They may also consult with expert witnesses to describe the impact whiplash had on your career and personal life. Combined with appropriate medical documentation, this attorney-client relationship can prove whiplash after a car crash. A proven personal injury law firm can work with you to ensure you receive the maximum compensation for your accident injuries.
Seek your free case evaluation today to learn more about the average whiplash settlement amount, settlement timeline , and how much your personal injury case may be worth. A car accident can occur in just one moment, but it can cause a lifetime of trauma. Car accident victims can suffer from several From rear-end collisions to side-swipe accidents, any type of car crash can cause physical harm, mental anguish, and a lot of Did you know more than , car accidents involving neck injuries are reported annually in the U.
From rear-end The Severity of The Injury Whiplash is an umbrella term for a neck injury caused by rapid head movement. Medical Bills and Lost Wages Medical expenses and lost wages mount quickly for a severe whiplash injury. Pain and Suffering Pain and suffering is a phrase used to describe the negative impacts of an accident.
Receiving a Payout from an Insurance Company for Your Whiplash Claim To receive a payout from an insurance company for your whiplash injury claim, you must send the company a formal demand letter describing your damages. Filing a Lawsuit Against an At-Fault Party for Your Whiplash Claim After being rejected or receiving minimal funds from the insurance company, the next step is to file a personal injury lawsuit against the at-fault driver.
How to Provide Proof of a Whiplash Injury It is paramount you receive medical attention immediately after a whiplash injury. Categories Personal Injury. Related Posts. If the case goes to court, the attacks on their integrity will ramp up exponentially.
Whiplash is a clearly defined condition that the American Medical Association recognizes at face value. If you have suffered a whiplash injury, call it what it is, hire a lawyer and move forward with the process, because there is work to do.
The amount of compensation you can receive for whiplash injury depends on how severe the injuries are, the degree to which your normal life is affected, and whether you can achieve the life you knew before the accident.
Special damages refer to losses that can be assigned a monetary value, because they can be verified through bills and receipts for things like out-of-pocket medical expenses and lost wages. Awarding of general damages is more apt to be tied to precedence than special damages, and that is the element of your whiplash claim that is most likely to be challenged in negotiations or courtroom cross-examination.
An impact strong enough to cause whiplash injuries likely caused additional injuries. They might be minor or serious. Adding them to your overall whiplash claim is simply done, but negotiations can get sticky.
There is essentially no difference in how damages are calculated. Special damages are based on verifiable evidence and general damages are based on pain and suffering. Your best strategy here is work with your attorney and inventory all the injuries, note how much they hurt and how much they affect your lifestyle. With your attorney working on your behalf, you can establish a figure that actually covers your needs.
You are entitled to receive compensation for:. The first two categories are easier to calculate than the second two, but ease of calculation has no bearing on how much your case is worth in terms of compensation.
Insurance companies and their lawyers will use past histories of similar cases to try to influence the potential whiplash awards, but your case is specific to you. In most states, mutual aid agreements among police, fire and ambulance services require them to respond to an automobile accident call unless dismissed by the dispatcher.
The sooner you seek medical attention, the sooner you will start to heal. This is also important for the claims process, but your primary objective at this point is getting your injuries treated. If you are injured severely enough, you will be admitted to the hospital for continuing care, but you may also be treated and released, with a recommendation that you seek follow-up care with a physician.
Do not skip this step! Some complications do not present themselves for days, or even weeks later, and you want as much medical intervention as you can get. It damages your case to be treated and released or to decline medical assistance at the scene of the accident , followed by a long gap before you sought additional medical intervention.
Part of the reason for their unmatched winning percentage is that they are experienced enough to recognize a case that has great winning potential and one that is problematic. No attorney wants to accept a case with problems that will be difficult to resolve. Contact Patrick Daniel Law by calling or contact us online. Companies and insurance firms that represent them do not want you to hire a lawyer.
Do not delay on the basis of not knowing what your final total will be for medical expenses and lost wages. Those factors can always be edited later. Follow all the steps required in filing the claim — copies of bills, the police accident report and pertinent documents. However, there is one thing you should not do. DO NOT give a personal statement, either by voice or in writing. You are not required to provide a personal statement, yet you will almost certainly be asked for one, and the caller may insinuate that you are somehow required to provide a statement.
