What is a Personal Injury claim?
A Personal Injury claim arises any time you are injured in your body. Although, this may occur in a numerous situations, today we refer to Personal Injury claim when your body is injured as a result of the negligence of someone else. The legal community uses different set of words to refer to bodily injuries that are a result of intentional acts of others, namely Assault and Battery.
Therefore, most bodily injuries that are the results of automobile accidents, slips and falls, dog bites, and the like would be referred to as Personal Injury claims.
How do I know that I may have a right to be compensated?
Your right to be compensated usually depends on a careful assessment of what happened and some common sense. After careful assessment of the facts of the incident, the question to be determined is who was careful and who was careless. This essentially means that ultimately the person at fault has to be identified.
Can I still be compensated even if the accident was partly my fault?
Even if you might have partly caused an accident yourself, you can still receive compensation from anyone else who was careless and partly caused the accident. The person who is assessed a bigger share of carelessness will be responsible to compensate the other with a lesser share of fault or carelessness in causing the incident.
What should I do when I am first injured in an incident?
The first thing you should do is to calm yourself and quickly assess your condition. If your condition is such that you must immediately seek medical attention, you should do so. If your condition is not as bad, you should take a mental note of all the Who, What, Where, and When questions. You may wish to preserve your mental notes in a writing for future reference. If you are involved in an automobile accident, you must exchange your information with the other driver. The information you exchange must be your name, address, telephone numbers, and driver's license number; the name your liability insurance company and the insurance policy number; the make, model, color, and license plate number of the other vehicle.
What is the role of insurance companies in personal injury claims?
Insurance companies have a duty to help their customers with the resolution of the personal injury claims. They even have a duty to defend their customers if they are sued by others claiming personal injury against their customers.
What is included in my compensation?
You as an injured person should be paid for all that you have suffered because of the incident. This typically includes the expenses for your medical care, the cost of repair for damages to any of your personal property and the cost of renting a comparable item for the duration of its repair (specially in case of automobile accidents), the cost of the income you have lost for being unable to attend to your work, and the temporary and permanent pain and other physical discomfort that you have experienced as a result of the incident.
In automobile accidents, must I have liability insurance before I can be compensated by the other driver's insurance company who was at fault?
Some years ago, the law was changed to limit the recovery of uninsured drivers who may not even be at fault in an automobile accident. The current law allows uninsured drivers not at fault to be compensated only for expenses that they have incurred as a result of the accident. This means they can only recover the expenses for your medical care, the cost of repair of your vehicle, the cost of renting a comparable vehicle for the duration of the repair of your vehicle, and the income you have lost for being unable to attend to your work
Does my health insurance coverage or paid sick leave from work limit my compensation?
Whether you paid for medical care out of your own pocket or your health insurance covered is none of a claims adjuster's business. The same goes for whether your lost time at work was covered by sick leave or vacation pay. In fact, it is improper for an adjuster even to ask about such payments. You paid for your health insurance and earned your sick leave or vacation pay; now the insurance for the person who caused the accident has to pay.
Your own health insurance, however, may require that, out of your settlement, you reimburse it for some or all of the amounts it has paid to treat your injuries.
What is the role of a Personal Injury lawyer?
A Personal Injury lawyer will collect the facts and determine whether it is likely that
some other person or company was careless and negligent in causing the incident.
The lawyer, with legal expertise and experience, advances reasonable argument showing
that the other person or company was careless and therefore at fault. The lawyer then
negotiates with an insurance company for a maximum recovery.
If an insurance company declines to settle or offers very small amount of money, the lawyer will file your claim in court and formally demand compensation.
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