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Were you seriously injured in an accident in Texas and have questions? Read our 4 personal injury tips, then contact our McAllen attorneys.
1. Choosing the Best Attorney
First, you’ll want to know if the firm or lawyer is a personal injury lawyer. That means all they handle is personal injury work. Here at the Law Firm of Ricardo A. Garcia, that’s all we do. The next thing that you’re going to want to know is if they’ve had success as a personal injury trial lawyer. The lawyer should show that they’ve successfully handled injury cases, taken them to court, and won verdicts. Don’t be afraid to ask the lawyer to show you their past results. Lastly, if they are a trial lawyer, are they board-certified? Board-certified means that you’re one of the top 3% of the lawyers in this state in that area of law.
2. Settlement Timeline
To resolve a personal injury claim in the state of Texas, it can vary anywhere from six months to three years. Personal injury encompasses a lot of things. Are we talking about a strained back? Are we talking about a broken knee? Are you going to need an operation? Once we’ve worked with your doctors and see the extent of injury that you’ve suffered, then we know how much treatment you have to go through and what is it going to take for you to get well. We also have to look at the court docket and see how many cases are in front of yours before we get a trial date. Then we have to see how fair we are going to be treated by the insurance company and how hard they’re going to fight us.
3. Accepting the First Settlement Offer
You may be wondering whether it’s ever a good idea to just go ahead and accept the first initial offer made by an insurance company in a personal injury case. The answer to this question is always no.
As a business, the insurance company is always trying to save money. As a result, it will always try to lowball you.
Some people make the mistake of jumping to accept the first offer from the insurance company, worried they won’t get another. This is unfortunate, because in truth, it’s reasonable to assume you’re never going to get a worse offer from the insurance company than their first offer.
These days, we typically see the insurance companies only offering payment of medical bills for personal injury cases. This provides you no relief for other bills you could not pay because you were unable to work and lost wages and for other loses that may be non-economic but legitimate losses just the same.
When you hire an experienced personal injury attorney, you greatly increase your chances of receiving maximum compensation because you can turn over all settlement negotiations to a lawyer who won’t fall for the insurance company’s manipulations.
4. Case Going to Trial
Whether your personal injury case goes to trial will depend on whether the insurance company is reasonable about resolving the claim through a fair settlement offer. Typically, they’re not, because they would rather refuse fair settlement to try to save money.
When this happens, the insurance company forces our hand and we’ve got to file suit. We end up at the mercy of the court’s schedule, which extends your claim’s timeline, and must also deal with the added expense of a trial.
Were you or a loved one seriously injured in an accident in Texas and have questions about our 4 personal injury tips?
Contact our experienced McAllen personal injury lawyers at the Law Firm of Ricardo A. Garcia today for a free consultation and case evaluation.
Let our experience work for you.
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