Your first thought after an accident is to recover as quickly as possible. Next, you may worry about paying bills and putting food on the table for your family.
A Chippewa Falls personal injury lawyer at Nicolet Law Accident & Injury Lawyers can help you recover the compensation you deserve, whether the accident that injured you took place in a car accident, on a snowmobile, or in a business like a restaurant or a grocery store. We can help you whether you suffered an injury or a wrongful death took a loved one. Contact our Chippewa Falls personal injury lawyers today for your free case evaluation if you suffered injuries or lost a loved one in a personal injury accident.
How Nicolet Law Accident & Injury Lawyers Can Help
Nicolet Law Accident & Injury Lawyers has many years of experience helping injured people recover the compensation they deserve. It started with one man in a one-room office in 2007 and has grown to many lawyers in many offices across Wisconsin and Minnesota. Even the best can't do that without giving their clients the personalized attention that Nicolet Law Accident & Injury Lawyers provide. Clients want to know they are more than a number and that their attorneys really care about their cases.
After suffering injuries in an accident, the insurance company might deny your case. If the insurance company offers a settlement, it will rarely cover medical your expenses. Instead of arguing with the insurance company for the compensation you deserve and taking a chance on missing important deadlines, Nicolet Law Accident & Injury Lawyers can help you fight the insurance companies to recover the compensation you deserve—and will ensure that you don't miss any deadlines.
We will meet you where you need us to be. Whether you can come to us or we have to go to your hospital room or home, we will do what is easiest for you. We can also set up a video conference if you prefer.
Contact Nicolet Law Accident & Injury Lawyers in Chippewa Falls for a free and no-obligation case evaluation today to learn more about your rights if you suffered injuries or lost a loved one because of another person’s or entity’s actions or inactions.
Recovering Damages After a Chippewa Falls Personal Injury Incident or Accident
If you suffered injuries or lost a loved one because of another person's or entity's negligence, you could recover compensation for expenses and other losses. As to the common question, "How much is my case worth?" no attorney can tell you that until the personal injury lawyer looks at your case. Sometimes, the firm might have to investigate your case before discussing an amount.
Determining Negligence
Determining fault isn't as easy as looking at a police report or medical records. You have to prove the negligence of the person or entity that caused your injuries or the death of a loved one.
To determine negligence, you must prove:
- Duty of care: The at-fault person or entity has a duty of care to keep you safe. In a car accident case, the duty of care is created by abiding by traffic laws and not driving recklessly or aggressively.
- Breach of the duty of care: The at-fault person must breach the duty of care. In the same car accident case, breaching duty means the driver broke traffic laws or was driving recklessly.
- Causation: The defendant’s actions must have caused your injuries. For example, the defendant was speeding and weaving in and out of traffic. The defendant sideswiped you and pushed you into the next lane, which caused a big wreck.
- Damages: You must have suffered damages due to the defendant's actions. For example, when the defendant sideswiped you, your vehicle rolled over, and you hit your head, plus the broken glass from the window sliced your arm and caused a deep gash.
Recovering Damages
After a personal injury incident or accident, you could recover compensatory damages. Some states allow you to recover punitive damages. Compensatory damages consist of economic damages and non-economic damages. The court orders compensatory damages to make you whole again.
Punitive damages, on the other hand, do not make you whole again. Instead, the court orders the defendant to pay punitive damages to punish grossly negligent or intentional behavior.
Economic Damages
Sometimes referred to as special damages, economic damages have a monetary value. Most people who suffered injuries because of another person’s or entity’s negligence recover economic damages, including:
Medical Expenses
Depending on the severity of your injuries, you might have a few thousand in medical expenses or hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical expenses, including but not limited to:
- Doctors’ appointments.
- Surgeries and follow-up appointments.
- Prescriptions and prescribed over-the-counter medications.
- Ambulatory aids.
- Physical therapy appointments.
- Occupational therapy appointments.
- Cognitive therapy appointments.
- Psychological therapy appointments.
- Home health care costs.
- Nursing home or rehabilitative care expenses.
- Hand controls for your vehicle.
- Accessibility upgrades to your home, such as wheelchair ramps, widened doorways, grab bars, and handrails.
Loss of Income
You could recover compensation for any income you lost from the accident. You could also recover loss of future earning capacity if your accident injuries cause long-term or permanent disabilities.
If you lost a loved one because of another person’s or entity’s negligence, you could also recover loss of future earning capacity.
Personal Property
In certain personal injury accidents or incidents—usually car accidents—you could recover compensation to repair or replace personal property damaged or destroyed in the accident, such as your vehicle. Additionally, you might recover compensation to repair or replace personal property inside the vehicle, such as cell phones or computers.
