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If you or a loved one was involved in an accident, your life might be overturned. Even if the accident was only moderate or mild, expensive medical bills could be more than you can absorb, and time away from work may hurt your costs and expenses.
Getting compensation is possible for many accident cases, but you should work with a lawyer. This can help you avoid being taken advantage of by insurance companies and help you get compensation at the full value you deserve.
For a free evaluation of your case, call The Queenan Law Firm’s personal injury lawyers at (817) 476-1797 right away.
What Are the Elements of a Personal Injury Case?
Most personal injury claims are for “negligence.” This is a tort – like the civil law version of a crime – filed against a person or company who injures you through carelessness, recklessness, or inattention. This is the usual claim for accidental injury.
You can also sue for intentional injuries, usually by filing an assault or battery claim – or both. Those claims have different elements, and you do need to prove it was intentional. With negligence, you only need to show there was a mistake to cause the injury.
More specifically, there are four elements:
- The defendant owed the victim a legal duty.
- The defendant breached the duty, usually through carelessness or inattention.
- The breach caused the victim’s harm.
- The victim suffered damages.
These are often called duty, breach, causation, and damages. Missing out on any one element can stop the case dead in its tracks, so it is important to have a personal injury lawyer review what happened and gather evidence of each element.
What is the Burden of Proof for a Personal Injury Claim?
The burden of proof is the legal standard the plaintiff has to meet to win their case. The plaintiff – that is, the victim – has the burden, meaning they need to provide enough evidence to prove the case.
As mentioned, you have to prove each element, and you must do so “by a preponderance of the evidence.” This is basically a 51% standard, meaning you need the jury ever so slightly on your side over the defendant’s to win.
This is a much lower burden of proof than the one used in criminal cases, which is “beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Who Decides a Personal Injury Case?
Usually cases will involve two stages: a claim with the insurance company and a lawsuit. We only need to turn to a lawsuit if the insurance company refuses to pay up in a fair settlement.
Insurance Claim
The insurance company decides insurance claims themselves. They will investigate fault and, if they determine that the case does not fit under the policy or that their insurance customer was not at fault, then they will reject the claim.
This is always going to be quite stacked against you, as the insurance company worries more about their financial risk than they do getting you the damages you need.
Lawsuits
If they will not pay up, then we can take their defendant to court. In court, the case is decided by a judge and a jury, but they play different roles:
- The judge decides legal questions, such as whether evidence can be admitted, what the jury instructions should be, and whether the case can proceed at a basic legal level.
- The jury decides facts, such as who was at fault, how much the damages are worth, and whether the victim shares any fault.
Some cases are “bench trials,” where the judge decides everything from the bench without a jury, but cases are usually better before a jury.
When Can You Settle a Personal Injury Case?
Ideally, injury cases should settle early on. This would get you damages the fastest and potentially even mean you can get damages without having to file a lawsuit in court in the first place.
However, insurance companies are often bad at early settlements. Instead of even looking at your damages, they may focus more on how much it would cost to defend the case and make an offer that saves them money off that cost. This usually is not enough to cover your damages in full, and you should reject it.
However, once they are dealing with a personal injury lawyer who can negotiate back and forth, demonstrate that the damages offered are too low, and take the case to court, they may change their mind. Again, we may not need to sue at all if they settle at this stage.
Settlements can ultimately be made at any point, even up to the day of trial in “courthouse steps” settlements. However, they are most likely after discovery, at which point both sides have all the evidence available and can assess their chances of victory.
Can You Get Medical Bills Covered in a Personal Injury Case?
One of the main goals of a personal injury claim is to get your medical care covered. This means paying for all kinds of care:
- Emergency hospital stays
- Ambulance rides
- Surgeries
- Imaging
- Follow-up appointments
- Specialist appointments
- Physical therapy and rehabilitation
- Mental health and psychiatric care.
As long as the medical costs were reasonable, we should be able to claim them as part of a case against the at-fault parties.
How Do You Claim Lost Wages?
Lost wages are another important area of damages. These can be paid to cover time you missed at work while recovering as well as time you will miss in the future if the injury left you disabled.
We can use various analyses and expert reports to see how long the injury will predictably affect your ability to work, and how much money that means you will lose out on. We can then claim the full value as part of your injury case.
Getting Pain and Suffering in a Personal Injury Case
Pain and suffering is the last of the three major areas of damages. Unlike medical bills and lost wages, pain and suffering is a form of “non-economic damages.”
These are based on physical, mental, and emotional experiences rather than money you were charged or money you missed out on. That means there are no bills or statements with the price on them.
