If your car accident results in a serious injury, having a lawyer is a good idea. Your lawyer helps keep insurance adjusters from finding shady ways to reject your accident claim. Once your case is proven, your attorney also helps you secure the most possible for your injury recovery.
Your settlement check is often much bigger than if you had handled your case yourself.
Why is a Louisville Car Accident Lawyer Valuable?
A skilled Louisville car accident attorney will prove most valuable during two phases of the claims process. First, your lawyer will make sure the fault in the car accident case is established and can’t be questioned by unfair insurance adjusters. Then your lawyer fights to earn you compensation for everything hardship you’ve been through.
Building Your Case
A skilled lawyer would first listen to you closely and will want to hear everything you remember about your accident. An investigation immediately begins. Your Louisville car accident lawyer collects evidence from the scene and tracks down eyewitnesses for testimony. The accident report filed by Louisville police, or the Kentucky State Police is secured. Any security footage that might show how your accident unfolded is located and requested.
Accident reconstruction teams and expert witnesses could also be hired to help prove your innocence. Medical experts and your doctors are asked to attest to the severity of your injury and how it may affect your life. This evidence and other proof are used to keep insurance adjusters honest and prevent them from trying to shift blame from their policyholder, the at-fault driver.
Demanding the Maximum in Compensation
When the auto insurance company looks over the evidence, they are hopefully convinced that they can’t get away with trying to point the finger of blame at you.
- Negotiating the Amount on Your Settlement Check: It’s time to negotiate over how much you’ll need to pay for your physical and financial recovery. Insurance companies like to try to pay for only that first visit to an emergency room and perhaps some fender damage. But you might need far more to pay for additional surgeries and physical therapy in the months ahead.
- Assessing Settlement Offers: Your attorney helps you decide if a insurance provider’s settlement offer is enough to cover everything you’ve been put through and will have to endure in the future.
- Making Sure Your Damages Are Covered: Your lawyer will want to ensure that every medical bill you have now and may see in the future are covered in any settlement. The time you miss at work and the paychecks lost should also be reimbursed. A settlement must also address the physical pain you’ve endured and the emotional trauma you’ve had to cope with.
- Rejecting Settlement Offers: If it isn’t enough, your lawyer turns it down on your behalf and demands more.
This is where your lawyer’s experience with the negotiation process is invaluable. Your attorney will know what past cases have earned, and how insurance companies operate. It all helps in squeezing every last cent out of an insurer because it all goes directly to helping you rebuild your health and your life. Once you and your lawyer decide a settlement is sufficient, you sign off on it and avoid a trip to court.
Hopefully this process all plays out between your law firm and the insurance company so that you can focus on healing.
How Does a Car Accident Lawyer Help if I Must Go To Court?
If a car insurance company refuses to accept blame for its policyholder’s mistake, you may have to take them to court to get help with your medical expenses. You would file a lawsuit and set a court date. This step would also be necessary if the insurer made a settlement offer that was way too low to cover all of your costs.
However, car accident claims rarely make it into the courtroom. Insurance companies want to avoid the cost of defending themselves before a judge and jury. They also hope to avoid the bad publicity.
When they fear you may take them to trial, insurers work even harder to make you happy with a settlement offer. In fact, a skilled lawyer represents the threat of litigation. When you hire a lawyer, insurance companies are often frightened and work harder to reach a settlement with you. And remember, you can still reach a settlement with an insurer right up until the court date and even while the trial is underway.
If you do end up in court, a skilled Louisville car accident lawyer will have a strong case already prepared. One way or another, having a lawyer usually provides the best chance of winning a case and securing the money you need to recover.
Trusting Your Case to a Louisville Car Accident Attorney
The best part is that you don’t have to pay a lawyer to receive this protection and expertise. Kaufman & Stigger, PLLC, doesn’t get paid for their services unless we win your case for you. Then our fee comes out of the insurance settlement you are awarded. Your weekly income and your savings aren’t touched.
But before you hire us, you should take advantage of a free, no-obligation consultation with our Louisville car accident lawyers. Contact us to set up an appointment. If we can’t help you earn more for your case, we’ll tell you that. But you’ll get a valuable lesson on how to handle your own case and what to look out for when dealing with car insurance companies. It’s the easiest way to find out what your injury is worth and how to protect your rights.
