What Are Some Warning Signs Of A Bad Attorney To Consider When Hiring A Personal Injury Attorney?
The first warning sign you should watch for is whether the attorney you are considering hiring will not really answer any of your questions directly. If he or she keeps saying, “I will answer your question after you sign the contract, that is probably the first and foremost warning sign that this attorney probably is not the attorney for you. You want an attorney that is willing to answer your questions, all of your questions, and educate you first and foremost. If they are not willing to do that upfront without a contract then they are probably not somebody that you should sign up with.
Secondly, you do not want an attorney that...
Common Mistakes Detrimental To A Personal Injury Claim
One of the things I have seen people do nowadays that has derailed and has harmed many people’s cases is they go online and they discuss their case on Facebook. For example, it is not just Facebook, but Twitter and any of the other social media out there. They discuss the details of their case, the details of their accident with people that they consider their friends. And these folks probably are their friends, but unfortunately, maybe in the moment they are very mad about what happened to them and they say stuff that is actually damaging to their case. They are angry at the person who caused the accident and they say things in that...
Can You Negotiate Medical Bills On Behalf Of Your Client?
When you negotiate your medical bills, I call it working both sides of the equation with respect to your case. We will make sure to gather together all of your medical bills that you have incurred as a result of the accident and get them submitted to the appropriate insurance companies to get them paid pursuant to those insurance policies. Then when the case is resolved, if you have medical bills outstanding, we will often negotiate down those medical bills that are outstanding with the healthcare providers, because sometimes the healthcare providers will charge an individual who has exhausted their health insurance or exhausted their...
How Soon Should Someone Seek Medical Treatment After An Accident?
It depends upon the injury, but we always suggest that you immediately seek the advice, evaluation, care and treatment of a physician immediately after an accident if you think there is any chance you may have been injured in that accident. An office consultation with the family physician is not that expensive. If you do not get medical treatment shortly after an accident and your injury is soft tissue in nature, such that it is not going to readily show up on an x-ray or a diagnostic study, then your gap in medical treatment and not having gotten medical treatment right after the accident is going to make it extremely difficult to...
What Factors Constitute A Viable Personal Injury Claim?
The first and most important factor is probably good quality medical care that is consistent with the nature of the injury and without any gap in medical treatment. The second most important quality of a good personal injury claim is honesty by the injured victim. Tell the healthcare providers about their past, about what they have been doing since the accident and what happened in the accident. The third probably most important quality and I am not really ranking them here, so I would be a little hesitant to rank them this way, but these are probably the three most important qualities.
That is the quality of the medical documentation....
Do Most Personal Injury Cases Settle Prior To Trial?
Most cases here, even in Kansas, in a very conservative case, will settle, as high as ninety percent will settle before a lawsuit even has to be filed. Then you have that ten percent that a lawsuit is filed on, and even of those, only about one percent of the overall cases end up going to trial. Even in the conservative state of Kansas where jury verdicts are not as generous as they are in other parts of the country, because we have conservative jurors and the environment here is such that the perception is that jury verdicts should be lower than other parts of the country, most cases do settle before they get to trial.
The reason...
The Top Misconceptions About Working With A Personal Injury Attorney
People think that a personal injury attorney is in it for themselves and going to take a majority of their proceeds. That a personal injury lawyer may not really help them in the sense that they could do it on their own and get the same type of settlement, because other people have told them that, or the insurance industry or insurance adjuster has told them, “We can settle this for you, you don’t need a lawyer, and we’ll pay you the value of your claim or policy limits, if you hire a lawyer, he is just going to take that portion that we were already going to pay you. Little do they understand that when they reach a settlement, many...
What Steps Should I Take In A Premises Liability Claim?
First thing they should probably do in a claim, is get somebody there on their behalf to the scene of the accident immediately. Have that person take pictures using their camera phone of the premises, and of the defects where the individual fell. Take pictures of the entire premises to get an idea, so whoever is looking at the pictures sees the layout of the place where the accident occurred. Secondly, I would recommend that they identify all of the video cameras that may have possibly caught him or her coming on to the premises, and may or may not have caught them falling on the premises, or injuring themselves on the premises.
Thirdly,...
What Elements Constitute A Viable Premises Liability Claim?
