Cloverly Car Accident Lawyer
Drivers and passengers injured in car crashes could face long roads to recovery. Injuries could keep them out of work or require expensive medical procedures and long-term physical therapy. However, there is no reason to face this road to recovery alone.
Our attorneys can help you ascertain the full extent of your damages and fight to get them compensated in court. Our attorneys will work with you to file insurance claims and lawsuits and even take your case to trial if necessary to get you the compensation you deserve.
For a free case evaluation, call Rice, Murtha & Psoras at (410) 694-7291 and speak with our car accident lawyers right away.
How Do I Know Whether I Have a Car Accident Case?
If you were injured in a crash, then you likely have a strong enough case to bring it to a lawyer and get the help you need. Most car crashes involve property damage alone, which might make the case a better candidate to handle through the insurance process. However, any time you face injuries, you should go to the hospital – and that will result in more expensive damages just for a simple evaluation, let alone for extensive medical treatment.
As for understanding when you have a case against someone else, it is important to understand how fault is determined. Courts look at which driver broke the law when determining who is responsible for a crash. More specifically, any traffic violation that led directly to the crash would make a driver at fault. Alternatively, if they did not violate a traffic law per se but still did something unreasonable or unsafe, that could also supply fault.
Our car accident lawyers can investigate your case and help you understand what damages you can claim, which parties to hold responsible, and what amount of compensation you could be entitled to.
What Evidence to Use in a Car Accident Lawsuit in Georgia
Car accident cases often use evidence in many different forms. Some evidence takes the form of testimony, which will come out in court, but the rest consists of records and photos. You should do your best to collect these items and keep them in a safe place, then turn them over to your lawyer to use in your injury case.
Medical Records
Any treatment you seek from your accident should produce medical records. These will show what was treated and the basics of how serious your injury was. They will also have times and dates of treatment on the records, so you should always get your injuries looked at quickly after an accident. Any delay in treatment could hurt your case because it gives the defense room to argue that your injuries were actually caused by some other accident in the interim.
Bills and Receipts
Any payments you make because of the accident should be reimbursed. This can include not only the medical bills for treatment after an injury but also other incidental costs. For example, if you have children and needed to arrange childcare while you were in the hospital, that is a new cost you would not have faced if it were not for the accident. All kinds of bills and receipts should be reimbursed, from therapy costs to vehicle repairs to replacement household service costs.
Pay Stubs and Income Records
Records of how much money you made before the accident and how much you make after the accident can be used to show how much you suffered in lost wages. If your injury is severe enough that you cannot work anymore, your pay stubs from before the injury will prove how much income you lost from the injury. Even if you have reduced wages now, your pay records will show this.
With more complex forms of income like self-employment income or part-time/seasonal work, more records might be necessary to prove how much you lost.
“Pain Journals”
You should track your recovery process so that you can later testify more accurately about how much the injury hurt you, what mental and emotional effects it caused you, and how long the pain and suffering lasted for. This will help you be more specific about how severe your injury was, potentially helping us put a value on your pain and suffering damages.
Eyewitness Testimony
People who witnessed the car crash – including you and any passengers in your car – can provide testimony and statements about what they saw happen. This is excellent evidence, and most juries will weigh eyewitness testimony as some of the strongest evidence in your case. You may want to consider writing down what happened so you do not forget and so you can reference these notes later when preparing to testify.
Expert Testimony and Reports
Some witnesses who testify in court do not testify about what they saw or heard on the day of the accident but rather about some expert analysis they made about your case. Accident reconstruction experts, doctors explaining your medical care and prognosis, and financial experts calculating your ongoing future lost wages might all be used in your case. We may even have to find industry experts who can testify about auto defects, road defects, tire defects, or other mechanical or technical issues that might have contributed to your crash.
Calculating Damages for Car Accident Victims in Cloverly, MD
As mentioned, we will often need bills, receipts, and records to prove the expenses you faced in your case. We can also project future lost earnings to claim these lost wage damages as well. To calculate “non-economic” damages like pain and suffering, we can use your statements about how severe your injuries were. We can also apply various calculation methods and adjust these values up or down to arrive at a fair calculation for these damages.
At the end of the day, calculations are very case-specific, so our attorneys will need to dive into the specific facts of your case before we can accurately estimate damages in your case.
Call Our Cloverly Car Accident Attorneys Today
If you or a loved one was injured in a car crash, call Rice, Murtha & Psoras’ car accident lawyers at (410) 694-7291 today for a free case evaluation.