THE QUEENAN LAW FIRMExperienced. Respected.Successful.
TEXAS PERSONAL INJURY, BUSINESS, AND FAMILY LAWYERS REPRESENTING CLIENTS ACROSS TEXAS
Our team of aggressive, strategic litigators is available to assist with Texans’ legal needs from our law offices located in Arlington and Houston. The Texas personal injury attorneys at The Queenan Law Firm, P.C. strive to establish long-lasting relationships and trust by providing responsive, high-quality legal representation to clients for an array of practice areas. If you or a family member needs guidance with a personal injury, family law, or business litigation concern, you will know where to turn. Our attorneys are committed to protecting and enforcing our clients’ legal rights, liberty, and future.
What to Expect in a Personal Injury Case in Texas
When you file a personal injury lawsuit, you will start your case by working with your attorney to explain the details of the accident or injury to the court. Your initial consultation with your lawyer will help give us an idea of what happened and what your case might be worth. After you agree to work with us, we can start building your case and getting all the details we need as to what happened and what damages you deserve. We will then compile those details into a “complaint” and file it with the court.
We will also have to “serve” the defendants in your case with the proper paperwork. This gives them a chance to respond to our filing and refute the claims. Many cases can go back and forth for a few rounds of filings. There, our attorneys will insist that the case should move to trial and the defense will try to claim that, even if everything we said is true, you should still lose the claim. Sometimes, these cases go to oral arguments, and we will appear in court on your behalf to address these motions.
If the case progresses, it will go to a stage called “discovery.” During this stage, both parties will conduct interviews, ask the court to subpoena evidence and witnesses, and finish extracting any and all evidence out of the case. We will determine what is important and whether any evidence should be barred from being used in your case. The Texas Rules of Evidence provide a lot of protections for injury victims, and you might be able to block certain facts from coming in at trial if they are irrelevant to the facts at hand or they paint you in a bad light without providing enough information about what happened and why the defendant was at fault.
It is usually at this stage that cases get settled, but if our Texas personal injury lawyers cannot settle for a fair value, your case will move to trial.
What to Expect at Trial in a Texas Personal Injury Lawsuit
If we cannot settle your case out of court and it goes to trial, you should expect a few days in court for your trial. In many cases, this can seem anticlimactic that it took weeks or months to get to this stage, and then it only lasts a few days at trial.
In a trial, the plaintiff/victim gets to go first. Your lawyer will give an opening statement and review the case with the jury, explaining to them the story of what we will prove happened. The defense will then get their opening statements, where they will explain that our case has too many holes in it or that it does not actually prove anything. From there, we will take turns presenting evidence and witnesses, cross-examining witnesses, and laying out the facts mentioned in our opening statements. At the end, we will get the last chance to speak to the jury and argue why the evidence we presented fully proves your case and shows that you deserve compensation for your injuries.
During your trial, expect both sides’ lawyers to make objections. These objections are usually used to prevent evidence that could be prejudicial or cause legal issues from being used in a case. For instance, the defendant cannot use “hearsay” – statements made outside of the courtroom offered to prove that what is said in those statements is true. Furthermore, the defendant should not be able to bring up things like a past criminal conviction you had to try to paint you as a bad person who does not deserve compensation.
At the end of the trial, the jury will deliberate. Before they do, the judge will give them jury instructions, which can take a long time to get through. The deliberations could take minutes, hours, or days, and there is really no way of knowing how long it will take. You should expect that the jury will come back and request parts of the transcript to be read again or ask certain questions of the judge before they come to their final decision.
Personal Injury
Vehicle Accidents
Family Law
Business Litigation
Our Texas personal injury lawyers practice in broad areas of injury law, and help clients with various type of injuries they may be facing. Some of our more common practice areas include:
Kevin and his colleagues are wonderful! They will go the extra mile to get their clients everything they deserve. If you are in need of a legal counsel or even just advice, do NOT hesitate to give them a call. You will not regret it! –C.B.
Texas Personal Injury Lawyers
Being injured in an accident can take a toll on your entire life and the lives of your families. Our attorneys understand the financial expense that goes into medical bills, transportation to the hospital, child care while you recover, and other costs after serious injuries. We also understand the difficulties you may face if you cannot return to work to continue to support your family. We understand these hardships because we have helped thousands of families in the same situation fight to get the help they need after a serious injury.
