Were you just injured in an accident that was not your own fault? Do you believe someone else should be held accountable for your damages and losses, such as medical expenses, hospital bills, lost wages, and pain-and-suffering? If so, your first step is to educate yourself and to hire a personal injury attorney.
Continue below for a brief explanation of the Indiana personal injury process, plus where to get started on your accident claim by learning more about your case.
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What to Expect From the Personal Injury Lawsuit Process in Indiana
When someone is injured due to the negligence of another person, they may file a claim with the insurance carrier for the at-fault party and a personal injury lawsuit, if necessary. In Indiana, the court process for these types of cases can be complex. Here is an overview of what you can expect if you choose to claim suit for a wrongful accident and injuries in the Hoosier state:
The first step in filing a personal injury lawsuit is to file a complaint with the court. The complaint must state the facts of your case and what damages you are seeking. Once the complaint is filed, the defendant will have approximately 23 days to respond.
If the defendant does not respond, the court can enter a default judgment in favor of the plaintiff. If the defendant does respond, the next step is to engage in discovery. This is the process where both sides exchange information and documents relevant to the case.
After discovery is complete, the next step is to file motions with the court. These motions can be used to ask the court to make a ruling on certain issues in the case. For example, a motion for summary judgment can be used to ask the court to rule in favor of the plaintiff or the defendant without having a trial.
Once all of the motions have been ruled on, the next step is to go to trial. This is where both sides will present their evidence and arguments to a judge or jury. The judge or jury will then make a decision on who should win the case.
Schedule a No-Fee Case Evaluation to Learn Your Rights
If you are considering filing a personal injury lawsuit in Indiana, it is important to understand the court process. This overview should give you a general idea of what to expect. However, it is always best to consult with and hire an experienced injury attorney in Indianapolis to get specific advice for your case.
If you’ve been injured in an accident, the last thing you want to do is try to handle everything on your own. You need someone who can help you navigate through the legal process and get the compensation you deserve. Continue below to learn some of the top reasons why you should hire an Indiana personal injury lawyer after being negligently injured in an accident, plus how to get started on your case as soon as today.
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Why Hire an Accident Lawyer in Indiana?
Some people choose to try to represent themselves in legal cases, whether it is because they cannot afford an attorney or because they believe they can handle the case on their own. However, this is not only a risky proposition due to errors that can be made due to lack of knowledge of the rules, it is a decision no person should really make. Even attorneys who are injured as a result of the negligence of any person or entity should obtain an attorney who specializes in the type and area of law involving their claim.
Without the training and experience of a qualified and experienced accident lawyer who knows all the ins and outs of the law of a particular type of case, you cannot possibly know how to best present your case. In our experience, a non-specializing attorney or non-attorney altogether obtain less favorable outcomes than if you had hired an experienced attorney who specializes in the correct subset of the law.
If you’ve been injured in an accident in Indiana, you may be wondering whether or not you should hire a personal injury attorney. Here are five good reasons to consider hiring one:
You may be entitled to more compensation than you realize.
Accident attorneys are experienced in fighting for the maximum amount of compensation their clients are entitled to under the law. This could include not only medical bills and lost wages, but also pain and suffering, property damage, and other types of damages. Such damages can include physical, emotional, and financial losses. If you’ve been injured in an accident, you may be entitled to compensation for these damages.
You will need help dealing with insurance companies.
After an accident, you will likely deal with your own insurance company as well as the at-fault party’s insurer. Insurance companies are in the business of making money, and they attempt to minimize the amount they have to pay out on claims. An experienced civil litigator can help you navigate the insurance claims process and fight for the compensation you deserve.
Your case may require litigation.
If the at-fault party’s insurance company is unwilling to offer a full and fair settlement, you may need to file a personal injury lawsuit. Only an attorney who has experience litigating such cases will be able to handle this process effectively.
You have a limited time to file a claim.
Most personal injury claims are subject to a statute of limitations, which is a law that sets a deadline for filing a claim. If you miss the deadline, you could be barred from recovering any compensation. An attorney can make sure your claim is filed on time. Moreover, a tort claims notice is required to made within a very short time period following an incident against a city, county or state defendant or you are barred from later making a claim. These time limitations are as low as 6 months.
You should not have to worry about the cost of legal representation or whether or not your own interests are being looked after.
