When to hire a traffic collision attorney

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Whether or not you need to hire an attorney after Accidentes de auto is a crucial decision. You have the right to hire an attorney before you talk to insurance companies, but you also have the right to go against the insurance companies yourself. The insurance companies are there to make profits, and not to make friends. 

Remember that insurance companies can’t make these profits if they pay you lots of money. Therefore, they may do anything to avoid paying the money to you. While a representative of an insurance company may pretend to be a good friend, it’s worth noting that insurance companies intend to pay little money so that they continue making more money for their business. This page discusses when to hire a traffic collision attorney.

The best time to hire an attorney

Whether or not you decide to hire a traffic collision attorney is completely up to you. However, if you want to get a lawyer for the car accident case, it’s good to one immediately, preferably the day after a traffic collision, or even a day or two after the accident. There are good reasons for doing this as described below:

Legal deadlines

There are many legal deadlines that you must meet, so a good traffic collision attorney can ensure that you meet them. The well-known deadline is perhaps the statute of limitations, which can vary depending on the state where the traffic collision happened. The statute of limitations sets specific time by which you need to file your case with the trial court. 

There are also other deadlines, though they are not well-known that you must know about. This can depend on the type of insurance that is involved because an insurance policy may need that you tell the insurer about the accident immediately or as soon as practical. 

You see, deadlines like this are quite common in many car insurance policies. If a government entity gets involved because at-fault party works for the government or due to negligent roadway maintenance, then you need to meet ante litem deadlines that can be short like six months or a year. Missing these deadlines can cause serious problems, and it can mean losing the case.

Preserving evidence

Evidence can sometimes last for a short period, such as surveillance camera footage. In most cases, you can find some evidence in some surveillance videos from businesses close to the accident scene that can prove to what happened and figure out the party at fault. 

No doubt,video like this is important, but it doesn’t last that long. Many businesses tend to delete or even record-over the surveillance camera footage in just a couple of days or weeks. Therefore, if you decide to get this evidence about a traffic collision, then your attorney needs to act fast. 

Another form of evidence is known as roadway evidence. So roadway evidence can include car accident debris like broken pieces of headlights, skid marks, and wheel gouges that are on the road’s shoulders. If there is a dispute about the one who was wrong, it’s crucial to go to the scene of the traffic collision and preserve this roadway evidence. 

You need an accident reconstruction expert to use this roadway evidence to show how the traffic collision happened. However, this evidence can also disappear if the attorney moves slowly because wind, rain, and other traffic can remove it. 

The cars themselves that were involved in the accident are also evidence. The damage to the vehicles can indicate how severe the collision was, and assist an accident reconstruction expert determine the way the accident occurred. But again, it’s a good idea to move fast. 

If the damage to the vehicles is important, an Abogados con Experiencia en Lesiones Personales may need to take photographs of the cars, or even get an accident reconstruction expert to do a 3D scan of the vehicles before they are crushed or repaired. This doesn’t leave you with a lot of time. If the vehicle can be repaired, then the car accident attorney needs to take the 3D scan or photographs before doing the repairs. On the other hand, if the vehicle is totaled, the attorney must get the 3D scan or photographs before the vehicle gets crushed and sold as scrap.

Medical treatment

If you know your doctor who treats you for the injuries after the traffic collision or you have good health insurance, then this may not be a problem. However, some people get injured in traffic collisions and may not have good health insurance or may not figure out where to go for medical treatment. 

Keep in mind that your urgent care clinic or local emergency room can only do some things to get you going. Therefore, if you require medical treatment but don’t have good health insurance or where to turn to, then a car accident attorney can guide you in the proper direction.

Witnesses

Unfortunately, witnesses may lose interest and memories fade quickly. In some cases, after an accident, witnesses can be willing to come forward and tell what they saw. This is the time when these witnesses have clear memories of you in pain, or they are just angry at the driver who was at fault for not paying attention. 

However, over time, some witnesses tend to forget about the accident and become less motivated to talk about what they saw. They sometimes dread the idea that they will be talking with attorneys or the chance of getting called to testify in court. If witness testimony is crucial, then it’s a good idea for the car accident attorney or the investigator to contact the witnesses immediately after the accident, before the fading of their memories or motivation. The attorney may usually take a written or verbal statement to preserve everything the witness remembers. 

