If you were involved in a car accident, you may be left with questions about what damages you can claim, whether you will be considered at fault, and how to go about getting damages, vehicle repairs, and injuries paid for. Our lawyers have decades of experience helping car accident victims just like you in situations just like yours.
Our attorneys can help you file insurance claims and lawsuits to recover compensation for medical bills, lost wages, and pain and suffering. In cases involving serious disabilities and injuries or a death in the family, these damages can be quite high – high enough that insurance companies might refuse to cooperate or pay without a court order against them.
For a free case evaluation, contact our car accident attorneys today at Rice Law: (410) 694-7291
When to Contact a Car Accident Lawyer in Hancock, MD
If you have been involved in a car accident, then you likely meet all of the qualifications to call a lawyer. Our car accident attorneys give free case evaluations if you call us, where we can discuss what happened to you and help answer some of your initial questions about whether you have a case, how strong it is, and what damages you might be entitled to. Keep in mind that your case would benefit from a lawyer if any of these situations apply:
Your Injuries Involved Medical Bills
If you faced any medical bills from your accident, it is serious enough to get an attorney involved. Insurance companies may be unwilling to cover your medical bills in full, or they might deny that their driver caused your injuries. In these cases, it often takes negotiation through an experienced attorney or potentially even a lawsuit to get your damages paid in full.
Your Injuries Were Serious
We have limited first-party benefits on most policies in Maryland, known as “PIP” or “personal injury protection” coverage. These benefits can help cover your injuries or injuries to anyone else in your car. However, more serious injury cases often require claims against the at-fault party to get your damages paid in full.
As mentioned, the defendant’s insurance company is often unlikely to pay you your full damages after your initial claim, but when claims involve long-term disabilities, permanent injuries, significant scarring, and other serious injuries, these insurance companies might shut down negotiation entirely. It often takes a lawyer and a lawsuit to get your claim paid at all when injuries are serious.
Your Case Involves a Hit and Run, DUI, or Other Serious Violation
If the driver who hit you fled the scene, was driving under the influence, was racing, was driving recklessly, was asleep at the wheel, or otherwise committed some kind of serious crime or traffic violation, your case is likely a bit more complex in a few ways.
For one, hit and run cases can be difficult to file claims for because you might not know who hit you. Fortunately, there may be coverages on your insurance policy that kick in to cover you when the other driver does not have insurance or flees the scene.
Second, these cases often involve criminal charges against the defendant, separate from your civil case. This allows our lawyers to work with law enforcement to borrow their evidence and use it in your case. Plus, if they are successful in prosecuting the driver who hit you, the burden of proof is higher in criminal cases, and our lawyers can often use the record of conviction to help you win your case in court or to settle quickly.
The Case is Complex
If your accident involves multiple cars, commercial drivers, public transit vehicles, deaths, or complex situations, your claim is going to be more complicated. It is always best to have a lawyer on your side, especially if there might be counterclaims trying to pin the crash on you or if you might have to bring your case against multiple parties. Maryland uses very strict rules for fault that stop a victim from being able to recover damages if they shared even 1% of the fault in causing their crash, so our lawyers always need to help protect our clients from these kinds of defenses.
Proving Fault in a Hancock Car Accident Case
Under Maryland law, a driver can be held at fault for a car crash if something they did (or failed to do) violated a legal duty they owed you and resulted in damages. In some cases, the violation is going to be a violation of the duty to drive as an ordinary driver of reasonable prudence would. This means that any objectively unreasonable decisions behind the wheel can often result in liability. Alternatively, a violation of a specific traffic law will suffice, such as running a stop sign or following too closely.
Our laws do allow multiple drivers to be held responsible for a crash involving more than two drivers. When this happens, each defendant driver needs to have violated some kind of duty to hold them at fault in the first place, then the court decides what share of fault they are responsible for. This is usually determined with a percentage, and each defendant pays a percentage of the damages equal to their percentage of fault.
In many cases, the defendant will try to say that the victim shares a percentage of the fault in causing the crash as well. Under Maryland law, this works as a complete defense; if a victim was even 1% at fault for the crash, they lose the case. However, there must be an actual violation that caused the crash; if the defendant’s actions cut off the victim’s liability or the crash would still have happened without the victim’s violation, then they are not at fault.
There are also doctrines like the “last clear chance” doctrine that can help avoid these allegations of “contributory negligence.” With that doctrine, a driver who had the last clear chance to steer clear of the accident and failed to do so will be 100% responsible.
Call Our Hancock Car Accident Attorneys Today
If you were injured in a car accident, call (410) 694-7291 today to speak with the car accident lawyers at Rice Law.