Accident lawyers in Indianapolis typically work on a contingency fee basis, which means they only get paid if you recover compensation in your case. This allows anyone who has been injured in an accident to seek the legal help they need without worrying about the cost. In addition, you can have peace of mind that you have an experienced and knowledgeable representative on your side and your side only.
Personal injury law is a complex area of the legal system that can be difficult to navigate. If you have been injured due to someone else’s negligence or the negligence of employees of a corporation, it is important to know your rights and how to protect them.Contact the Law Office of Craven, Hoover, and Blazek P.C. at 317-881-2700 to schedule a free case evaluation with an experienced accident lawyer in Indianapolis, Indiana. We also represent injured victims all across the state, Indiana citizens injured in other states and citizens of other states injured in Indiana.
When you know you are not at-fault for a recent accident that caused you injuries and damages, you might be eager to obtain justice through an Indiana personal injury claim. Continue below to learn which court system you might file your personal injury lawsuit, plus where you can get trusted legal advice regarding your recent accident and injuries.
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Common Factors That Influence Where You File an Injury Lawsuit
There are many factors that will ultimately determine which court system is the right fit for your personal injury complaint. Whether you file in small claims court or state civil court will be dependent on the location or jurisdiction of the accident site, scope of injury, extent of damages, and more.
Small Claims Court
Small claims court deals with just that: smaller level claims. They adjudicate cases that involve a lower level of damages and losses, or more plainly, the amount of compensation you are seeking for such damages and losses. Although the set limit for small claims can differ among states, they typically range between $3,000 and $15,000.
There are some benefits to pursing a personal injury lawsuit through small claims court. The legal process is generally quicker, easier, and cheaper. However, small claims court is less formal and because damages in small claims court are capped, it is not the choice for serious cases, like wrongful deaths and similar catastrophic accidents or any case that is valued over the small claims limits.
Civil Court
Civil litigation allows civilians like yourself to seek financial justice after being wrongly victimized by another person or entity. In comparison to small claims court, civil court deals with personal injury cases that involve a higher level of damages and losses, and therefore, higher settlement demands and verdicts. Personal injury complaints that are requesting more than $15K in damages should be filed and adjudicated in the proper branch of the state’s civil court system.
Common cases include serious motor vehicle accidents, medical malpractice, serious slip and fall cases, brain injuries, wrongful deaths, and catastrophic accidents like falling from heights, chemical explosions, house fires, and plane crashes.
How to Get Started With Your Personal Injury Complaint
It is critical to the outcome of your case, namely the amount of compensation you are awarded, to hire a skilled and experienced Indiana personal injury law firm to manage your case. Your accident lawyer will navigate every step of your case from start to finish with the objective to obtain the maximum settlement or verdict for your claim. Trust your personal injury attorney to handle the unique needs of your case, including filing your complaint with the right court system and obtaining the evidence necessary for you to win your case.
Are you ready to schedule a free case evaluation with a seasoned personal injury lawyer who can help you understand the next best step in the legal process?Contact the Law Office of Craven, Hoover, and Blazek P.C. at 317-881-2700 to get started, today. We represent victims all throughout the state of Indiana and Indiana residents injured in other states.
Shopping carts are such a common commodity that many people fail to realize just how dangerous they can be. When used, corralled, or maintained negligently, shopping carts can cause serious and long-lasting injuries to both adults and children. If you or your child recently sustained injuries in a negligent shopping cart accident, you may be wondering if you have a valid legal claim, either against the proprietor or another shopper.
Continue reading to learn some helpful information about shopping cart injury claims, plus who to trust for dependable legal advice regarding personal injury cases in Indiana.
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Shopping Cart Injuries and Legal Claims
Shopping cart accidents can involve children and adult shopping carts. These days, shopping carts found at retail stores come in all sorts of styles, from racecars and miniature shopping carts for children to adult size shopping carts, basket carts, double tier carts, platform carts, and more. As for the a conventional, adult-sized shopping cart, a new study the Clinical Pediatrics journal reports that between the years 1990 and 2011, more than 500,000 children were admitted into the emergency room due to shopping cart related injuries. Using this data, the study reveals that an average of 24,000 children go to the hospital each year for shopping cart related injuries, which comes out to sixty-six hospital admissions every day.
With astonishing statistics like these, it is important to protect yourself and your loved ones from negligent shopping cart accidents. If you or someone you love was injured by a shopping cart due to the negligence of the store, the shopping cart manufacturer, or another shopper, it is important that you contact an Indianapolis personal injury lawyer to learn your rights for pursuing a legal claim against the at-fault party.