Tricks used by insurance companies

It’s always a good idea to hire the best car accident lawyer immediately after the accident. You can contact an attorney on the day of the accident, or within a couple of days, but before giving a statement to the insurance companies. This is because insurance companies usually use some tricks to avoid paying a full settlement. Well, if you have still not decided hiring an attorney, perhaps you need to do it if you see the following from the insurance company:

Delay in the car accident settlement

There are several benefits insurance companies gain by delaying the cases. It means that they can hold onto your money longer so they can earn interest for themselves. While the time drags on, your medical bills are piling, so you become desperate for money and the chances of an insurance paying a low amount increases. 

Worse still, if the insurance company delays and you fail to act, then the statute of limitations can run out. At this point, you can lose the rights to get the compensation for your injuries. In most states, the statute of limitations is usually just two years that you are required to file a legal case for your personal injuries. 

Insurance companies use various delay tactics. For example, they can send a friendly insurance agent who gives you small amounts of money to keep you pleased with the hope that you may not hire a lawyer who can immediately know that you are running out of time to file a lawsuit. The insurance company can even send you some money to repair your car. However, they may not send money that would cover the present and even future medical expenses.

The insurance company can ask for medical records to examine them. They can even promise that they are trying their best working on your behalf to complete the case and pay you. But when you give them these medical records, they can even tell you that they need more information before they make an offer of a full payment. 

This can keep going on and on until the statute of limitations runs out. At that moment, it means you have lost all the rights, and there is no way they can honor the claim. These little amounts of money and the promise of a larger pay-off can immediately stop.

They can simply stop responding or picking up their phones, leaving you wondering what is happening with your claim. All these can be an attempt to manage you until the statute of limitations expires or it can just be that the insurance company doesn’t have adequate adjuster to look after their customers.

They can pretend that they don’t have to pay your medical bills

Some insurance companies usually claim that if a workers’ compensation policy or a medical insurance company has paid for the medical bills, it means they don’t need to compensate you. 

This is not right because the at-fault driver or the insurance company of the at-fault driver needs to compensate for your medical bills, regardless of whether or not you have medical insurance. The idea is that the person who causes the accident or injuries you should not get a discount on the injuries or damage that they cause simply because you were smart enough to get insurance.

There is also something that many insurance companies may not tell you after the case is finalized. You see, some workers’ compensation or medical insurance companies can come after you and demand that you pay back the money for the medical treatment that they covered.

This process is known as subrogation. Therefore, if the insurance company refused to pay for the medical bills, this leaves you in a bad financial position. Think about this, the car insurance company may have only paid a bit of money perhaps for pain and suffering, and now the workers’ compensation or medical insurance company tells you to pay that money back to them so that it can cover for the medical bills. 

They under-count the medical bills 

Medical treatment providers, such as doctors, hospitals, or even surgical centers usually send the bills in some unusual ways. For example, if you go the emergency room, you can have several bills coming from that one visit. The hospital can send one bill, the ambulance company can send the second bill, and the ER doctors may also send another bill. 

Surgeries also work in the same way, the hospital where the surgery is done can send a bill, the doctor who does the surgery can send a bill, and the anesthesiologist can perhaps also send another bill. Remember that you need to be compensated for all these medical bills.

Most car insurance companies know this, but they may not tell you about it. They can sometimes identify just a single or two bills, and then claim that was all they needed to pay you for. Unfortunately, you may not realize it until after the case is finalized that the insurance company didn’t pay all the medical bills that it was expected to. By that time, it can be too late, so you may have been cheated.

They use usual pleasantries against you

After a car accident, it’s normal to be polite and take care of the other individual, even if the other individual was at fault. Sometimes, you can tell the other person to stop worrying or even suggest that the traffic collision wasn’t the other individual’s fault. Well, keep in mind that the other individual’s insurance company can attempt to use this kindness against you. The at-fault party’s insurance company can claim that the statement meant that you were admitting to fault or you were not injured, even if this is not what you meant.

Some states use what is called comparative negligence, meaning the compensation is usually reduced by a certain percentage you are to blame. So if you are at least 50% or above to blame, then you cannot collect anything. It means the insurance company of the other party can focus on proving that you were partly to blame because this reduces their payout. Simply put, by putting the blame on you, the insurance company can keep more money for itself.