cases because those are difficult. Once again, you’ve got to know what caused you to fall. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to turn down cases because people didn’t contact an attorney right away and they come in and say, well, I’m not sure why I fell. You have a duty as a client, as an injured plaintiff, to look out for your own wellbeing. If you can’t tell me what caused you to fall, then I can’t determine whether or not the property owner has failed to maintain the premises in a safe condition. That’s the standard. Usually, you think about the grocery store where someone has spilled something. You have to show that the store had knowledge of the spill, failed to take the appropriate action, and left it there for an extended period. If you can do that, then you can pretty much establish negligence.

What Makes A Good Criminal Lawyer?

Three things: preparation, preparation, preparation. If you don’t know your case, you’re not going to do very well. If you don’t know the law, you’re definitely not going to do very well. You also have to have the ability to relate to the jury. You have to be compassionate to understand why your client did that. I’ve represented hundreds, if not thousands of criminal defendants. For the most part, I’ve liked it. I go home and I tell my wife, “I think he’s innocent. Then maybe we’ll turn around and enter a guilty plea. You have to be invested in your client’s case. You have to care about the outcome. Then you have to really be prepared. The preparation is the thing that I think defines the criminal defense attorney. You’ve got to know the facts of the case, and you’ve got to know the law.

What Factors Play Into Sentencing?

There are a lot of things you’re supposed to consider. You’re supposed to consider whether or not the defendant can be rehabilitated. You also have to consider the nature of the crime. Was it a hate crime? Was it premeditated? Was it one that shows a total disregard of the rules of humanity? In that case, the sentence is going to be much more severe. Does the defendant show remorse? Has the defendant led a reasonable clean life up until this point? Does he have a very significant criminal history? Is the defendant likely to reoffend? Those are the things that a judge has to consider. The purpose of sentencing is, Number 1, to punish the person for the offense, Number 2, to remove the danger to society if that is an issue, and Number 3, to see whether or not this person can be redeemed. Sometimes people commit crimes and there’s no social redemption.

You might consider the Charles Manson case in being someone who the judge and the courts have found him – he’s deceased now, but found him to be not redeemable, that his evil would be a continuous threat to the society. On the other hand, if you take someone like, let’s say like Martha Stewart, who was doing inside trading. I mean, she had lived a perfectly good life up until that point. She’s not a danger to society. That was taken into consideration. She got a much lower sentence. She’s back out and she’s doing very well. You can’t undo what’s been done. You have to try to make the best of what has been a bad situation to get a total net result that would be beneficial, not only to the defendant but to the victim’s family, and if the victim is survived, the victim him or herself.