Instead, we use calculation methods. We can either assign a per-day value for as long as your injury will last, or we can multiply your damages by a factor between 1.5 and 5, reflecting the overall severity of damages. We can adjust this value, and the final decision about the value of your pain and suffering is left to the jury.
Who is at Fault for My Injury Case?
You can sue multiple potential parties for causing your injury. Often, it will depend on the specifics of how the accident happened, but the case can sometimes even be filed against multiple parties.
The defendant can be a person or a company. For example, if you were hit by a negligent driver, your case would be against that individual. However, if you slipped and fell in a store, you would sue the store itself.
Many cases see victims sue a company in place of their employee. For example, in a slip and fall in a store, it might have been a single worker who forgot to mop up the spill, but the company is at fault. Similarly, a truck driver causing an accident can lead to a lawsuit against the trucking company.
We can often sue the following parties and companies for injuries:
- Negligent drivers
- Negligent property owners
- Stores and businesses where accidents happen
- Manufacturers of dangerous and defective products
- Dangerous doctors and other medical providers who commit malpractice
- Dangerous and negligent hospitals
- Vendors, customers, suppliers, and product manufacturers who cause injuries in the workplace
- Employers, if you are not covered under Workers’ Compensation.
The Process of Filing a Lawsuit
As mentioned, most cases start with an insurance claim. Only once the insurance company fails to cooperate or denies your claim do we file the case in court.
Complaint
Lawsuits start with a complaint that lays out the facts as you allege them. This details what happened, how the defendant is responsible, and what damages you faced.
Motions
From there, there are motions and arguments to be made. The defense will try to get the case thrown out on legal grounds, and we will try to narrow the issues so there are fewer elements to prove if we can get agreement on certain facts.
Discovery
From there, we start exchanging evidence in a process called “discovery.” Discovery usually involves depositions of witnesses and parties and an exchange of records and other evidence to get a grasp of what happened.
Conferences/Mediation
From there, we go to trial. However, many judges push for mediation or conferences to try to settle the case first. Most are successful, and most cases settle before trial.
Trial
At trial, the jury decides the case after we put on our evidence and witnesses, face cross-examination from the defense, cross-examine the defense’s witnesses, and make opening statements and closing arguments.
What Evidence Should I Have for My Injury Case?
Our lawyers can collect much of the evidence in your case, such as medical records, police reports, photos, and more. We can also seek out security camera footage or other footage of the accident that might have been captured by dash cams, store cameras, or other cameras.
If you can collect pictures and contact info at the scene of the accident, that will be vital. Otherwise, your testimony will also be vital in proving the case. Unless you were knocked out or unable to witness the accident – e.g., medical malpractice during surgery – you are the star witness who saw everything that happened.
FAQs for Personal Injury Cases in Texas
The following are some frequently asked questions about personal injury cases in McKinney and throughout Texas:
How Much is My Case Worth?
Each personal injury case is unique, so we cannot assign a price without assessing the damages in your case. Every case involves the victim’s total damages: medical bills, lost wages, and pain and suffering from the injury. There is no set price list for a broken leg or amputated arm or anything like that; each case is unique.
Do I Have a Case?
If your case has met all four elements – duty, breach, causation, and damages – and you have ample evidence to prove it to a jury, you probably have a very strong case. Call our lawyers right away to get started on your case, and we can assess further how strong your claim might be and what it might be worth.
How Long Do I Have to File?
Most personal injury cases in Texas must be filed within 2 years of the accident. There are some exceptions if you were injured as a minor or have a mental disability, but these are rare.
Is Texas a No-Fault State?
Most states are either no-fault or at-fault/tort states for car insurance. In no-fault states, your insurance covers your car accident, whereas you have to make a claim against the at-fault driver’s insurance in a fault state.
Texas is an at-fault state, meaning you sue the at-fault driver or file a claim against their insurance for damages. However, your insurance might have some coverages for your own medical bills and vehicle damage that can help early on.
In other accidents, you typically file against the at-fault party’s insurance, too.
What Types of Cases Do You Handle?
Our attorneys handle the full range of personal injury cases:
- Car accidents
- Slip and falls
- Premises liability
- Defective product injuries
- Medical malpractice
- Work injuries
- Wrongful death
And more.
How Much Does a Lawyer Cost?
Personal injury lawyers are usually paid on a contingency fee. This means that we take a portion of the winnings in your case, and we only get paid if you win. Under this, you usually pay nothing up front. Talk to us about fees to understand more as part of your free case review.
Call Our Personal Injury Attorneys in McKinney, TX Today
For your free case review, call our personal injury attorneys at The Queenan Law Firm at (817) 476-1797.