The elements would show evidence upfront about the nature of the premises, and the defect that caused your accident. Good evidence would consist typically of pictures that show the defect that caused your accident. The videotape of your actual accident would go a long way in proving your premises liability claim or lawsuit. Those are the two main elements if someone claims a premises injury, and they are established through photographs, videotapes, and how the accident occurred. The videotape verifies that it is the plaintiff who is involved in the accident or injury on the date in question.
Then your case is proven halfway. Obviously,...
How Is Causation Proven In A Premises Liability Claim?
Typically, causation in a premises liability case is proven by surveillance from the videos. There are so many cameras surveilling stores, homes, businesses than there ever were before. In the last ten years, video cameras have exploded in numbers, both in home and businesses. The first thing you do is observe to see if the premises have any video cameras. Then pursue the videotapes that those cameras have produced. Once you get the videotapes, you hope to prove that the person fell on the premises on the date in question. That is one part of the causation, and then the other part of the causation is getting medical providers to review...
What Is A Premises Liability Claim In Kansas?
A premises liability claim is any claim involving an injury that occurs because of some defect, or negligence that is perpetrated or caused by a property owner, and premises liability claims can also consist of slips and falls. They can consist of trips over dangerous or hidden conditions of the premises. It can consist of stairs being improperly designed such that they cause somebody to fall and suffer an injury. Many of the premises liability claims that we have handled, have involved concrete structures, such as sidewalks, parking lots, or exterior stairs that were ineffectively constructed, or defectively designed, and placed...
How Long Does It Typically Take For A Catastrophic Injury Claim To Resolve?
In catastrophic injury cases, it is dependent upon how soon you reach maximum medical improvement for your catastrophic injury and the nature of the catastrophic injury. If it is something that is going to need lifetime treatment, no matter what a doctor does, then the case can probably be resolved relatively quickly, within six months, even though the person is under active medical care. On the other hand, if the outcome is not going to be known for a while, then you have to wait in the hopes that your outcome from the doctor, suggests a permanent prognosis, and permanent treatment recommendations before you have to file a suit.
There...
How Can Someone Know The Worth Of Their Catastrophic Injury Claim?
The value of a catastrophic personal injury claim is usually dictated by two main factors. The first is the amount of insurance that is available to pay a settlement. This will often be a limited amount, and so a person needs to make sure that whoever is responsible is not independently wealthy, or has money beyond their policy limits. The second factor is the cap in Kansas, which has limits on how much you can recover in pain, and suffering. We are currently working on a number of cases that if they go through the litigation process, they will well exceed the cap in pain, and suffering damages.
If we have to litigate these cases...
What Kinds Of Injuries Are Considered To be Catastrophic In Nature?
Generally speaking, there are four types of catastrophic injury cases. The first type of injury case is the type of injury that affects a person’s activities of daily living. It prevents them from doing things that a healthy person would be able to do in an ordinary day. These would be injuries like paraplegia, quadriplegia and amputations, all of which prevent folks from walking normally. This can affect their ability to get around and care for themselves in an everyday life setting.
The second type of injury is the type of injury that prevents a person from returning to the workforce or their occupation. Those would be injuries,...
What Can Someone Expect In A Personal Injury Trial?
Usually, in Sedgwick County, Kansas a case can be tried within a year of the date of having the accident. In other jurisdictions or counties, it is anywhere from a year to two from the date that the petition is filed before the case is tried. Most personal injury cases in Kansas result in a trial of less than one week and four to five days of trial. The whole trial experience from beginning to end lasts no more than a week to a week and a half if the jury hands down a verdict.
How Does Going To Trial Affect The Overall Cost Of A Personal Injury Claim?
Going to trial will result in typically two to three times the case expenditures...
Does The Involvement Of An Attorney Impact How An Insurance Company Evaluates A Claim?
I would tend to agree that an attorney could affect how an insurance company evaluates a claim; except I would say that, it really depends who you have involved in your claim more so that whether you have an attorney or not. There are many attorneys there that are merely settlement attorneys, and that want to settle quickly. Some insurance companies know who those attorneys are, and they will treat your claim very much as if you are unrepresented because they know that lawyer is not likely to go to court than you are if you are not represented by a lawyer. Therefore, you need to make sure that you have a competent lawyer that is willing...
