Car accidents can leave people in shock and, after serious collisions, victims can be in a lot of pain. You can be forgiven for not knowing all the right things to say and do in the moments after a crash and in the days to come.

One of the smartest and easiest things you can do is reach out to a personal injury lawyer. You might be in the dark about your next move, but a legal expert is there to guide you to the best outcome for you and your family.

Want to know if your case requires the help of an attorney? Why should you call a personal injury attorney after a car accident? The best way to find out is to make a free call to a well-regarded, local attorney and simply ask.

How Much Is Your Settlement Worth?

Schedule a completely free, no obligation consultation with our team

Schedule Consultation

How Soon Should I Talk with an Attorney?

Your call to an attorney should happen before you get a speak with any insurance representative. So, that means you should pick up the phone soon. As soon as possible, in fact.

Insurance representatives will have an agenda when they call you and there are things you should avoid in that first conversation. An attorney will go over these pitfalls that can hurt your case in your first consultation. You can inadvertently cost yourself thousands of dollars in compensation when you aren’t prepared for the tricks insurance adjusters can play.

If you do need the services of a personal injury attorney, letting him or her investigate your case as soon as possible only benefits you. Bringing in a car accident lawyer weeks or months after the incident can make it harder to build a case.

Evidence is more difficult to track down, witnesses could have changed addresses and be harder to locate, and documents may take longer to obtain. It’s always best to give your attorney a head start.

Car accident causing a road traffic

When Do I Need a Car Accident Attorney?

The insurance claims business has become pretty standardized when it comes to getting damaged cars fixed or totaled out and replaced. If your collision only involves property damage and/or just minor bumps and scrapes, a personal injury lawyer may not be able to improve your end result.

However, if you and/or your loved ones sustained injuries in a car accident, you can always take advantage of a free consultation with the attorneys at Steers & Associates. Tell them your situation and they can determine what your case requires. Make sure to call your attorneys as often as needed to update them regarding the extent of your injuries and forward your collected health and accident records.

Securing an Attorney After a Car Accident Involving Injuries

When an accident involves a serious injury to you or a family member the outlook of your case changes dramatically.  Insurance companies will fight hard in order to avoid getting stuck with all of the medical expenses that come with a major injury. They’ll battle you even when the fault is clearly on their policyholder.

Request Your Free Consultation

"*" indicates required fields

Injuries can require days or weeks in the hospital and lengthy physical therapy regimes. Serious injuries can lead to a permanent disability that may continually build up healthcare bills over a lifetime.

Generally, if an injury requires more than a few thousand dollars in medical care, the case should be left in the hands of a legal professional. Injured victims can quickly get taken advantage of when they proceed against insurance adjusters without legal assistance.

Securing an Attorney After a Deadly Car Accident

In the most devastating car accidents, lives are lost and families are left behind to cope with the heartbreaking grief. In such distressing circumstances, families can turn to the help of a personal injury attorney to file a wrongful death lawsuit. This lawsuit is used to earn support for family members in the aftermath of a tragedy.

The sudden loss of life can threaten the financial stability of close relatives almost immediately, as the costs of emergency response and any other medical care received before the victim passed on come due. The costs of a funeral service and burial can also unfairly fall to family members.

These expenses also arrive at a time when families may suddenly be without the financial support a loved one had always provided through his or her employment. A wrongful death lawsuit seeks to stabilize family members now, and in the future when close relatives can no longer count on the emotional guidance a loved one would have offered.

Insurance adjusters can ignore the welfare of the family and try to avoid accountability for a deadly accident, but a personal injury attorney will constantly monitor their actions and make sure they remain absolutely fair towards victims.

Securing an Attorney When an Accident Involves Businesses and Government Agencies

When at-fault drivers work for rideshares like Uber or Lyft, delivery businesses, or tow truck drivers, you should know that your case will likely involve more than just the driver’s insurance provider. Businesses generally have their own coverage that may be involved. For example, if you were hit by a FedEx van, or Doordash driver, you might be unsure whether you should sue the driver or FedEx or if you are able to sue Doordarsh for injury claims.

Where corporations are involved, corporate lawyers won’t be far behind. When insurance companies and businesses retain lawyers over your case, it’s unwise to proceed without a legal expert safeguarding your rights.

If someone driving a city, state, or federal vehicle hits you, your insurance claim can get complicated quickly. The same goes for accidents caused by negligence in a work zone/construction zone involving the Department of Transportation. Government agencies make their own rules for how you can try to secure compensation from them.