Death-Related Expenses
If you lost a loved one because of another person’s or entity’s negligence, you could recover funeral and burial expenses, cremation expenses, certain probate court fees, and probate attorney’s fees and costs.
Non-Economic Damages
Sometimes referred to as general damages, non-economic damages do not have a monetary value.
In most cases, you have to suffer catastrophic injuries or lose a loved one to recover non-economic damages, including:
- Pain and suffering, including emotional distress.
- Loss of quality of life if you have to make lifelong changes, such as taking prescription drugs or using ambulatory aids.
- Loss of use of a body part, such as a hand or foot.
- Loss of bodily function, such as your eyesight or hearing.
- Loss of consortium if you can no longer enjoy a physical relationship with your spouse.
- Loss of companionship if you can no longer enjoy time with your family, including attending family activities and events.
- Inconvenience if you have to hire someone to do the chores you usually do, including but not limited to grocery shopping, home repair and maintenance, lawn maintenance, and house cleaning.
- Amputation of a digit or limb.
- Excessive scarring and/or disfigurement.
Chippewa Falls Personal Injuries
Most people interact with people every day, whether directly or indirectly. When you spend so much time around others, the risk of being injured by someone’s negligence increases. Other drivers could ignore traffic laws or drive recklessly.
Manufacturers sometimes sell items knowing they are contaminated—they do not lose money on a recall. In other cases, the manufacturer knows that its product injured one or two people but doesn't want to issue a recall.
Regardless of the reason for negligence, you could suffer:
- Bumps, bruises, cuts, scratches, and scrapes.
- Strains and sprains.
- Pulled and torn muscles and other soft tissue injuries.
- Simple and compound fractures.
- Face and eye injuries.
- Ear injuries, including deafness.
- Chemical, thermal, and radiation burn injuries.
- Internal injuries.
- Lung injuries due to chemical and/or smoke inhalations or drowning.
- Road rash.
- Crushed bones and other crush injuries.
- Head, neck, and shoulder injuries.
- Traumatic brain injuries.
- Back and spinal cord injuries.
You could also suffer secondary injuries, such as infections from open wounds. Even if the wound is secondary to surgery to repair an accident injury, the defendant is responsible for those extra costs and pain and suffering.
Additionally, the defendant must pay for pain and suffering if the accident exacerbates existing illnesses or injuries.
Fighting the Insurance Company
After an accident or incident, an insurance company might call you to offer you a settlement. In other cases, you might need to notify the insurance company of the accident or incident. An insurance company could deny your claim, make an offer—which is usually a lowball offer, or, if you submit an offer, submit a counteroffer.
Regardless of what the insurance company does, concentrate on recovering instead of worrying that the insurance company will be honest enough to give you the compensation you deserve—because that rarely happens.
The best thing you can do is to retain a Chippewa Falls personal injury lawyer to help you recover the compensation you deserve. Instead of dealing with the games the insurance company plays, you can concentrate on recovering.
A Chippewa personal injury lawyer will submit a demand letter that includes the facts of the case, a fair and reasonable amount of compensation you deserve, and a reply-by date. The insurance company might deny the claim or submit a counteroffer. If the insurance company submits a counteroffer, you can counter that offer.
If the insurance company denies your claim or refuses a fair and reasonable settlement, you could move to litigate your case.
Insurance companies know that attorneys will not hesitate to move to litigation, so they are more apt to settle for a fair and reasonable amount. If the insurance company has to prepare for and attend a trial that it might lose, it knows it could potentially cost more than what you are asking. At the least, if you win, the insurance company not only has to pay their high-priced lawyers, but they'll have to pay your lawyer, too.
After an Accident
You can help your attorney with your case by taking certain actions. If you have yet to see a doctor, you should. You won’t be able to recover medical expenses without seeing a doctor. Always keep all doctors’ appointments and therapy appointments.
Other things you should do—or not—include:
- Keep a journal of your prescriptions, the pain you feel daily, and what you did and discussed during appointments with doctors and therapists.
- Be sure to keep receipts for medical expenses you paid out of pocket.
- Keep copies of documentation that your insurance company paid for expenses, including lost income.
- Do not post on social media about your activities or the accident. Insurance companies troll social media sites. Even an innocent dinner with your family gives the insurance company ammunition to say your injuries are not as bad as you say.
- Refrain from discussing the accident with any insurance company, even your own. Always refer insurance companies to your attorney.
If you have this information, bring it when you come in for your initial free case evaluation or email it to the firm. And, even without this extra information, our Chippewa Falls personal injury lawyers can still recover the compensation you deserve.
Contact Our Chippewa Falls Personal Injury Lawyers Today
If you suffered injuries or lost a loved one in an accident or incident in Chippewa Falls, contact Nicolet Law Accident & Injury Lawyers at 1-855-NICOLET for your free case evaluation.