If you were hurt while walking and have questions about what to expect after a pedestrian accident? Call our Kansas attorneys to get started.
Choosing the Best Attorney
When choosing an attorney to handle a pedestrian accident claim, you want to make sure that you find someone that is focused on handling these types of cases and their core focus is injury cases and in particular pedestrian injury cases. You don’t want to hire somebody who handles a little bit of everything, the attorney that you know that handles divorces and wills and traffic tickets and those kinds of things. You want to find an attorney that’s core focus is on personal injury and in particular pedestrian injury accident.
You also want to find somebody that has experience and success in handling these types of cases. They will know how to work up your case. They will know how to present the case to the insurance carrier to get the insurance carrier to pay a fair and reasonable amount for your injuries. Most importantly, another thing you want to make sure you look for is a trial attorney. Not all attorneys are trial attorneys. Trial attorneys are attorneys who are experienced in taking cases to trial.
Not all attorneys are willing to take a case or even capable of taking a case to trial, so you want to make sure you find someone that is able to take your case to trial if the insurance carrier’s not willing to pay a fair and reasonable amount for your injuries. A trial attorney will work your case up from the beginning with the intention of taking it to trial if that’s necessary. Make sure you find somebody that is an experienced trial attorney to help you with your pedestrian accident case.
Common Mistakes To Avoid
It’s important to make sure that you collect all the evidence that you can, you take photographs, that you collect witness statements or at least contact information right away there at the scene, or if you’re not in a position to do that that you hire an attorney right away that can do that for you. The more time that goes by, the more evidence is lost. Things change, and witnesses forget what they saw or change the story from what they told you there at the scene, so you want to make sure that you gather the evidence right away.
Another common mistake is that they don’t go get the treatment that they need. People will oftentimes wait to get treatment thinking that they’ll get better from their injuries, and they won’t need to go to the doctor, and then two, three, four weeks down the road, they’re still having problems. It’s important to get in to see your doctor right away so that you can make sure you’re getting the treatment that you need and get started on that treatment right away and also to make sure that your injuries are well-documented. If you wait too long to go to the doctor, the insurance carrier will use that delay in getting treatment as an excuse to delay or maybe deny your case entirely.
Another mistake people make is that they will give statements to the insurance company without the assistance of an attorney. That’s a huge mistake. You do not want to give a statement to the insurance carrier. The insurance carrier’s sole focus in obtaining a statement from you is to gather evidence that will help them delay or deny your claim. Even though you feel like you’re going to tell the truth, what harm could there be in talking to the insurance carrier, the insurance carrier is skilled at getting information, asking questions in a certain way, maybe asking the questions in a certain order that will be detrimental to your case.
Probably one of the biggest, most common mistakes we see is people hire the wrong attorney to represent them. You want to make sure that you have an attorney that understands this area of the law, that has experience and success in handling these types of cases and is willing to take your case to trial if that’s what’s necessary to get the best recovery for you. Don’t make these common mistakes. Hire an attorney early and quickly and hire the right attorney.
Case Value
There are different types of damages that you can pursue in Kansas. One is economic damages. Those are things like payment of medical bills, prescription costs, lost wages, both in the past and anything that you anticipate needing in the future. Your damages can also include non-economic damages, which are things like pain and suffering, inconvenience of having to go to doctors’ offices, the worry about whether you’ll recover from your injuries, how life will be in the future, and the impact on your life and your family as a result of your injury. Once we know that information, including all of those economic damages as well as the non-economic damages, we’ll be able to help you determine the value of your pedestrian accident injury case.
Case Timeline
This is a question that is specific to and unique to every person individually. It’s impossible to give you an answer that applies to everyone. The important thing is that you focus on getting the treatment that you need and recover from your injuries. While you’re doing that, we will be working on your case and preparing your case and gathering all the evidence and having everything ready to go so that when your doctor says you are done with treatment, we will then present a demand to the insurance carrier to see if we can settle the case.
If the insurance carrier is willing to be fair and reasonable and pay the full extent of your damages, then we might be able to reach a settlement agreement quickly and get your case resolved pretty fast. If the insurance carrier is not willing to be fair and reasonable and pay you for the damages that you’ve incurred, then we might need to pursue your case further, file suit, and take your case to trial in front of a jury. Those steps will, of course, take more time, but regardless of how much time it takes, our goal is making sure we get the best recovery for you, and we will make sure that we do that even if that does require more time involved on the claim.
Were you or a loved one severely injured in a pedestrian accident in Kansas and have questions about what to expect after a pedestrian accident? Contact our experienced Kansas pedestrian accident lawyers today for a free consultation and case evaluation.
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