If you’ve suffered a serious injury due to another person’s negligence, it’s very important that you talk to a personal injury attorney as soon as you can. You want an attorney who has experience here in Casper, Wyoming and knows the local courts and the state law as well. An attorney like this will be able to do a lot to help you get the compensation you’re owed for a catastrophic injury.
What Role Does a Personal Injury Attorney Play in Casper, Wyoming Catastrophic Injury Cases?
1. Investigator
One of the first things that your attorney can do for you is thoroughly investigate the accident. If you’ve been badly injured, it’s unlikely you had a chance to gather evidence from the scene of the accident yourself. It’s important to get moving on gathering the evidence quickly, however, because evidence degrades and disappears naturally (as well as unnaturally sometimes when someone wants to cover their tracks). Even video footage is often overwritten after a certain amount of time as standard practice to save space. You want an attorney to subpoena that footage quickly.
Once you contact a lawyer, your lawyer can immediately begin interviewing witnesses, getting photos of the scene, accessing video footage, and seeking any other evidence that may be important. If there’s any chance that someone is trying to hide evidence, your attorney can initiate an investigation and may even choose to hire a private investigator to look into it.
2. Communicator
Insurance companies are usually involved in these sorts of accidents, and the insurance companies do not usually have your best interest at heart. Because they are businesses looking to make money, they often look for ways to minimize your losses. There are a number of tricks that insurance companies may use to accomplish this. One of the most common is to have an insurance adjuster call you very early on and ask for another statement or for you to answer questions. These are often attempts to get you to say something that can be used against you.
Insurance companies may also scour your social media accounts looking for anything that can be used to minimize your injuries or increase the amount of blame they can saddle on you for the incident. Another tactic of insurance companies is to offer an early settlement and suggest to you that this is “all you’re going to get,” to pressure you into signing right away. Usually, the insurer is hoping that you are either so desperate for money that you will take less than you deserve, or they hope you don’t really know what your claim is worth.
Your lawyer takes over all communication with the insurance company as soon as you retain them. Whenever the insurance company calls, you can just say, “talk to my lawyer.” Your lawyer will look at all settlement offers and let you know whether they’re fair and will keep you protected from any insurance company tactics designed to compromise your settlement.
3. Settlement Calculator
Your lawyer also properly calculates the worth of your settlement. In a catastrophic injury, it’s likely that your medical bills will be extremely high, and you need to make sure that everything is included. You should be compensated not just for what you’ve already had to pay but also for what it’s likely you’ll have to pay into the future. After a catastrophic injury, most people need extensive physical therapy, possibly surgeries, medications, and may even need permanent help for life.
Your lawyer will also help you calculate the cost of things like modifications that have to be made to a home or vehicle so that you can live with a new disability, the loss of income you’ve suffered because of your injury (including the possible future loss of income if you have a permanent disability), and all kinds of peripheral things you might miss otherwise.
Beyond that, your lawyer will help you properly calculate the worth of your non-economic damages. These are the losses that can’t be quantified with receipts and include things like reimbursement for your pain and suffering, mental anguish, loss of enjoyment of life, and more. In some cases, punitive damages are also appropriate. These are not meant to reimburse you for any particular loss but to punish the person who caused your injuries, if that’s appropriate. Punitive damages are very rare and are only applied when someone was grossly negligent or deliberately tried to injure you. Your lawyer can tell you whether these are appropriate to request and will help you calculate and ask for them, if so.
4. Negotiator
Negotiation is a huge part of these claims. Insurance companies always go into these situations expecting to bargain, and they know how to bargain well. They don’t want to pay the full value of your claim, and even if they did, there are always gray areas in such claims. For example, if you have a catastrophic injury that has compromised your ability to work, there can be differing opinions among equally qualified doctors about exactly how long you will be unable to work or whether you’ll be able to return to the same job (and thus the same kind of income) as you had before the accident.
There can also be questions about liability. Wyoming allows you to collect damages so long as you’re not 50% or more at fault in an accident, but the amount of your total compensation is usually reduced by the same percentage as your fault for the accident. Sometimes fault is shared and sometimes fault is unclear. All of these are opportunities for negotiations, and one of the most important things that your lawyer will do for you in a claim is to negotiate hard for your rights and for the highest compensation possible. Studies show that those who bring a personal injury claim with a lawyer almost always walk away with a bigger settlement—even after the lawyer’s fees have been removed—than those who try to go it alone.
5. Legal Guide
Probably the most important role of all for a lawyer is precisely that: to be a lawyer. Your attorney knows the law and will bring this knowledge to bear on your case, helping you to understand how the laws apply to you, how to use them to get the most compensation possible, where and when to file claims, etc.
Your lawyer will know how the Wyoming courts have interpreted the law in cases similar to yours in the past and can guide you on what to ask for and what to expect. Your lawyer also understands all the legal language and the frustrating complexity of the terms involved and will explain these to you. And of course, if your case goes to court, your lawyer will take care of everything in the courtroom, from presenting your case effectively to cross-examining witnesses and challenging evidence brought by the other side.
Your lawyer has a lot of roles in your personal injury claim. For experienced help, contact us at the Ochs Law Firm in Casper, Jackson, Cheyenne, Cody, Laramie, or Teton Village and surrounding areas.