Types of Shopping Cart Injuries
Unfortunately, the safety standards for shopping carts are not regulated on a state or federal level. Instead, they are voluntarily implemented by the shopping cart manufacturer themselves. For this reason, shopping cart safety standards are unbalanced. Furthermore, there has been no observable decrease in shopping cart injuries since 2004 when safety standards were moderately revised for shopping carts.
The most common types of injuries that result from shopping cart accidents are head injuries, orthopedic injuries, lacerations, and contusions. These kinds of injuries commonly result from falling out of the shopping cart, but also due to the shopping cart tipping over, getting run over by a shopping cart, running into the shopping cart, falling over the cart, or getting stuck in the shopping cart (or a body part stuck).
Suing the Store or Another Shopper for Shopping Cart Injuries
Under premises liability laws, store owners are responsible for maintaining a business that is safe and free of any foreseeable hazards. If the store owner failed in any way to protect you from a shopping cart accident, they can be held liable for your damages and losses. If the shopping cart manufacturer is solely responsible for a shopping cart accident, perhaps because the shopping cart was defective or poorly designed, or lacking the proper warning labels about the cart’s risks, the claim would fall under product liability law. In some cases, the shopping cart manufacturer can be held responsible along with the store owner.
If another shopper causes a shopping cart accident because they were reckless or negligent in some way, it can be deemed a civil wrongdoing under Tort law. In this case, the injured person could bring about a claim under tort law and recover compensation for their damages and losses.
Do not start your legal claim process without the help of a seasoned personal injury lawyer who can help you determine the best course of action for your case. Contact the Law Office of Craven, Hoover, and Blazek P.C. at 317-881-2700 to schedule a free case evaluation with a skilled personal injury lawyer in Indianapolis, Indiana. We represent clients all throughout the state, plus Indiana residents injured in other states. We can hold meetings via phone or online video conference, so there is never any need to travel.
After being injured in an accident by the carelessness of another, many victims are legally entitled to some degree of reimbursement or compensation for their losses. These losses include damages like lost wages, medical expenses, hospital bills, prolonged rehabilitation, mental trauma, pain, suffering, property damages, and more. In extreme cases where the wrong doer demonstrated egregious misconduct or caused such trauma that compensation is not a sufficient means of amends, punitive damages may also be awarded by a court or jury.
Although a victim of a negligent act or accident is truly a victim and should be compensated for their damages, pursuing a lawsuit for such restitution may not always be in the victim’s best interest. Most often, a personal injury lawsuit is the path wrongly injured victims should take, but in some instances, it may not be the best option for a number of reasons. For this reason, it is wise to consider whether a lawsuit is a worthwhile endeavor.
Continue reading to learn a few considerations that can help a personal injury victim decide if a lawsuit is the productive course of action to take after being hurt in an accident.
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Examining the Details of the Accident
After being injured in an accident at the expense of another person or entity, it is important to indicate three aspects of the incident. First, it is critical to consider the actual level of fault of the opposing party.
What was their role in the incident?
Did they have a legal duty of care to prevent such accidents from happening to the same class of people as the victim?
Would a reasonable person have foreseen the possibility of the accident happening?
Did they take reasonable action to prevent such accidents?
There is much more involved in determining fault in a personal injury case, but these are a few inquiries that come into play when assessing liability. Sometimes, it can seem like an accident was the other person or company’s fault, when in fact, they are cleared of such liability for several other reasons. If a person does not have a strong enough claim against an opposing party, or if the opposing party is not the majority at-fault, there may be no point to a personal injury lawsuit.
Comparative Fault Analysis
It is also important to consider the victim’s own liability in the accident. This is referred to as comparative fault analysis. According to USLEGAL.com, Comparative Fault Analysis is defined as, “…a doctrine of tort law which permits plaintiff and defendant to compare their liability for the accident. It allows proportionate recovery if both the plaintiff and defendant were negligent and thereby contributed to the cause of an injury.” So, one must ask themselves what was their level of fault might be? Could they have prevented their injuries? Should they have reasonably foreseen that such an accident could happen? Was what they were doing at the time of the incident reasonable?
