Car Accident Lawyer

In the hours and days after a car accident, you’ll figure out the extent to which how your property has been damaged and how much it’ll cost to repair or replace those items. For example, your car may need extensive repairs or to be replaced altogether. Your phone screen may be cracked and too damaged to turn on. Your laptop might have been damaged in the accident and perhaps your bag was lost when your vehicle was towed. Or perhaps a car accident occurred which you were not a part of, but the accident resulted in damage to your fence, business, or home. Insurance adjusters are often our first means of determining how severe the costs will be, especially if you aren’t sure if your vehicle will be totaled or how extensive the structural damage is to your home or business. There may also be a gap between what insurance is willing to pay and what the repairs or replacements actually cost you. I advise my clients to make lists and ask for documentation of estimated replacements and repairs.

It’s easier to understand your current medical expenses than those in the future, but both are important to figure out before you file your claim. After gathering all your existing medical bills that relate to your injury, have a thorough discussion with your doctor about what your life will look like in the future. Do your research ahead of time about conditions like yours and how they progress. Together with your doctor or care team, consider what medical equipment you will need, how your symptoms might change over time, and how your doctors will treat these changes. What surgeries and medical testing will you likely need? How will your medications need to be adjusted as your body and injury ages? Consider your home. Will you need to renovate your house or buy a new house to accommodate your decreased mobility? Will you need to have a ramp built or a chair lift installed at some point? Will you one day need to go into a nursing home? During your conversation, write down every item your doctor describes, then look up how much each item will likely cost. Tally these expenses, along with those for doctor’s appointments, specialist’s appointments, and likely hospital and rehab stays.

If you’ve had to take medical leave, sick or vacation time, or time without pay because of your accident, you have suffered lost wages. We tend to focus on medical-related expenses because they are easier to account for when you have a bill, but any time your wages were negatively affected by your accident, you should document it and include it in your calculations. In calculating your losses, include every time you had to take off work to go to the doctor or hospital, to attend therapy, to purchase necessary medical equipment, and to pick up prescriptions. Non-medical examples of lost wages include being on light duty, when you weren’t able to make your shifts because your car was totaled or being repaired, time taken to have your damaged property repaired or replaced, and instances when you had to meet with an insurance adjuster or go to the police department to obtain a copy of the police report. Keep your pay stubs from before your accident as well as after to show how your wages were affected during this time.

If your injury could negatively impact the type of career you likely would have had and how much money that career would have earned, your future earning capacity has been affected. An injured knee, for example, may mean you may have to permanently switch to light duty at an earlier age, impacting how many years you’ll earn wages at that higher pay amount. If you will need to have knee replacement surgery in the future, the time you’ll have to take off work and the light duty you’d have to return to while you recover are also factors in your future earning capacity. You may now suffer migraines that mean you’ll have to miss work more frequently. Maybe you haven’t been able to return to work at all because of the accident. Your injury may make it impossible for you to gain a promotion or transfer you have been interested in because you are no longer physically capable of doing that job. You might have to switch to a desk job because you can’t do the physical work or travel that you did successfully before your accident.

You can sue for pain and suffering, though in every case I’ve taken there have been other kinds of damages as well. You can’t sue simply because you were involved in a car accident, and it’s hard to prove pain and suffering without documented medical expenses. Pain and suffering is an important aspect of damages, though, and it’s difficult to put a monetary amount to the degree of your discomfort. Some law firms put pain and suffering calculators on their websites, giving inaccurate and inflated amounts to hurting people who need real legal advice. This is why I offer free consultations to my clients, so I can hear the details of your story, examine at your documentation, and give you sound legal advice about what would be fair compensation for the pain and suffering you’ve endured, as well as the other damages you incurred. My decades of experience as a car accident lawyer and as an ER nurse are especially suited to serving my community in this way, and I’m honored to do so.

When a person dies because of the negligence of someone else, as in a car accident, the financial support they would have provided to their dependents is counted among the damages. To determine the amount of support lost, calculate the portion of the person’s earnings that would have gone to supporting their dependents. Dependents include children under the age of 18 and children, siblings, or parents who are not physically or mentally capable of supporting themselves financially. In cases where parents are divorced and one of them has been ordered by the courts to provide a certain amount of child support, calculating the loss of support is easier. Regardless of the complexity of your situation, I always make myself available to my clients as they work to determine and document these losses.

When explaining this concept to clients, I start with hobbies. How did you enjoy your free time before your accident? Did you like to fish, knit, or play softball with your church group? Did you like working on cars or swimming? Did you love to travel, and often flew or drove to new places? Then I ask my client how their hobbies have been affected by your accident. Can you still do them to the same degree and with the same skill as before? Nerve damage may mean you aren’t able to make your own flies anymore. Or maybe you can, but not without pain. Maybe you now have migraines that make flying or even watching TV painful. Perhaps you have a spine injury that will keep you from swimming or driving to see your grandson play baseball. I’ve had clients who have lost limbs or the ability to stand, and every aspect of their lives is affected by their injury. It’s common for people’s mental health to suffer as a result of a serious accident, which may result in depression or PTSD. All these factors affect your enjoyment of your life, and you are entitled to compensation for their loss.