Car Accident Lawyer
The value of a car accident case is primarily dependent upon two factors: The harm that an accident victim has suffered and the harm that they are anticipated to suffer moving forward. For example, if a car accident victim needed to be rushed to the hospital immediately after the crash occurred, they suffered pain, trauma, and the burden of ambulance and medical bills. If they need to take time off of work to heal, they likely are burdened by the harm of lost wages. If they require follow-up care, have sustained disabilities, cannot return to work, etc., their overall “harm” includes the costs of these forward-looking burdens.
Questioning the Value of Your Accident
As an experienced car accident lawyer – including those who practice at the Cohen Injury Law Group – can confirm, it is important to avoid making assumptions about the value of your case until your circumstances have been thoroughly and objectively evaluated by an attorney. All too often, car accident victims underestimate the overall value of their crash cases. This undervaluation can lead them to believe that they don’t need to fight for compensation now because their harm isn’t “really” that costly. In reality, when accident victims total their past and total burdens related to moderate, serious, or catastrophic injury, the cost of a crash tends to be truly significant.
If you’ve recently been injured in a crash, chances are that you’re in a strong position to pursue at least one kind of compensation related to your harm. This is because California is known as a “pure comparative negligence” state. This distinction means that you can sue any other party whose negligent, reckless, or intentionally dangerous conduct directly contributed to the cause(s) of your injuries, even if you were partially responsible for what happened to you.
Many other states bar car accident injury victims from seeking compensation in the wake of a crash if they were partially responsible for their own harm. California doesn’t honor this kind of restrictive approach. Therefore, it is almost certainly worth your time and effort to speak with a lawyer about your situation if you have suffered injuries and economic harm as a result of a crash. Depending on your circumstances, another driver, a manufacturer of defective auto parts, or a government agency tasked with safe road maintenance may owe you damages.
Calculating the Value of Your Accident
Once an attorney is familiar with the particular ins and outs of your unique situation, they’ll calculate an estimated total of both your economic and non-economic damages. Economic damages are objective and easily quantifiable (medical bills, lost income, etc.). Non-economic damages are subjective and not easily quantified (pain and suffering, etc.). Once your attorney has estimated the total value of your harm and taken into account any role that you may have played in the cause of your crash (reducing the total compensation you’re entitled to collect), you’ll have a strong sense of how much you could expect to be paid if you pursued a lawsuit.