What Do You Need to Do to Protect Your Legal Rights?

When you’ve been hurt in a car, truck or motorcycle accident because of someone else’s careless or wrongful act, you have a right to take legal action, seeking full and fair compensation for all your losses. The actions you take in the immediate aftermath of the crash, though, can make a significant difference in the outcome of your claim. Here’s what you need to do to make certain your rights are fully protected.

Get the Medical Care You Need

This should be your first priority after any type of motor vehicle wreck. Seeking prompt medical care, though, is not just about ensuring yourself the best chance to fully recover physically. It’s also essential to ensuring that you get full and fair compensation for your Injuries. Here’s why:

• To successfully recover compensation, your attorney will need to establish cause/fault. If you immediately seek medical attention, the cause/effect relationship between the accident and your injuries will be relatively easy to demonstrate. The longer you wait to obtain medical care, though, the greater the risk that you’ll be involved in some other type of accident, or that a defense attorney will attempt to identify other causes of your injuries.
• In addition, the longer you wait to get treatment, the more likely defense attorneys will argue that your injuries were not as serious as you claim they are

The best way to protect your rights—either go to the hospital in an ambulance or immediately take yourself to an emergency room or urgent care facility (you could also schedule the earliest possible appointment with your primary care physician). When you are treated, be certain to tell medical personnel about anything that seems out of the ordinary—don’t just focus on the obvious injuries. Tell them about the pain or stiffness in your neck or lower back—they’ll be able to determine for themselves that your leg is broken. Be as thorough as you can in describing exactly what happened and where it hurts, and ask that everything be put in writing.

Gather Information, If Possible

Your injuries may prevent you from doing so, but, if you can, get contact information from anyone involved in the accident, as well as all potential witnesses. That will make it much easier for your lawyer to contact them during the preparation of your case. If you can, pull out your phone and take pictures of anything that might be related to the crash:

• The damage to all vehicles
• Any injuries you have suffered
• Any defects in the roadway, including potholes, and damaged or missing signs
• The weather conditions at the time of the crash

Contact an Experienced Personal Injury Attorney

You may think your first call should be to your insurance agent, but you’ll likely be better served by hiring a lawyer first. Insurance companies are for-profit businesses with an obligation to maximize shareholder value. They do that by minimizing what they pay out in claims…and they do it all the time. Their goal isn’t to ensure that you get full and fair compensation. It’s to get you to settle for as little as possible. If you hire an attorney first, you’ll immediately level the playing field. Your lawyer will know the value of your claim, and can be your advocate with insurers, helping you get all you are entitled to under your policy.

Contact the Results-Oriented Personal Injury Lawyers at Bailey & Galyen