By: Alexa D’Amato Barrera, Esquire

I was born to be a trial lawyer! My father Paul R. D’Amato has been representing injured victims as a plaintiffs’ personal Injury attorney for 45 years and I am honored to be his law partner. For many of those years he was a sole practitioner. As an aspiring lawyer I worked in his office as much as possible throughout high school and college. I knew he handled large catastrophic injury cases, but I had no idea how just how much work was involved until I became a practitioner myself almost 20 years ago now.

I quickly learned what it is like to handle major construction and catastrophic Personal Injury cases when in 2003 there was a collapse during the construction of a parking garage at the Tropicana Casino in Atlantic City. We represented 14 people with catastrophic injuries and the family of one of the workers that passed away. When the Tropicana Garage Collapse resolved it was the largest construction settlement in New Jersey history.

I. Privacy

I consider it an honor to represent catastrophically injured victims and their families. The trust they have in us is unwavering and I intend to prove every single time that trust is well placed. While the Tropicana Garage Collapse settlement was nationally recognized, we do not seek out to publish our verdicts in the paper and we do not brag about them on our website. This is a small town, county and State. Our clients were victims of a tragedy and do not need people crawling out of the wood work looking for money that is intended to try to make them whole for the horrendous injuries they suffered. While we certainly want the public to know about cases we are working on so they too can avoid tragedy in their lives, the verdicts and settlements we recover for our clients are their business and we respect their privacy.

II. Our Reputation and Communication

Your reputation in anything you do follows you throughout life. An honest approach with our clients, insurance companies and defense firms is vital. We copy our clients on every single correspondence that goes in and out of the office on your case so you know everything that is happening and the work that we are doing. We give you our cell phone numbers so you can reach us any time of day with an emergency. Our computer program allows you to text or email us directly to your file in our computer and we can text you back as well. We also meet with our clients every 3 months or more often in person to discuss how they are feeling and what treatment they are receiving.

III. Finances

Unlike other areas of the law, personal injury attorneys are not paid a fee at the outset. When you hire our office we front the legal costs. Catastrophic injury cases can be a large lift financially. We have cases where we have over $500,000 out in expenses at a time. Our clients trust that we spare no expense in litigating their cases. Catastrophic injuries turn someone’s life completely upside down and our firm will do what it takes to ensure that we do everything we possibly can to make sure that justice is served. Here are some examples of what our firm does when you hire us:

· An inspection of the scene should be done as soon as possible. We hire qualified licensed investigators to photograph and videotape the scene.

· If the area can be viewed from the outside, we obtain aerial photographs.

· We instruct our investigators to interview key liability and damage fact witnesses; the sooner they are interviewed, the better.

· We also direct them to interview all of the law enforcement personnel that were involved in the investigation of the incident. We send out a request to obtain photographs of the scene of the incident that were taken by the first responders.

It is better to know what the opposing counsel might find out about your history that you might forget so we investigate you, our client, to be able to protect you. Here is a short list of things we request:

Every relevant medical record and diagnostic testing film from before and after the incident;

Prescription records;

We look at your public social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts and search you on Google;

We have an insurance search performed to determine any potential claims made in the past;

Your Motor Vehicle Abstract;

Prior Workers’ Compensation Claim files;

With the diagnostic testing films we obtain anatomical exhibits which show the extent of the injuries and surgeries performed;

We obtain narrative and independent medical expert reports;

We hire a vocational expert and an economist for your loss of income claim.

We will also hire a company to prepare a life care plan.

We will also discuss with you the production of a day-in-the-life video.

Finally we will put all of this together to create a video settlement brochure.

I am proud to be a personal injury trial attorney representing catastrophically injured victims. It is a team effort with my law partners, Paul and Stephen Van Natten, and all of our staff. All the hard work we put in now truly pays off when we are able to resolve your claim successfully. For more information visit https://damatolawfirm.com/ or call 609-926-3300.

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