Personal Injury FAQs

There are a variety of things you may do from the first few days and weeks after an accident at defend your right to compensation in case you would like to file an injury claim. Except for filing an official claim against a government entity, there is no single measure that you must take to get a fair settlement, without a set order wherein you must proceed. Nevertheless, the more of the following suggestions you may follow, the more easily your claim procedure is likely to flow.

In case you’ve no success in reaching a settlement with insurance provider, you might be forced to consider bring a lawsuit in tiny claims or other court. But you must be conscious of the laws, known as statutes of limitations, which limit the time where you need to file. Should you overlook your nation’s deadline, you’ll lose the right to recover compensation in court, and will probably be forced to abandon your claim altogether. Check your state’s laws to locate the time limit that applies to your case.

There are a variety factors that dictate whether the homeowner is careless or not. Here’s the basic explanation of who’s negligent or not: a home owner has a duty to maintain his/her property in a sufficiently safe condition to ensure others are protected from threats or flaws that could lead to injury. If an owner fails to do something, such as repair a broken step at a stairway and someone falls throughout the step, they might be responsible for this person’s injury. Another fantastic indicator that the owner was negligent will be a code violation on the assumption, which might be as simple as a missing stairway banister or unlit entry manner.

It depends who on is accountable for keeping the premises. In the event the owner of the property is accountable for keeping the premises, then odds are they’ve the insurance associated with someone becoming injured on their property. Both the tenant and the landlord might be responsible.

This depends upon whether or not an individual dies as a consequence of the injuries or from unrelated causes. If an individual hurt in an accident subsequently dies because of these injuries, that person’s heirs might recover money through a lawsuit. Each state has a law permitting action when someone causes the wrongful death of another. If an individual with a personal injury claim dies from unrelated causes, the claim survives in most cases and can be brought by the executor or personal representative of the deceased person’s estate.

In most states, a complainant might not recover punitive damages in a wrongful death action. There are several states, however, that do have specific sculptures that permit recovery of punitive damages.

A criminal case arises when a government tries to punish a person for an act which was classified as a crime. A civil case, and on the other hand, usually has to do with a litigation about the rights and obligations that people and organizations legally owe to each other. The burden of proof is higher in a criminal case, and the penalty imposed is a criminal sanction, whereas, at a civil case, the defendant will usually have a monetary judgment imposed against him/her.

No, there are various differences in between each state’s wrongful death laws. Determining the state wherein you ought to bring an unjustified death action is a really important decision, since some states don’t allow certain types of harm awards and/or can have different statutes of limitation that set a time frame in which you must file suit.

Unless of course you are filing a complaint against a government agency or an employee, you don’t need to notify the people you believe are accountable for your injuries in a fixed number of days following a collision. But this does not means you should drag your feet. On the flip side, behaving right away, within a couple of days, if possible, will increase your probability of receiving a speedy and a fair resolution of your claim. Giving notice doesn’t obligate you to file a claim, it only Preserve your rights and prevent others from later saying that your claim is unfair because you waited too long to let them know about your injuries. If you immediately notify others that you intend to file a claim for your injuries, you may then move at your very have pace in processing and negotiating the claim with the insurance carrier or government agency which winds up accepting responsibility.

In case your injury may have even been partly caused by a government entity or an employee, the town, county, state, or national government, or some agency or division; you have to submit a formal claim in a brief time following your accident. This amount of time usually ranges between 1 month and one year, dependant upon your condition. If you are not able to file a claim inside the time limitation, or do not include the required information on your claim, you might forever lose the right to collect compensation. Write down just as much as you could about the accident itself, your injuries, and any other losses you have suffered as a consequence of the accident. Make notes of conversations that you’ve with individuals involved with the accident or the injury claim. Preserve the evidence of who caused the accident and what harm was done by collecting physical evidence and taking photographs. Find individuals who witnessed the accident and who could be capable to assist you prove your case, also. Notify anyone you think could be accountable for the accident of your intention to file a claim for the injuries.

In case your injury may have even been partly caused by a government entity or an employee, the town, county, state, or national government, or some agency or division; you have to submit a formal claim in a brief time following your accident. This amount of time usually ranges between 1 month and one year, dependant upon your condition. If you are not able to file a claim inside the time limitation, or do not include the required information on your claim, you might forever lose the right to collect compensation.

Yes, in addition to the wrongful death, a decedent’s family might recover damages for the suffering and pain that the deceased endured prior to death.

In order to determine if you have a case, contact the Law Offices of Paul J. Fina for more information. We will analyze the events, liability law, and facts surrounding your case in order to evaluate if you are legally entitled to compensation for your injuries. Our case evaluations are free, and always confidential.

No, we believe that we should get paid only when you receive compensation for your injuries. For this reason, we handle all personal injury cases on a contingent fee basis. This means that until you are compensated for your injuries, you pay us nothing. Normally, the legal fee charged in personal injury cases is about one-third (1/3) of the amount we recover on your behalf.

In the outside chance that we do not recover an award for you, you owe us absolutely nothing. We have an adamant “no exceptions” policy when it comes to this rule.

Unlike many personal injury lawyers who may settle for lowball offers, the Law Offices of Paul J. Fina prepare every case as if it were going to trial. We use this technique to let insurance companies know that we take your case very seriously, and will follow through to the full extent of the law. In the rare event that a defendant’s insurance company refuses to offer a fair settlement for your injuries, we will not hesitate to proceed to trial in order to recover money on your behalf. However, this being said, most cases (more than 98%) are resolved through a settlement prior to trial. Should your case go to trial, the Law Offices of Paul J. Fina have years of experience trying cases, with highly successful results.

Yes, there are other ways of resolving a personal injury case other than by going to court. As stated above, over 98% of the cases handled by Paul J. Fina are resolved before trial. The most common of these resolutions involves a settlement offer by the defendant’s insurance company. If their offer coincides with what we think is fair value for your case, we will present this offer to you as a possible resolution. Recently, there has been an increase in the use of private means for resolution, known as “Alternative Dispute Resolution” (ADR). ADR may be utilized as a way to recover on your behalf through “mediation”, a non-binding situation in which an unbiased third party hears each side of the story and attempts to create a settlement acceptable to both parties. If mediation fails, the case may advance to trial without penalty to either party. If we are able to reach an agreement, payment is typically received by our client within thirty (30) days. Another ADR option may be to have a private neutral party decide the result of a case. This option is known as “arbitration” and occurs outside a court room, although it is in many ways similar to trial before a judge. Prior to arbitration the two parties make a legally binding contract that the decision of the arbitrator will be enforceable. ADR has gained popularity for several reasons. ADR is less costly than trial before a judge or jury and proceedings are generally less formal than those in a courthouse. The Law Offices of Paul J. Fina are experienced in negotiating cases through mediation and arbitration.

Every case is unique. Thus, it is impossible to correctly estimate the exact duration of a certain case. Cases involving car accidents, animal attacks and dog bites, and defective or negligently maintained premises are generally resolved faster than more complicated negligence cases. For example, medical and dental malpractice cases, and defective product cases may take longer to resolve. While recovery in simple cases can sometimes occur in just a few months, it may take several years to recover fair value in more complex cases. The Law Offices of Paul J. Fina work as efficiently as possible in order to recover just compensation for your injuries. However, we pledge never to settle for a low offer merely for the sake of resolving a case when we feel you legally deserve more. Grounded in the experience of thousands of cases, the Law Offices of Paul J. Fina have observed that cases hastily completed generally produce lower recoveries than those afforded due diligence.