Experienced Orange County Personal Injury Lawyer

Injuries are a part of life. No matter how careful we are, we will all sustain injuries of one kind or another in the course of life, some more serious than others.

When you or someone in your care is injured, it is important to find out whether that person is entitled to compensation for the injury. It is essential to take immediate steps to protect the injured person’s rights.

Immediately after an accident, insurance companies begin to collect evidence, interview witnesses, and conduct a comprehensive investigation. They do this to build a case in the event their insured is challenged. They take quick action because soon after an accident, evidence critical to their case may be lost or destroyed.

So, hiring an attorney can be an extremely effective way of ensuring that your rights and assets are protected in much the same respect.

Personal Injury is a general term used to describe an area of the law that relates specifically to the representation of individuals who have been physically and/or emotionally hurt by the actions or inactions of others. In a narrow sense, personal injury means a hurt or damage done to a person, such as a cut, or bruise, or broken limb, as distinguished from an injury to property.

A personal injury law firm will typically represent clients who have suffered damages in the following areas:

Automobile Accidents • Medical Malpractice (both hospitals and doctors) • Product Liability • Aviation and Train Accidents • Slip/Trip and Fall Injuries • and Construction Accidents.

A law firm that concentrates in personal injury will typically not practice in the areas of:

Criminal Defense • Divorce/Matrimonial Law • Wills and Estates • Insurance Defense • Corporate Law • Collections • Bankruptcy • or Environmental Law.

Numerous categories of damage recovery exist for each plaintiff. Depending on your specific case, you could receive compensation for one or many of the following categories:

Past medical expenses • Future medical expenses • Past and present pain and suffering • Future pain and suffering • Disability and disfigurement • Loss of a normal life • Aggravation of a pre-existing condition • Past lost wages • and Future lost income.

In a death case, depending on the specific circumstances, it may also be possible for the decedent’s estate to recover compensation for the aforementioned categories in what is known as a survival action. Further, the surviving next of kin (children), may also be able to bring forth a Wrongful Death; lawsuit for their own benefit and would recover compensation for loss of society and companionship.

Although in many cases it is not essential to retain an attorney immediately after negligence occurs in order to file a lawsuit, there are a number of good reasons to contact an attorney as soon as you believe or learn that negligence may have occurred.

In any type of case, especially automobile accidents, where witness testimony plays a crucial role in the outcome of a lawsuit, memories of the accident are not as fresh as more time elapses. Therefore, many times an attorney will obtain statements from witnesses immediately after an accident occurs, so their memories can be refreshed three or four years down the line when the case is ready for trial. In addition, your attorney can help you with the property damage done to your vehicle. Also the other party’s insurance company is not there to help you, your attorney will protect your rights.

In medical malpractice cases, the more time that elapses between the time of the malpractice and the time in which you retain an attorney, a greater opportunity is created for medical records, nursing notes, physicians’ records, to become missing, lost, and/or destroyed. It should be emphasized that document destruction and/or purposeful misplacement does not occur in every legal action, and, in fact, happens only in a minority of cases. However, it does occur and, therefore, it should be a concern of any potential plaintiff when trying to decide when to hire an attorney. The same concern applies to product liability actions.

Most product liability actions involve a failure on the part of the manufacturer to design and manufacture a safe product for public use. An integral part of any product liability lawsuit from the plaintiff’s perspective involves obtaining all of the relevant blueprints, plans, design documents, hazard analyses, consumer complaints, incident reports etc. Similar to medical records, these types of documents can easily be disposed of or intentionally lost over time.

In California, just because you have been involved in an accident, your insurance rates do not automatically increase. If the other party involved in the accident has insurance and their insurance company pays for all damages, the California Insurance Code states your insurance premiums can not be increased.

It is all right to notify your own insurance company of the accident and your injuries, since most policies require such notification for insurance coverage. However, under almost every circumstance, other insurance companies will contact you for an additional recorded statement which they will maintain in their files. These recorded questions and answers can be used against you in a court of law or even in a deposition and, therefore, you should be extremely careful in answering such questions if you do not have an attorney representing you at the time. However, if you do have an attorney at the time that an insurance company requests that you give a “recorded” statement, your attorney can simultaneously monitor the question and answer session and advise you as to the meaning and ramifications of each and every question. In most cases, we advise our clients to not give a recorded statement to any insurance company other than your own.

Most automobile insurance policies offer a provision entitled uninsured/underinsured motorists coverage. If your policy contains this type of provision, then you can, under most circumstances, recover monies from your own insurance company for injuries that you incurred as a result of the accident, despite the fact that the person who hit you did not have any insurance.

This coverage would also apply in a situation where you were hit by a car which then drove from the scene of the accident and neither you, nor any witness, was able to obtain information about the car or driver. If no information is subsequently obtained about the vehicle at fault, you should then be able to make a claim with your own insurance company. If this happens to you, first make a police report within 24 hours of your accident and then contact your automobile insurance company, also within 24 hours of the accident. In any case, contact an attorney to protect your rights.

A common misconception is that a lawsuit against a huge corporation, such as United Airlines, is impossible to win unless there are several plaintiffs who will all attack the corporation in a class action. This is simply untrue. Single plaintiff lawsuits against airliners are commonly filed, settled, or won at trial. In addition, such lawsuits are not limited to only severe crashes where individuals are killed or severely injured. In fact, some individuals have torn muscles and/or ruptured spinal discs from sliding down evacuation ramps, experiencing rough landings, or having luggage fall from storage bins on their head.

The insurance company for the party at fault will pay for the damages to the vehicles involved in the accident. If you are not at fault and your insurance company begins the process of repairing your car, don’t worry. If the other party is at fault their insurance company will reimburse your insurance company for any money it has paid to repair your vehicle.

Even though you received a ticket for the accident, you may still collect damages against the other driver if the jury determines that the accident was partly his or her fault. This is known as comparative negligence and will be more fully explained by your attorney.