You will have a shorter deadline for filing a claim against the agency and possibly a shorter window to file a lawsuit than the typical statute of limitations. A personal injury attorney will know exactly how best to cut through the red tape to earn the help you need.

Securing an Attorney When Fault is Disputed

When a police report leaves the fault in an accident unclear, you will see the other driver’s insurance representatives doing everything in their power to send the blame your way. Sometimes police officers on the scene get the facts of an accident wrong.

If you feel you are receiving unfair liability in your accident case and will end up with what the court will deem to be a “frivolous lawsuit,” make sure to call a personal injury attorney who will secure evidence and testimony to prove your side of the case. Don’t let insurance adjusters decide who should shoulder the blame. Their policyholder will win out every time.

A wrecked car after an accident

Insurance Tactics Your Personal Injury Attorney Will Help You Avoid

Getting the facts down in an accident report and supporting them with evidence is only half the battle when facing down an insurance company. No matter how clear cut the fault in an accident is, insurance adjusters may try to wriggle out of responsibility.

Depending on the area of your accident, you might need different steps on filing a car accident report, here are some helpful links:

They have a binder full of strategies to frustrate insurance claimants and ultimately force them to give up or accept far less than they should get for their injuries.

One of the most important roles car accident lawyers have is as a defender. Injured victims should be focused on healing, but instead, they are often forced to worry about the latest tactic an insurer targets them with. Skilled personal injury lawyers have seen all of these “bad faith” practices before.

Hopefully, you’ve already talked with a car accident lawyer before you encounter these strategies, but if you notice an insurance company reaching into their bag of tricks, contact an attorney.

These are just a few of the tactics you may encounter:

  • Delayed Justice: When insurance companies know they are liable for your injury, their go-to tactic is to stall as long as they can. As you wait and bills pile up, they count on you becoming desperate. As you become more and more worried over your finances, adjusters know you’ll become more and more vulnerable.
  • Lowball Offers: Now that you are desperate, insurance companies feel better about their chances of success when they send over a settlement offer that doesn’t cover all of your accident expenses. Without a personal injury attorney, you won’t have any way of knowing that it’s a “lowball” offer. You should receive much more in support, but without any experience in personal injury law, you may sign off on a less than fair offer.
  • Snooping Through Your Past: Insurance adjusters may attempt to avoid blame by peeking into your prior driving history. They might say your past speeding tickets or previous accidents are proof you are a bad driver. They hope to show that you could have caused your most recent crash. They might also use your medical history to falsely claim your current injury is left over from a past accident. Insurance companies can get away with these flimsy arguments when you don’t enjoy the protection of a personal injury lawyer safeguarding your case.
  • Use Your Statements and Posts Against You: Insurance representatives like to call victims asking for recorded statements about what happened or about their injuries. Don’t fall for this. They may ask confusing questions all in the hopes of getting you to say something they can twist to hurt your credibility later. Adjusters can also sift through your media posts to find something to use against you. The nice thing about having your own legal representative is you’ll be warned about all of these sneak attacks ahead of time.

A Personal Injury Attorney Represents the Threat of a Trial

If there’s one thing insurance companies hate, it’s having to appear in a courtroom. When insurance adjusters won’t extend a reasonable settlement offer, they should face the real possibility of being brought before a judge and jury. Often this threat is enough to force them to send you a fair offer, but if you don’t have a personal injury lawyer preparing your case, that threat isn’t very convincing.

Allen Vaysberg Los Angeles Auto Accident Lawyer

Contact a Personal Injury Lawyer Representing Southern California Victims

Traffic accidents in Southern California can leave you feeling confused and vulnerable. Insurance companies and corporate lawyers can quickly move to take advantage of this. Talking to a personal injury lawyer before their tactics begin can save you from falling into their many traps. Letting a personal injury lawyer represent your case also frees you and your family up to focus on recovery and rebuilding your lives.

Personal Injury Attorney Allen Vaysberg and the Law Offices of Steers & Associates offer a free case evaluation and strategy session for victims and their families. Contact us as soon as possible to set up an appointment.

If we don’t feel we can help you improve the outcome of your case, we will tell you. But if we are able to greatly increase your chances of securing fair compensation, our attorneys go to work immediately. We investigate the scene of your collision, scrutinize accident reports and medical charts, and secure powerful witness testimony. We do this to make sure you have the strongest case possible when taking your claim before an insurance company.

On November 25, 2021   /   Car Accidents