Personal Injury

Personal injury, as the name suggests, is an area of tort law focusing on physical injury to a person's body (as opposed to property damage). This area of law usually requires litigation and attempts to recover damages the injured party suffered, so is sometimes called "making the plaintiff whole." While it is impossible to rewind time and prevent an injury from happening, personal injury law attempts to compensate the injured party by weighing the degree of injury suffered (damages) with fault and whether it was preventable (liability).

Types of Cases

Although the most common type of personal injury is a car wreck, there are many other types of injury cases. This field of law also includes animal aggression, motorcycle crashes, "slip and fall" or other premises liability cases, emotional distress, wrongful death, "defective products" and other products liability cases, food borne illnesses, and several more. Our firm has experience handling a wide variety of different types of personal injury cases.

Damages & Liability (Case Value)

No two personal injury cases are the same, and no two individuals experience injury and suffering in the same way. Even so, attorneys, judges, and juries try to place a value on injuries. We would be lying if we told you psychology and societal norms played no role in assessing an injury. That said, the main two factors affecting the value of your personal injury case are fairly straightforward: damages and liability.

Damages are what a party suffers as a result of personal injury. Obvious examples may include broken bones or pulled muscles and hospital bills, physical therapy to regain movement, or prescriptions for chronic pain as a result of an injury. Less obvious examples may include lost wages, PTSD, time lost with loved ones, or reduced ability to perform daily activities. Severity of damages is open to interpretation, and the relative monetary value assigned to them is usually disputed, which is why they are frequently litigated.

Liability describes who or what was responsible for the injury that occurred. It is possible for one party to be found 100% at fault, such as with a car rear-ended at a red light. But it is also possible for liability to be shared among more than one party, even parties that are not involved in the case! Whether a party should be held liable for an injury, or to what degree they should be held liable, is also open to interpretation, which is why liability is also frequently litigated.

Damages and liability analysis forms the core of personal injury recovery. Other factors are relevant, but these two must be present, and it makes sense why. If you fell off your own roof by not paying attention... you may break bones (damages) but cannot blame anyone but yourself (no liability). Consider a different scenario where a bicyclist rides into your car, and you feel a light thud... the bicyclist may be entirely at fault (liability) but if there is no scratch or harm on you or your car (no damages), there is no case. Both must be present.

An Unfortunate Truth About Recovery

We would be remiss without mentioning an unfortunate truth to you: the available insurance and resources of at-fault parties involved may impact your ability to recover. It is a sad reality, but if there is no available insurance from any source and the at-fault party is of limited means, our ability to recover for you is also limited. The largest judgment in the world is useless if there is nothing available to recover. This is one reason we encourage people to have insurance policies with adequate uninsured and under-insured amounts.

The Process

If you believe you have a personal injury claim, we begin by meeting you and gathering any available information you may have. This includes collecting your account of what happened as well as the way you were injured, any police reports, any insurance policy information from the parties, any photos or other recorded media, and any medical bills and records. You will not have everything, but bring what you can. We discuss your expectations of the process and anticipated recovery early on to ensure we are a mutually good fit.

During this process, it is important for you to be patient, follow instructions, take it seriously, and continue treating for your injury if still applicable. We would love to tell you it is a fast process forward, but that is not always the case. A quick agreement might be reached with the opposing party and/or insurance company, but it may also takes several months or even a year or two before you finally recover... anyone telling you otherwise is not being fully honest about the realities of how time consuming and expensive litigation can be.

For our part, we "push your case forward" in the court system to ensure it resolves either at trial or sometime before. Because litigation can be expensive and complex, note that on occasion we engage in "co-counseling" relationships with other litigation firms to resolve your case if we anticipate high litigation costs such as several parties and depositions, expert witnesses, or high discovery costs. Should this occur, it is not an additional cost to you as the attorney fee is split between firms.