There are extenuating circumstances under which providing a statement could be beneficial to your case, but do not act without consulting your attorney first. Nothing impedes the progress of an insurance claim or a court case quite like missing evidence. Whether the evidence was never collected in the first place, misplaced or mishandled, it can make or break your case.
If you file a claim immediately — as you should — your claim will by default be incomplete when you first file it.
Take as much care with preserving this evidence as you did with the initial documents. As already mentioned, your testimony is subject to challenge and vulnerable to misinterpretation. Hard evidence is unflinching. The entire process, if your claim becomes a lawsuit, can take from six months to over a year before final verdict.
But 95 percent of all personal injury cases are resolved prior to going to trial. Reaching a pre-trial agreement can take anywhere from two to six months, but there are many exceptions and so many variables that expecting your case to follow the pattern of other cases would be an exercise in futility. They often perform Jekyll and Hyde routines with claimants before the case goes to court and plaintiffs after the case goes to court , coming on cheery at first and then getting stern and intimidating when it suits their purposes.
Rogers is welcoming you to his neighborhood. For them, the business at hand is to get your signature on a whiplash settlement, a settlement that they will promote as being very generous, a settlement that they are sure will take care of your needs and happily send you on your way back to the life you once knew. You can be assured that the first offer will be an amount the insurance company can live with.
If you decline the offer or mention that you want to take some time to think about it, they may tell you that there is a time limit, and that the offer will no longer be valid after a certain date. Insurance companies can extend or withdraw offers as much as they like, impose deadlines and write conditions on settlement, but none of that reduces their obligation to pay whiplash injury compensation to those who deserve it. Insurance companies will often attempt to advise claimants that the offer extended to them represents an average settlement for whiplash, something all insurance companies believe is reasonable.
This probably will come with a take-it-or-leave-it attitude, along with a prediction that any attempt to gain a better settlement will meet with failure.
Never give a statement to the insurance company or the opposing attorney. Statements can be misinterpreted, taken out of context or used against your credibility if the case goes to court.
The law is on your side in this regard. You do not have to say anything, period. You should, however, speak openly with your attorney to provide him or her with all the information needed to litigate your case. There is a difference between a statement and a deposition. If you are asked to provide a deposition, it should be approached with the same demeanor as courtroom testimony, because in a way it is. In a deposition, all parties from both sides are present, and you are placed under oath.
You must tell the truth when providing a deposition, and answer questions from either side. This is part of the discovery process in a legal case, where the facts are gathered and refined. The nature of damages relevant to whiplash injuries also factor into the timing filing a claim or lawsuit. In most cases of whiplash injuries, the true extent of the physical damages suffered by a patient, most notably to their soft tissues in the cervical neck region, are not readily apparent immediately following an accident or injury.
Often, the full extent of symptoms may take several days up to a week to be recognized by both patients and legal professionals. Moreover, this is only applicable to relatively minor whiplash injuries, whose symptoms will likely dissipate on their own in due time.
In more serious cases, whiplash injuries can pose prolonged and immediate medical issues for victims. Though often written off as nuisance claims , whiplash injuries are actually very serious medical injuries, depending on the extent of the over extension of the soft tissues and ligaments in the neck. The cervical region is integral for appropriate mobility and physical comfort, and any significant alteration or damage to this region in a victim does pose potentially lifelong complications affecting their physical ability to move and live free of pain.
Like other soft tissue injuries, though, whiplash is hard to document in medical records it doesn't show up on x-rays or other diagnostic tools making the claims process a little more difficult. Most whiplash-type injuries go away within a week, and even the most serious cases will see a patient be symptom-free within three months.
So, if you've been experiencing lingering symptoms of a neck injury -- stiffness, pain, limited mobility, tingling, numbness, and other signs that something isn't right -- you may have something more significant than a standard "whiplash" injury.
Great comunication and always kept me up to date. Our whiplash claims team has almost years of combined legal experience. Our legal services are offered on a no win no fee basis, meaning there is no financial risk to you when claiming. This means you may receive significantly more when claiming with us than with another firm.
We recommend you speak with our solicitors to discover your legal rights following your injury and the level of compensation you may receive. Each claim is different, and the process length depends on how complicated the case is. A conversation with one of our solicitors is the best starting point for you to understand the unique nature and potential length of your claim.
Please call our legal advisors so that we can understand your claim better. We can then advise if you have a legal right to claim. Our experienced legal team are usually able to advise you if you can claim on your initial call, which will take no longer than 5 to 10 minutes.
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