Our attorneys fight for compensation for our injury victims. Our goal is to see all of your needs paid for if you were injured because of someone else’s negligence. Whether that means fighting auto insurance companies, suing the owner of the property where you were injured, or taking a large trucking company to court, the lawyers at The Queenan Law Firm work to see your medical bills paid and your lost wages reimbursed.
If you are experiencing serious pain and suffering from your injuries, our lawyers will work to see that you receive compensation for your suffering. Texas law allows injury victims to recover very high damages for their pain and suffering, and places no restrictions or “caps” on the damages. Because of this, pain and suffering damages may be one of the biggest parts of your personal injury case.
Help keep your family going while you recover from your serious injuries. Take your case to the Texas personal injury attorneys at The Queenan Law Firm, P.C.
Damages for Personal Injury Lawsuits in Texas
If you or a loved one was injured in an accident in Texas, you may face expensive medical bills. If your injury keeps you from working, it may be impossible for afford these medical bills and the everyday expenses of rent, utilities, and groceries. Lastly, you may face substantial pain and suffering because of the accident. When you file a personal injury lawsuit in Texas, you may be able to collect compensation for any of these harms.
If insurance is available to pay for damages after your accident, the insurance company may not fully cover the damages you need. Insurance may require you to pay deductibles to get the coverage you need, and some procedures and payments may not be covered at all. Insurance also commonly refuses to pay pain and suffering damages entirely. However, a lawsuit can compensate you for nearly any harms you suffered because of the accident. This includes 100% of the damages for pain and suffering, lost wages, and medical bills.
It is vital to talk to an attorney before accepting any money for an accidental injury. Accepting a settlement may limit your ability to sue for additional damages and could leave you without the funds to cover your needs. Call our Texas personal injury lawyers to discuss how much your injury might be worth and what damages you may be entitled to claim in court.
Every case is unique, and there may be additional damages you did not know you could claim, such as damages for spouses, damages to cover household care costs after a serious injury, and the cost of medical transportation. If your injury prevents you from going back to work or forces you to take a lower paying job, you may also be able to claim ongoing lost wage damages that compensate you for your reduced earning capacity. Talk to a lawyer at The Queenan Law Firm for help calculating the damages in your case.
Filing a Personal Injury Case in Texas
When you are seriously injured, one of the best ways to get compensation might be to file your case in court. A personal injury lawsuit filed against the at-fault parties can help you get your damages paid and hold the responsible parties accountable. Lawsuits can be filed against at-fault drivers for car accidents, against negligent product manufacturers for product defect injuries, and against owners of dangerous property where you were injured.
When you take your case to court, your lawyer will need to prove your case to get you the compensation you need. In most injury cases, your claim will be based on a theory of “negligence” that essentially states that the defendant failed to use the proper care and skill that the law required them to use. If this breach of legal duty caused your injuries, you can receive compensation for any damages you can prove.
To prove your case at trial, your attorney will present evidence and testimony of what happened. Before setting foot in the courtroom, we will investigate your case and collect any photos, videos, statements, and records of what happened. This might require extensive interviews and depositions with witnesses and subpoenas from the court to collect evidence that is in the at-fault party’s possession.
Once the case goes to trial, we will present your case and call witnesses to tell your story. In many cases, your testimony is one of the most valuable pieces of evidence, but testimony from other witnesses and other pieces of evidence will also be essential in building your case.
If we can prove that it is more likely than not that your injury case happened the way that you say it did, the court will be able to award you damages for any harms you faced, including medical bills, lost wages, and pain and suffering.
How Long Should I Wait to Contact a Personal Injury Lawyer After an Accident in Texas?
If you were injured, you should contact a lawyer as soon as you can. Injury cases are very time-sensitive and have a lot of moving parts. First, there are your injuries, which you should get immediate medical attention for. As time goes on, these injuries could worsen or improve, and it is important to document your recovery journey to help provide you with evidence for your case. Second, evidence collection is vital. If too much time goes by, witnesses might forget what happened. Furthermore, any security cameras, dashcam video, or cell phone video of the crash could be deleted. Sending letters to preserve evidence, collecting photos, and getting witness statements should be done right away with the help of a lawyer.
