Every single day across the state of Texas, people are involved in accidents that happened through no fault of their own. The result of these accidents can be injuries that require long periods off work, extensive medical treatment, and emotional distress.
It isn’t fair that anyone suffers as a result of another person’s negligence. If you have been involved in an accident that was not your fault, you deserve to seek compensation for any economic damages and non-economic damages that you have suffered as a result.
To do this, you should get in touch with a skilled team of personal injury lawyers immediately. They will be able to evaluate your case, advise you on whether you qualify to raise a claim, and will answer any questions you may have.
Houston Injury Lawyers, PLLC – Speak To a Stafford TX Personal Injury Lawyer Today
At Houston Injury Lawyers, PLLC, when it comes to personal injury trial law, our attorneys are unrivaled. Each and every one of our personal injury attorneys are fierce advocates with a long history of success in cases just like yours.
We believe that every victim should have to opportunity to seek the full and maximum compensation that they deserve for their injuries. To do this, we offer a free consultation service.
During this free initial consultation, you can obtain some no-strings-attached free legal advice and counsel. We also work on a contingency-fee-basis, allowing us to work for clients regardless of their financial situation.
We only take our fees from your settlement if we win your case. If we don’t win, you don’t pay. This means you can seek compensation without fear of being left in a worse situation if you lose.
Call us at 936-251-5246.
Four Elements To Prove In a Valid Personal Injury Case
There are four important elements to a personal injury case. If your case goes to court, you and your attorney will be expected to prove each one in order for the court to look at your case favorably.
The four elements are:
- At at-fault party held a duty of care to you at the time of the accident. (Duty of Care)
- They breached their duty of care by acting in a negligent manner. (Breach)
- This breach in the duty of care caused you injury. (Causation)
- These injuries directly caused you to suffer economic and/or non-economic damages. (Damages)
Don’t worry if you are unsure of whether or not you can prove the above. When you call and speak to an attorney, they will be able to arrange a free initial consultation to evaluate your case.
How is Negligence Defined in Stafford TX?
Assigning negligence is one of the most important aspects of any personal injury case. Negligent behavior is when a person acts in a way that no reasonable person would act in the same situation.
An example of negligent behavior would be if you mopped the floors in your store and left the floor wet without signposting it with a wet floor sign. A reasonable shop owner would have signposted the wet floor, thus warning customers about the hazard. If someone slipped on the floor and wasn’t warned that the area posed a hazard (like a sign), you may be held liable for their damages due to your negligent behavior.
How Do You Decide Which Personal Injury Lawyer to Hire?
Your choice of personal injury lawyer is important. They will be investigating on your behalf and fighting your case. However, many people have never had the need to seek legal representation from a law firm before, and this can make the task seem daunting.
You may be tempted to choose a personal injury attorney based on TV ads or billboards, but we advise you to dig a little deeper before making a choice.
You should look at the history of your potential personal injury attorney. Check to see if they have past victories and glowing referrals from past clients. Good attorneys are more than happy to provide these in your consultation. You should also look at independent review sites like AVVO to ensure that your attorney has a good rating.
Remember, any attorney with a good reputation and a history of successful cases will most likely be extremely busy. They will probably have a full caseload of clients to handle. This means you may not have 24/7 access to them. However, they should make ample time for you in their schedule and they should answer your queries promptly in a timely manner.
What Damages Can a Personal Injury Attorney Help You Claim?
One of the main jobs that your personal injury attorney will carry out on your behalf is the calculation of the damages you wish to recover. This will form the basis of any settlement offer you send to the other party.
To calculate your damages, your attorney will look at both your economic and non-economic damages. Your economic damages are the ones that you have had to pay out or will have to pay out that have a solid figure attached. Things like medical bills and receipts and car repairs are added up, and the result is your economic damages total sum.
Next, they will consider your non-economic damages, the ones without a clear and easy sum attached. These are the difficult damages to calculate, and this is where a skilled attorney will come into their own. The more experience they have in complex cases in the past, the better they will be at calculated non-economic damages that are fair and reasonable, and hard to dispute.
The most important damages to understand are:
Pain and Suffering
Your pain and suffering damages can include a wide variety of different things. Any suffering you have been through, such as loss of enjoyment of life or emotional distress, will need to be considered. If you can no longer play sports or look after your children in the same way you did before the accident, you deserve to be compensated for your losses.
Lost Income
In the majority of personal injury cases, the victim will have to take time off work to some degree and this may lead to a loss of income.
Fortunately, if you have suffered injuries through the fault of someone else, your attorney can help you recover all lost wages, past, and future.
In more severe cases, victims may not be able to work in the same capacity ever again. If your injuries mean you will never be able to return to work, you may be able to claim for a lifetime of lost wages.
Medical Bills
Even if you are lucky enough to have a strong level of medical coverage, serious injuries that require a lot of expensive treatment can quickly exceed your coverage or ability to pay. When this happens, victims may have to find the money for the treatment they desperately need themselves.
Your attorney may be able to help you recover all of your medical expenses incurred by you because of your claim. You can claim for all costs associated with your recovery and medical care. This means you can claim for all of your treatment costs, therapy costs, travel to and from the hospital, food whilst in the hospital, and even childcare for your children.
In order to ensure that your costs can be verified, make sure that you keep copies of all your receipts, bills, and invoices. With supporting documentation, medical bills are extremely difficult to argue with.
