If you have been hurt as a result of someone’s carelessness, you probably feel a lot of different emotions – anger, frustration, worry, and anxiety are common. That is not abnormal, and it is certainly understandable. One of our goals is to provide you with information that will help you identify a personal injury lawyer that can you get clarity and the compensation that you deserve from the person that caused your injury.
We’re focused on getting to the heart of your case. It’s really easy to get bogged down in the details of any given case and to get held up with procedural problems. When delays occur, evidentiary problems arise with the loss of evidence and an inability to locate witnesses. Our goal is is to make this process as simple as possible as we can for you and to help you understand what it is going happening with your case – it is your personal injury case. We want you to know what actionable steps we’re taking to make sure that we help you get the maximum recovery out of your case as quickly as possible. Those are our goals and everything that we do going forward should be with those goals in mind.
Whether you have been hurt in a car accident or suffered as a result of the negligence of a doctor, call The Sessions Law Firm, LLC, today for a free consultation.
Your personal injury lawyer should not be the cause of delays in your case.
One of the most frustrating aspects of a personal injury case for many clients is the time delay that’s associated with getting a settlement or judgment in their case. Far too many lawyers wait too long to begin actually investigating and pursuing your claim. That is a real concern in our office. We work diligently to try to avoid this problem in each and every one of our cases. When delays occur, problems creep into the case and it puts off your recovery. A delay could also compromise your ability to get recovery. Let’s say for example, that your lawyer sits on your case for 16 months, does virtually nothing to pursue the claim until about 16 months after the date of the accident. If that were the case, and if that were to occur, then your ability to interview witnesses that may have seen the accident or talk to people who may have information about the accident is virtually gone.
Your personal injury lawyer may have a very difficult time finding and locating witnesses if he/she delays the pursuit of your case. Beyond that, your lawyer may may be unable to pursue the claim because they cannot find and serve the defendant with the complaint because of the delay. Now, if your defendant can’t be located and your lawyer can’t serve them with the complaint through a marshal or through an appointed process server, then you’re not going to be able to maintain a lawsuit against them. If you can’t settle the case within the statute of limitations, it is not uncommon at all for insurers to recognize that your lawyer has procrastinated on the handling of the case and to refuse to settle the case. Then, you’re in a position where a lawsuit must be pursued in order to obtain a settlement or a judgment against the defendant. However, if they refuse to settle the case up against the statute of limitations and you can’t serve the defendant, then you’re in a position where you can’t obtain a recovery. And the case is for all practical purposes, worthless, despite the fact that you may have had clear liability and very real injuries after the accident.
What determines the value of a personal injury case?
You’ll frequently hear people discussing the valuation of personal injury cases talking about value enhancers. Value enhancers are facts in the case that increase what the case is perceived to be worth. Things that increase the value of your personal injury case can take many different forms. Value enhancers may be an extreme or graphic injury caused by the party. It could be exceptional cases of recklessness or negligence by the defendant. For example, a DUI driver in a car accident is a real value driver in most cases. It could also be a repeated pattern of failure to properly maintain a truck, for example. All those things are facts that we can look at as potential value drivers in personal injury cases, and they are by no means an exclusive list of value enhancers or value drivers. We certainly want to look for those things and, particularly, actions on behalf of the defendant or things that the defendant failed to do that could be real value drivers or enhancers.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS IN PERSONAL INJURY CASES
- What is negligence and why does it matter in my Georgia personal injury case?
- Can I change lawyers in my Georgia personal injury case?
- Can I settle my personal injury case myself?
- Should I be cautious about referrals from medical care providers to a lawyer?
WHAT YOU FOCUS ON AFTER YOU HAVE BEEN HURT IN AN ACCIDENT
Video: “What you focus on after you have been hurt in an accident”
If you were to ask me what it is, the one thing that someone should focus on if they’ve been hurt in accident, I would tell you really simply, that the focus of every person that’s hurt in any type of accident, whether that’s a car accident, a work-related accident, an accident that relates to a slip and fall in any type of store, the one thing that those people should really focus on is getting better. That is, getting the very best medical care that they can receive in their set of circumstances. So, focus on yourself, and everything else will sort of take care of itself. If you have questions about your injury case, feel free to call me.
THE IMPACT OF MEDICAL EXPENSES ON YOUR PERSONAL INJURY CASE
Video: “The Impact of Medical Expenses On Your Personal Injury Case”
One of the questions that people frequently ask me is, how is it that their medical expenses actually factor into the value of their personal injury case. What I’d like for you do if you’re in this situation, is focus on the actual quality of care that you’re receiving. Don’t worry about the numbers necessarily. What I’d like for you to focus on is getting the best treatment that you can from the most qualified medical per — professionals that you can find. Follow the course of treatment very, very rigidly that they recommend for you. Don’t deviate from that treatment. Follow that, take care of yourself, get better, and the value of the case will increase along with that. As long as you’re doing the things that you should do on your end, in terms of getting better, getting to feeling better, and making a recovery as well as you can, and following the course of treatment that the doctors recommend from you, from well-qualified doctors, it — the most well-qualified doctors that you can find, that will really help the value of your case in the long term. So, don’t worry necessarily about the amount of money that — that you’re going to recover, based on the treatment that you may or may not get. Instead, focus on getting better, and focus on getting the best treatment that you can. I believe that long term, you’ll get the value out of the case that you should. If you have any questions about your case, please feel free to call me.
IMPORTANCE OF UNDERSTANDING PERSONAL INJURY LAWYER FEES
Transcript – Importance of understanding personal injury lawyer fees
One of the things that I would really encourage you to do, as you’re deciding upon which lawyer it is that will actually represent you and your case, is have a firm understanding of how it is that the fees that the attorney will charge you at the conclusion of the case will actually be calculated. That is, you wanna understand where it is they’re gonna take the money out of, how much it is they’re gonna charge you in each phase of the case, and you wanna understand when they actually move from each phase, whether or not that’s going to be something that will actually net you more money, most likely. So, evaluate those decisions, and understand your fee agreement really well, before you actually engage in the lawyer for representation. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me.
One of the primary factors that an insurance company or a jury eventually may look at in evaluating what the value of your case is whether or not you have any sort of future pain and suffering or future limitations on your enjoyment or of life or, or a future limitations on your ability to earn income. That is a very important, what we call value driver in your case. And we need to make some real efforts to make a decision as to whether or not you do have any limitations on your life going forward as a result of this accident. It’s very important. Firstly, your lawyer recognize how important that is in driving the value of your case. And second that your lawyer has the resources to actually put you in a position where you’ve got an expert witness who can testify to those things that they exist in your case.
And that we understand how important going through an evaluation like that is because it can make a tremendous difference in terms of, of your ultimate recovery and whether or not you are made whole as a result of of this case. So, um, if you have any questions about the future value, um, of your injury or whether or not you do in fact face a, an injury that could possibly have future impairment on your ability to enjoy life or your ability to earn