Lastly, one of the biggest factors in why you should work with a lawyer as soon as you can is that your case has legal deadlines attached to it. Personal injury cases in Texas need to be filed within a certain time of the accident or the injury or else your case could be blocked from court. Nothing is worse in a lawsuit than losing your chance to seek compensation because of technicalities like the statute of limitations.
Furthermore, the longer you wait to file, the longer it will take to get you the compensation you need. Call our Texas personal injury attorneys at The Queenan Law Firm as soon as you can after an injury to get a free legal consultation and start your journey to recovery.
Determining Fault in an Accidental Injury Case in Texas
There are many ways that an accident could happen, and there are many potential parties that could be held liable for the injuries you faced. In many accident cases – such as car accidents and truck accidents – the person to blame will be another driver on the road. In cases dealing with dangerous products, the product manufacturer is likely to blame; in medical malpractice cases, the doctor is likely at fault; and in slip and fall cases, the property owner is likely responsible. In some cases, multiple parties or companies might share fault.
If you were injured by someone who was working for a company when the injury occurred, such as a commercial truck driver who caused your crash or a clerk at a convenience store that forgot to mop up a spill, then you might be able to hold their employer responsible as well. This often opens higher damages because the company is able to pay for more serious expenses and harms than the individual employee could cover on their own.
In some cases, multiple people or companies share responsibility. For instance, a dangerous product that injured you or a loved one might have been designed by one company and assembled by another company. If both the designer and manufacturer did something wrong, our lawyers might be able to hold both parties accountable for their fair share of damages. The same is true for car accidents involving multiple drivers or dangerous conditions left by a property owner and the current tenant.
Talk to a lawyer for help determining whom to sue in your injury case and how to hold each party responsible for the harms they caused you.
Personal Injury Cases in Texas: Settlements vs. Trials
If you were injured and need compensation, you might have a choice to make: you could accept a settlement from the insurance company or the at-fault party, or you could take the claim to court and fight your case at trial. Most cases ultimately settle, but it is important to have an attorney review your case and make sure that the settlement you were offered is not too low to cover your needs. If there is any problem with the settlement, a lawyer can negotiate for a better offer or fight the case at trial.
A settlement often leaves out damages, especially if it is paid through an insurance company. Insurance policies can often get damages paid quite quickly, but they often pay only a percentage of the damages. Insurance policies also leave off certain damages, such as pain and suffering, which could very well be a big part of your case.
If you take your case to trial instead, you might be able to claim the damages you faced at their full value. However, you will need to go to trial and prove your claim to the jury to get the damages awarded.
Our attorneys are experienced in negotiating settlement offers and fighting to get our clients the damages they need. We are also experienced at fighting our cases at trial and working before a judge and jury to get our clients what they deserve. We can analyze your case and help you determine the best course of action.
Many insurance companies and big corporations will try to settle cases quickly at low values to make the case go away and avoid paying for expensive damages. Our lawyers can stand between you and these companies and fight to make sure that any offers you receive are fair and cover your needs. These other companies and legal teams do not represent you or your best interests and should not be trusted. Instead, hire a legal team of your own by calling The Queenan Law Firm today.
IF YOU HAVE BEEN INJURED
Hurt in an Accident? Call Our Texas Attorney for Injury Victims for a Free Consultation
Accidents are sometimes strange and confusing, and you may not know where to start with your accident case. Talk to an attorney before accepting anything from insurance companies or the parties responsible for your injuries. It is difficult to understand what your case might be worth without looking into various details of the case, the defendants, and the victims. Our attorneys offer free consultations to help you understand what your case might be worth.
If you or a loved one was injured in an accident, a family member suffered serious injuries at work, or you lost a parent, sibling, or child to a tragic accident, talk to an attorney. Our lawyers can work to get you the compensation you need for your injury case. The Queenan Law Firm has convenient offices in Arlington and Houston. We offer free consultations to help you understand your case, and what our attorneys can do to help. Call our law offices today at (817) 476-1797.
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