Legal Blog For Professionals

March 17, 2010

How Do I Know If I Need To Hire A Personal Injury Attorney?

You just got in an accident and you are hurt. Most people don’t know what to do or who to call. We’ve all heard about big dollar settlements from cases where someone was hurt, but probably don’t know one of these people personally. And we probably are not attorneys either so we don’t know the law and what our rights are. So how do you know if you need to hire a lawyer?

First of all, to win a personal injury case against someone, you have to be able to prove both 1) that the other person was liable for their actions & 2) you have suffered damages from their actions & your injuries. You need to get some advice from a professional attorney if you feel that this is the case. But how do you find one? There are two great places to start. First go to Google and do some searches for Personal Injury Attorneys in your city. This will give you dozens of qualified lawyers to help you with your case. Second, you can go to lawyers.com. This is a great site that allows you to find attorneys in your specific city, and looking for the area you want. Plus you can do your research on them right away and check on their credentials from their website. See if they are advertising that they have won any money for their clients in the past. This should give you a great starting point to go from.

Automobile accidents are the area that most personal injury actions happen. You need to prove the other person was negligent in the accident. If you are in a fault state, you need to prove negligence by showing that the other driver failed to exercise reasonable care. All drivers have a responsibility to exercise reasonable care when they drive on the roads. When the other driver breaches that responsibility and you are injured, then personal injury law states you can file suit for your losses. However the system is different in states that have passed no-fault laws.

Negligence isn’t the only basis for personal injury claims. Strict Liability is important & a growing area of tort law. It means that if a product is defective, the designer or manufacturer is strictly liable for any injuries caused by that product. You don’t have to prove negligence here, but you do need to prove the products design or manufacturing process made the product dangerous when used the way it is supposed to.

Intentional wrongs are another basis for personal injury claims. But the filings of those cases are rarer. Examples of this are if someone hits you in the face, you might be able to win a lawsuit for battery. Or if you are suspected of shoplifting, and the store wrongfully detains you, you might be able to win a wrongful imprisonment lawsuit. Remember, this is civil damages not criminal charges.

The second element you need to prove is damages. What type of injury did you suffer, and from what kind of accident? How have you suffered? Did you have a lot of medical bills, did you lose out on money from lost time at work? Can you still work? What is the extent of your damages? All of these things factor into whether you have suffered any damages. You need to prove you suffered damages in court, and just because you are injured, it doesn’t mean you are entitled to a guaranteed amount of money. A good attorney will prepare your case for court, even though most of these cases have monetary settlements before actually going to trial.

What is the statue of limitations for that type of case? Every state is different & the time limits you have to file a case are different for the kind of cases you are filing. You have a specific amount of time to file a personal injury case, so you need to know what that is. For example, you might have only one year to file an auto accident case. Once that time is has passed, your case can be thrown out of court.

Personal Injury attorney Las Vegas is a highly searched phrase, and the author, Anthony Flores, helps firms be found when searching for it. So when people are searching for a Las Vegas Personal Injury Lawyer, your firm shows up.

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