For example, consider a winter blizzard. On a snowy and icy day, a young man visits a grocery store wearing roller skates. Although there are wet floor signs posted everywhere and the store attempted reasonable clean up, he ignores them and continues to skate his way through the store, eventually wiping out and injuring himself badly. Since a reasonable person would not wear roller skates to a grocery store in those conditions because they know that floors will be wet and slippery, and since the grocery store took reasonable action to try to clean and to post “wet floor” signs as a warning to customers, the level of fault might fall onto the man. In this case, the store would not be held liable or fully liable for his injuries. A personal injury lawsuit might be futile in this example.
Extent of Damages
And the third aspect to consider is the severity of the victim’s injury and the extent of damages incurred because of the accident. If the injury is not so serious that it caused the victim to suffer calculable financial losses like medical bills, lost wages, and loss of ability to work.
For instance, let’s say a person is wrongly rear-ended by another driver and the collision causes the airbag to deploy. As a result, the person who was rear-ended incurred minor airbag burns on their forearm but no other injuries. Because these burns are minor, they only required one doctor’s visit in which the physician orders the patient to use OTC topical ointment to soothe the burns as they heal. Because the accident did not cause them to suffer serious damages and losses, a personal injury lawsuit would be useless, although if a settlement were not reached with the at-fault party’s insurance carrier, a lawsuit in small claims court might be sufficient but again, the pros and cons of your time and effort in obtaining a small claims judgement would need to be weighed.
Had the car accident resulted in a head injury, orthopedic injury, or similar serious injuries that require extensive medical treatment and ongoing rehabilitation, the circumstance would change, and a personal injury claim and possible lawsuit would be worthwhile filing.
Prospect of Compensation
Aside from the three aspects of the accident, it is important to think about the possibility of compensation. Although a court can rule that a victim is owed compensation, the court is not the one to pay it, and neither is the government unless the claim was brought against the government. All compensation that is court- ordered to the victim or their families has to come from, in almost all cases, the defendant’s insurance company. If a defendant has no insurance, and has very little assets, income, or savings, there is little chance to get the compensation. They usually cannot pay a judgment if they could not afford to carry liability insurance. For this reason, pursuing a lawsuit is most often not worthwhile, but every case needs to be looked at individually.
Would you like to learn more about your opportunity to obtain compensation through an Indiana personal injury claim or lawsuit?Contact the Law Office of Craven, Hoover, and Blazek P.C. at 317-881-2700 to schedule a no-risk, no-fee personal injury evaluation to explore your eligibility, today. We represent clients all throughout the state of Indiana and Indiana residents injured in other states.
There are many elements involved in pursuing a personal injury claim, but the most important one is proof of damages. Not only do personal injury claimants hold the burden of proving more likely than not that the opposing party was negligent, but they also must prove more likely than not their damages and losses. After all, if a personal injury plaintiff cannot show how much their accident and subsequent losses have cost them, they cannot possibly win their claim, let alone obtain a fair settlement or verdict.
The best method for ensuring that all personal injury expenses are collected, organized, and preserved for the sake of proving a claim is documentation. Continue below to learn some critical tips for keeping track of your personal injury costs, plus how to find trusted and experienced personal injury representation near you.
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Personal Injury Record Keeping
In order to guarantee good organization of your personal injury expenses, it is important to record them right away. Your records should be gathered and preserved with care so that they can easily be handed over to your Indiana accident attorney and aptly applied to your case. It is important to keep a list of all medical providers so you can provide that list to your attorney so they can make sure all medical records and medical bills have been obtained.
Medical Treatment
After being involved in a wrongful accident, it is necessary to begin the record-keeping almost immediately, starting with medical care. You have a few options depending on the circumstances of your accident. You will need to either seek treatment at the scene by EMT’s, have an ambulance or someone else take you to the emergency room, or make an appointment with your doctor.
In all cases, it is critical to see a doctor or medical professional as soon as possible after noticing signs of injury. Although nobody wants to go to a doctor, it is important to make sure nothing is being missed when it comes to your health. Keep all records and paperwork you receive from your medical treatment, including all bills and invoices and provide them to your attorney.