We also recommend that you keep a daily diary of your medical treatment, mood, and pain levels following the accident. Each day, note down how you are feeling, a number between 1-10 for your pain levels and if you have had to receive treatment that day, note down what you have received. This can be extremely helpful for your attorney and can ensure they can create an accurate timeline of your medical costs. AND STAY OFF SOCIAL MEDIA! PERIOD!
Personal Injury Cases Our Attorneys Regularly Handle
Personal injury cases are unique. The circumstances that led to the accident, the level of liability, damages, and severity of the injuries suffered are usually different. Some cases happen more often than others, however.
Here are some of the most common types of cases we take at the Houston Injury Lawyers, PLLC:
Slip and Fall or Trip and Fall Injuries
Injuries that result from slips, trips, and falls are one of the more common forms of personal injury case. When someone neglects to keep their property maintained and in order, and a victim is injured, they could be found liable for the injuries.
Car Accident Injuries
Car accidents are extremely common and have the potential to cause serious lifelong injuries or the wrongful death of the victim. When you get behind the wheel of a car, you assume a duty of care to all other road users. When this duty of care is breached, by things like distracted or reckless driving, you could be held liable for any damages you cause.
Premises Liability Injuries
Premises liability cases happen when a person fails to maintain their property to a safe standard or neglects to warn people of hazards that are on the property. Common premises liability cases include drowning accidents and electrocution.
Medical Malpractice Injuries
With the cost of medical care in the United States, we expect a certain level of competency from our medical providers. At the very least, they should adhere to the standard medical practices and act with due care and attention.
When a medical provider fails to act with due care and attention or deviates from the standard medical practices, the results can be catastrophic. This is what we call medical malpractice.
Medical malpractice covers a wide variety of different things. A doctor might fail to diagnose a patient on time, send them for a procedure twice or diagnose the wrong condition. These can lead to the patient suffering further injury or aggravating their previous injuries. In rare cases, medical malpractice may lead to the wrongful death of a patient.
Birth Injury
Babies and their mothers are particularly vulnerable during both the pregnancy and the birth. This means that doctors and medical providers need to take due care and attention when it comes to examinations and during labor. Unfortunately, sometimes things can go wrong, and this is where birth injury can occur.
Brain Injuries
A Traumatic Brain Injury is extremely serious due to the fact that the brain does not have the ability to repair and recover like the rest of the body. This means that brain injuries and damage are often permanent.
Victims that suffer a TBI may need long-term care and will likely never be able to work again in the same capacity as they did before.
What to Do at The Scene of the Accident
Prioritize your safety
The first and most important thing to remember at the scene of an accident is that you need to prioritize your own safety and well-being above all else. This means that you should first check to see if you are injured. If you know you hit your head, or feel pain in the neck, shoulders, or spine, do not move. Wait for the ambulance team.
If you are confident you haven’t suffered any spinal or head injuries, and you are still in a dangerous spot, move to safety if possible.
Call an ambulance if there are injuries
If you have received any injury whatsoever, or another party has been injured, you must call for an ambulance immediately. Even if the injuries seem minor, for everyone’s wellbeing, it is safer if you allow the ambulance team to check everyone over. Internal bleeding, concussion, and TBIs may have no outward symptoms and can lay dormant until they cause major issues later on down the line. Adrenaline and shock can mask the symptoms of multiple injuries.
The ambulance team will also file an accident report that your attorney can access later on down the line.
Call the police/fire department
For any accident where there is fire, electricity, gas, or explosion, you need to call the fire department to ensure the safety of everyone involved and to prevent further risk to other people nearby.
If there are aggressive parties involved, drunken drivers, or a traffic accident that has caused injuries, you have to call the police. They will ensure everyone is made safe and that the at-fault parties are dealt with and/or tested for alcohol/drugs.
Both the fire department and any police officers that turn up at the scene will file an accident report you can use as well.
Collect evidence
Once you are certain you are safe, you have called the emergency services and moved to a place of safety. Now is the perfect time to collect some evidence if your injuries allow it.
Personal injury cases are reliant on evidence. The more you can provide, the better. Your attorney will be able to use the evidence you collect to build the strongest possible case on your behalf.
Take photos and a video of the scene, draw/sketch how the accident happened, record a voice note of what happened, and take details of the cars/people involved.
Speak to witnesses
If there were any witnesses to the accident, they can be extremely useful in your case. However, witnesses often become unreliable later down the line. We suggest asking any witnesses on the scene if you mind them recording a quick voice statement. This makes it easier for them to just verify the statement when your attorney reaches out to them later on down the line.
Collect as many personal details as possible as well. Take an email, phone number, address, and name if they are willing to provide them.
Call a Stafford TX personal injury lawyer
The sooner you involve a personal injury attorney, the better. They will be able to advise you on what to do and say, what evidence to collect, and will be able to begin investigating on your behalf and building your case.
We recommend calling your chosen attorney at the scene of the accident or immediately afterward, wherever possible.
Secure Personal Injury Representation Today
The attorneys at our personal injury law firm are ready to help. With a long history of victory in similar cases and an unrivaled approach to the client-attorney relationship, our team can take over your case immediately.
We want all victims to have access to reliable representation. This is why we work on a contingency-fee-basis and offer a free consultation. During our initial consultation, we can give you some no-strings-attached advice and if you feel comfortable, we can get to work right away.
Our practice areas cover Stafford, Houston, Sugar Land, TX, and surrounding areas. So speak to an experienced personal injury attorney today at 936-251-5246.
