When You Need an Attorney for a Personal Injury
Feb. 16, 2019
Immediately hiring an attorney following a personal injury may seem like an overreaction, but having an attorney ready to act on your behalf mostly provides benefits.
Serious or severe injuries
If the personal injury results in serious or severe injuries, consider hiring an attorney. The amount of compensation received after the injury typically depends on the seriousness of the injury. Most people have no idea how to calculate a financial number for their injury. In contrast, insurance companies use a formalized process to calculate an amount, which considers factors such as the medical bill amounts, the seriousness of the injury, and the recovery time.
However, even for serious injuries, insurance policies have limits to impose boundaries on the amount they can afford to pay. In other words, even if the injury is very serious, the insurance company might only pay up to a certain amount, resisting any attempts to recover more money. In these situations of a serious or severe injury, hire a personal injury lawyer to ensure the maximum amount of possible compensation can be recovered.
Permanent or long-term damage
If the injury resulted in permanent or long-term damage requiring future medical assistance, hire a lawyer. An experienced attorney can advise on the cost of medical assistance and treatments for certain injuries. In addition, this attorney should be able to calculate the amount of future damages, which includes how the injury can affect a person’s earning potential over time. To ensure the insurance company or the liable person isn’t lowballing the financial amount, hire an attorney to ensure all available forms of compensation are properly considered.
Multiple parties are involved
More problems, more problems. If a personal injury results from a situation involving multiple people, contact and hire a lawyer. Multiple parties make the situation more complicated because people usually like to point their finger at someone else. In personal injury cases, where insurance companies are also involved, the insurance companies also like to point fingers, usually away from themselves.
Unfortunately, in situations involving multiple parties, there is usually even less money to go around with more people fighting for their share. An attorney can provide the proper legal protection while ensuring the amount of money recovered improves the situation.
The insurance company either engages in shady tactics or refuses to pay
More times than not, insurance companies attempt to avoid making fair settlement offers. In other unfortunate situations, sometimes the insurer engages in questionable tactics, like showing an unwillingness to negotiate or ignoring requests for information, in an attempt to muscle the person into accepting a low offer.
In fact, when the insurance company is involved, insurance agents will usually attempt to start contacting the injured person as quickly as possible, including paying visits to your home, hospital room, or workplace to acquire a signed agreement accepting the lowest settlement possible. If bothered by any of these situations, hire legal assistance with experience litigating these sorts of bad faith insurance claims. These representatives know the ins and outs of permissible conduct to ensure a fair settlement is awarded for the injury.
Contact us here for more information from Kim A. Bodnar, Attorney at Law or to schedule a consultation in our office in Pittsburgh.
NOTE: This is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice.
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