Lists
Before and after seeking medical treatment, it is strongly encouraged for personal injury victims to keep a list about their accident, injuries, expenses, missed events [work, vacation, etc…]
Additional Document Requests
In addition to requesting and retaining copies of your medical records, receipts, and billing invoices, it is also important that you and your attorney obtain a copy of the police report for your accident. Making a police report at the scene of an accident is important for many reasons, whether the law mandates it for your incident or not. This is especially true for car accidents that result in bodily injury. In such cases, injuries may not appear until days or weeks later. These are known as late-appearing car accident injuries or an onset of symptoms. If you are employed, it is necessary to retain copies of past paystubs, plus proof of missed wages from time off work.
Any party who is required to provide a legal standard of care for a dependent or subordinate, such as a child, elderly person, or employee, must uphold their duty of care. Otherwise, they may face serious civil consequences. This legal principal falls under the category of negligent supervision, within personal injury law.
Continue reading to review some frequently asked questions about negligent supervision and how it pertains to tort law.
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Frequently Asked Questions About Negligent Supervision
What is Negligent Supervision?
Personal injury cases arise when one party’s negligent action or inaction is the responsible cause another party’s injury and subsequent losses. When a mandated caregiver provides inadequate supervision or management over their charge, and as a result their charge is seriously injured, they could face a negligent supervision lawsuit. This tort law also applies to employers and employees. If an employer does not take the proper steps or precautions to ensure safety standards at the workplace, and as a result, an employee or customer is injured, they can be held liable for all damages resulting from the accident, subject to worker compensation law limits.
Who is Protected Under Negligent Supervision Laws?
Most negligent supervision cases surround children, elderly persons, and employees. They can also involve anyone else in long-term medical care, whether in-home or at a facility. Children who are under the care of daycare staff, school bus drivers, teachers, coaches, instructors, nannies, babysitters, and any other authority in charge of looking after their safety and well-being can become victims of negligent supervision.
Elderly individuals and those who suffer from severe mental or physical challenges are also common victims of negligent supervision. These victims are generally in a long-term care or treatment facility, or in the care of an at-home nurse or orderly.
Employers can also be guilty of negligently supervising their staffs. Employers are responsible for ensuring that their staff is properly adhering to all company policies, regulations, and safety standards. They must also ensure that they themselves are avoiding harmful or wrongful behaviors, plus preventing any wrongful actions of their employees.
What are Some Examples of Negligent Supervision?
A nanny is hungover from the night before and falls asleep on the couch. As a result, the child in their care wanders outside and gets hit by a car.
Parents allow their teenagers and friends to consume alcohol under their roof. As a result, a kid gets alcohol poisoning or into a serious car accident after they leave.
A daycare attendant fails to lock up a toxic cleaning solution as protocol requires. As a result, a child ingests the chemicals and suffers serious or fatal injuries.
A teacher heading detention leaves the classroom for a period of time without having another teacher cover for them. As a result, a fight occurs among students that causes serious injury to another student or teacher.
High school or college coach turns a blind eye to locker room hazing, and as a result, a teammate gets seriously injured or killed.
How Do I Prove That a Party is Guilty of Negligent Supervision?
There are 4 key elements that must be present for a valid negligent supervision case. First, the individual must have had a duty of care to supervise the victim. Second, the individual must have failed to properly supervise the victim. Third, the individual’s failure to supervise led to the victim’s harm. And fourth, the incident that caused harm to the victim must have been a foreseeable event might happen that any reasonable person could anticipate and prevent with proper supervision.
Where Can I Get Trusted Guidance for a Negligent Supervision Claim?
Cases vary in detail and jurisdiction, so it is important to discuss your state’s particular laws and procedures for negligent supervision with a seasoned Indianapolis personal injury lawyer. They can determine your case’s strength and help you pursue legal action against them by filing a claim or lawsuit. If a judgement or settlement occurs, the defendant’s liability insurance carrier would have to pay it, subject to any insurance limits.
Are you ready to get in touch with a trusted negligent supervision lawyer who can help you get started on the right path toward financial justice?Contact the Law Office of Craven, Hoover, and Blazek P.C. at 317-881-2700 to schedule a free initial consultation with an experienced personal injury attorney in Indianapolis, Indiana. We represent victims all throughout the state of Indiana and Indiana residents injured in other states.
After sustaining serious injuries in a wrongful auto accident, you may be entitled to pursue legal action against the negligent party to obtain compensation for medical bills and similar economic damages. If you obtain a settlement or judgment against the negligent party, their insurance carrier will pay the settlement of judgment, up to the negligent party’s liability insurance limits.
