How Does A Personal Injury Claim Protect You
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[Below is a transcription of the podcast]
This is Ann Margaret Perkins with Perkins Law Firm and today I’m going to be talking about how a personal injury claim protects you.
Unless you’re injured so badly that you can’t deny you’re hurt, most people who’ve been involved in a situation like a car wreck or a fall or something like that, are going to assume that they are going to be OK. That’s because a personal injury claim is not something most people want to have. Life is better if you are uninjured. So if you’re not hospitalized for days or weeks or no one is killed, how do you know if a claim is going to be necessary to protect you? Think about the number of people you have known who have been involved in wrecks. My guess is that of those people, very few were hospitalized for days or weeks. Even fewer were killed. Odds are though that you know a number of people who have been injured in wrecks and had no overnight hospital stay but have lingering effects on their life.
And sometimes injuries that might sound like they would affect you the most are in fact injuries that don’t. A broken bone may be acutely painful and cause you to be in a cast and have restrictions on your activities for a period of time. But if it is a clean break of the bone that heals well, you may not have significant ongoing problems. Whereas other injuries that we might think of as not being as significant – whiplash comes to mind – may, in fact, give you problems for years and years to come.
Very rarely do we know immediately after an event whether or not we’re going to have an injury that’s going to affect us significantly. Only time tells us how we will recover. That’s why you should not do anything that may negatively affect your rights. You do not need to have conversations with insurers, other than to give your insurer notice that the event happened, until enough time has passed that you can really assess how you’re doing. And when I say time, I think rarely does someone know inside of a couple of weeks how they are feeling. Right after the wreck your adrenaline is pumping and make you less aware of how you feel. The initial treatment you get may mask your injuries for a while. Hopefully, after a couple of weeks, you’re going to have a much better idea of how you’re doing.
If you’re doing well after a couple of weeks, a claim may still be necessary to compensate you for what you have been through, although, you may be able to resolve that claim without an attorney. I think it’s always a good idea to talk with an attorney to identify the possible sources of recovery, to see if there are any extenuating circumstances that might make a difference in what your recovery should be, to help you identify whether there are symptoms that should be more concerning than what you’re aware of at the time, and because you aren’t going to have to pay for a free consultation so really what do you have to lose?
A personal injury claim protects you by compensating you for your injuries, for your wages that you lose, or any other expenses you have like medical expenses, prescription expenses, transportation to and from medical appointments as well as the way that your injuries affect just your day to day life and potentially your life ongoing. And since you probably aren’t going to know early on which direction it’s going to take for you, it’s important for you to protect yourself by not doing anything that could permanently affect your ability to recover in the event things are more serious than you thought.
If you are the victim of some event that could potentially cause you injury, don’t feel like you need to be in a rush to do anything. Protect yourself by not talking to the at-fault party’s insurer, not talking to your insurer other than to report the claim, talking to an attorney and getting a free consultation and making sure you get medical treatment so that you can make a good decision when the time comes about whether you need to pursue a claim and how you need to pursue a claim.
I hope this has helped you some. If I can help you in any other way, feel free to contact me through our website injuryispersonal.com or call my office at 770-834-2083.