The best strategy for obtaining a full and fair car accident injury settlement is to hire a licensed and experienced personal injury attorney who specializes in motor vehicle accident claims. From there, they may implement an effective strategy to support the full value of your claim that involves creating a solid letter of demand to the at-fault driver’s insurance carrier. A demand letter is a formally written document that becomes the basis for negotiating compensation for your resulting damages and losses.
Continue below to learn what you need to know about car accident claim demand letters, including what they entail, why most cases require one, and why you should never attempt to write your own.
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The General Template for a Demand Letter
Demand letters are written with a strict focus on facts first, followed by opinions. Facts that are generally included in a demand letter are as follows:
Description of why the claimant believes the other party is to blame. Did they run a red traffic light? Or maybe they neglected to stop at a stop sign? Whatever the violation or cause may be, it should be included in the demand letter.
Description of ALL injuries sustained by the claimant, how they were sustained, how they are being treated, and how the injury or wound is healing or is healed.
A breakdown of all medical-related financial losses associated with the accident, including hospital bills, medical expenses, and any other evidence and documents showing missed time at work, physical therapy, counseling, medical equipment and supplies, fuel costs traveling to and from medical appointments, and similar losses.
Information about an IUM claim, if applicable. This is when the other person does not have insurance, or their insurance wasn’t enough to cover the medical expenses and other damages and losses.
This typically completes the introduction of a demand letter. Next is the actual demand section. The demand segment of the letter requires a different set of guidelines that should be followed by the claimant and their legal team. In this section, claimant’s demand compensation for:
Medical Expenses – The hospital can provide documents proving a claimant’s injuries and the treatments that followed. Claimants can also provide bank statements, invoices, and other forms of billing evidence that shows the dollar amount associated with the medical treatment.
Liability – Description of how the accident happened and why the other driver was at fault. This should include police reports, photos and witness statements to support the allegations.
Lost Income – All information on the total amount of lost wages incurred because of the injury. Description of how the injury affected the victim’s ability to work and make money, plus proof on how much time they had to take off from work.
Comparative Negligence – If the defendant’s insurance company attempts to argue comparative fault on the party of the plaintiff/claimant, the plaintiff/claimant’s attorney can argue the facts to the insurance adjuster on why such an argument is without merit.
Emotional Distress and Pain and Suffering – Description of injuries sustained and how they have affected the victim’s everyday life, including pain and suffering and relationships, and more. Also, a detailed description of the injuries and accident and how they have caused the victim suffering and trauma.
What to Keep in Mind as You Proceed With Your Auto Accident Claim
Demand letters are important ways to begin the negotiation process of a car accident claim. They can be complicated and could possibly make or break your compensation claim all together. It is strongly encouraged to hire a seasoned Indiana personal injury law firm to navigate all elements of your claim, including writing your demand letter.
Are you looking for a qualified Indiana auto accident lawyer who can represent your best interests in a car accident claim?Contact the Law Office of Craven, Hoover, and Blazek P.C. at 317-881-2700 to schedule a free consultation with a seasoned car accident attorney in Indianapolis, Indiana who knows how to obtain the maximum settlement or verdict for your claim. We represent victims all throughout the state and Indiana residents injured in other states.
There are various factors that influence the total timeline of a personal injury case. Some cases may take only a few weeks or months, while others might take two years or more if a person sustains substantial and on-going injuries and problems. Consult with an experienced accident attorney to understand the elements of your case and the predicted length of time it will take.
For now, continue below to learn more about how long personal injury claims take and where to get trusted legal advice surrounding your accident case concerns.
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Complex Personal Injury Cases Take Longer to Settle
You can roughly get a feel for the amount of time it will likely take for your claim to settle by the complexity of the case. The more complex the case, the more difficult it will be to adjudicate, which delays the settlement phase even longer. This is especially true for cases that go to trial.
Certain Liable Parties Can Attempt to Delay a Personal Injury Case
Another factor that can extend the timeline of a personal injury case is the type of liable party, or parties. If the liable party, or defendant, is a company, corporation, or government entity, or if there are multiple liable parties (defendants) in a case, the process can take longer.
Proving Negligence and Extent of Damages Can Take Time
As a claimant in a personal injury case, you hold the burden of proving that the opposing party is at fault for your accident and subsequent damages. Your Indiana personal injury lawyer will document a strong and impactful case to prove that the opposing party breached their duty of care, or was otherwise negligent, and as a direct result, caused your accident and damages. In addition to proving negligence, your team will need to prove your damages to support reasonable compensation.
To gather all the relevant evidence needed to prove your case, your lawyer may need to hire expert witnesses, forensic specialists, accounting experts, and accident reconstruction services, or prepare witnesses, including yourself. These needs add to the overall time it takes to reach a settlement or verdict.
How Long Care is Needed
The longer an injured person needs to obtain treatments, the longer it will take the case to resolve. This is because it takes some time for doctors to determine if a person’s injuries are permanent or not. If an injured person’s injuries are permanent and will last a lifetime, then obviously that would need to be taken into account when attempting to determine a full and fair settlement value for the case.
In some cases, insurance companies require claimants to acquire legal representation for their claim. If the claimant is hospitalized or comatose for several weeks after a catastrophic accident, they are not capable of retaining a lawyer for the purpose of pursing an injury claim. This scenario would increase the expected timeline of the case.
Refusing to Accept a Settlement Offer Will Extend Negotiations
It is important to trust your personal injury lawyer with their evaluation of your case. If you refuse every settlement offer you get, you can expect the process to take longer. You can feel confident in accepting an offer that your attorney agrees is full and fair and the attorney should explain to you why they believe the offer is fair. If an offer is not fair, your attorney should also explain to you why that is their opinion.
Back and spinal injuries are serious, as they tend to result in higher levels of pain and longer periods of recovery. Herniated discs are a type of spinal cord injury that can impose a series of damages and challenges in a victim’s life, and his or her family’s life. If you are a victim of a personal injury accident that caused you to suffer from a herniated disc, it is important to acquire all evidence to obtain the justice you deserve.
Continue below to learn important information about herniated disc injuries and accident settlements, plus where to get trusted personal injury legal advice near you.
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Herniated Disc Injuries
As a spinal cord injury, herniated discs are painful and challenging to rehabilitate. Also called ruptured discs, herniated discs cause patients to experience high levels of immobility, pain, stress, and exhaustion. Sometimes such accidents are so serious, they completely disable a person.
Needless to say, herniated disc injuries cause victims to experience a lot of hardships and distress. Not only do they usually lose time at work and the ability to care for their children, family, or dependents, but they are also forced to miss out on important events in life, suffer through painful physical therapy, surgeries, injections, etc…, spend a lot of out-of-pocket money for related expenses, and much more. To make matters worse, ruptured discs tend to take a long time to heal, often several months or even years and sometimes they cannot even be operated on.
Herniated disc injuries require extensive treatment, which usually involves diagnostic testing, physical therapy, steroid injections, and medications like NSAIDS, narcotics, and muscle relaxers. In many cases, surgery is necessary to remove a part of the bone around the injured disc, known as a laminectomy, which relieves some pressure. In more serious cases, patients may need to have the entire disc removed (discectomy), an artificial disc installed, or spinal fusion surgery, which aims to stabilize the spine by fusing two or more vertebrae.
Personal Injury Damages
As a wrongfully injured victim suffering from any type of spinal cord, back, or neck injury, you will learn just how quickly all these expenses add up. Expenses include, but are not limited to:
▶ Lost Income From Missing Work ▶ Medicines and Medicinal Treatment ▶ Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation ▶ Diagnostic Testing and Evaluation ▶ Medical Equipment (Crutches, Braces, Wheelchair, etc.)
Ruptured Disc Injuries Can Show Up Later
A delayed onset of injury is very common among herniated disc patients, who often times do not experience any symptoms right away. That is because the pain can arise during periods of activity or movement, then fade during times of rest. As a result, sufferers initially tend to think they are not really injured as bad as they are. But as time goes on, the symptoms become stronger and more persistent.
Pain, tightness, stiffness, numbness, tingling, and burning sensations can and sometimes appear gradually after someone is in an accident that causes a herniation in the back or neck. These are the most common symptoms of a ruptured disc. Common accidents that cause herniated discs are auto accidents, construction accidents, and slip/fall accidents.
Would you like to learn how you can bring about a successful claim against the party that caused your herniated disc injuries?Contact the Law Office of Craven, Hoover, and Blazek P.C. at 317-881-2700 to schedule a no-risk, no-fee consultation with an experienced spinal cord injury lawyer in Indianapolis, Indiana. We represent clients all throughout the state, and there is no need to travel. We can hold case evaluations via phone or online video conference.
