Pursuing a personal injury lawsuit in the state of Texas allows victims to recover their damages and seek compensation for the pain and suffering they have been through following an accident caused by the negligence of others.
Whether you have been seriously injured in a car accident caused by a drunk driver or fallen and injured yourself on somebody else’s property in Katy, TX, you should not be left in financial hardship due to medical expenses and property damages.
Houston Injury Lawyers, PLLC – Speak To a Katy Personal Injury Lawyer Today!
We are prepared to fight your case at the Houston Injury Lawyers, PLLC. As your fierce advocates, we can investigate on your behalf, build an air-tight case, and liaise with all parties. And calculate your damages in an accurate, hard-to-argue manner. We have dealt with and won countless patients in personal injury, giving us the experience necessary to tailor your case. But in a way that massively increases your chances of seeking total and maximum compensation.
We believe that representation should be available to everyone, regardless of their financial situation at the time of the accident or in the following months. We build this ideal into our practice by offering a free consultation and case evaluation. This means you can arrange a sit down with one of our attorneys, ask any questions you need, and receive free, no-strings-attached legal advice regarding your case. We will tell you, honestly and transparently, if we think your case is worth pursuing.
At Houston Injury Lawyers, PLLC, we prioritize the attorney-client relationship. What does this mean? It means that when you retain an attorney from our team, they will be your fiercest advocate, confidant, and sympathetic ear. We take the time to listen compassionately to our clients and keep them informed throughout each step of the process.
Call us today at 936-251-5246.
What are Damages, and What Can I Recover in a Katy, TX Personal Injury Claim
One of the most important tasks an experienced personal injury attorney can fulfill is calculating the damages you suffered from the accident.
First, your Katy personal injury lawyers will need to calculate, add up and evidence your economic damages, i.e., the ones with a price tag attached. They will also need to put a fair and reasonable sum on your non-economic injuries, like pain, suffering, and emotional distress.
For these tasks, experience goes a long way; A Katy personal injury lawyer who has won numerous cases will have a lot of expertise in calculating fair and reasonable damages that are difficult to argue with or dispute.
Economic Damages
Your economic damages are the easier of the two to calculate. All your monetary damages will have a price attached. Your attorney can add these quickly; as long as you have supporting documentation and evidence, they will be hard to dispute.
Your economic damages include the following:
Lost Income
Besides your medical bills, the income you lose due to the accident, the injuries suffered, and the mental trauma. Many people live paycheck to paycheck and support or provide for their family with their income. And as such, when accidents happen, victims may need to take time off work.
You shouldn’t be left out-of-pocket following an injury that wasn’t your fault. And your attorney will help you recover your lost wages. You can claim all past and future lost income as part of a personal injury lawsuit.
Medical Bills
Medical bills have the potential to spiral out of control following a severe injury. Even with medical insurance, your coverage can quickly be exceeded if you need multiple operations and expensive treatment.
When your coverage is exceeded, you could be left with a decision. You either pay for the medical bills or do not get treatment.
When you are dealing with injuries that happened due to somebody else’s negligence, this is an unfair situation to be put in.
An experienced personal injury lawyer can help you recover your medical expenses. This includes your treatment and surgery, your parking charges, ambulance costs, and even the food you have had to buy while in the hospital and the cost of childcare if you have needed it.
However, while everything may be recoverable, you need supporting documentation, so keep all your bills, receipts, and invoices and make copies. Keeping all of this documentation will make it much harder to dispute your claims.
Non-Economic Damages
After your attorney has calculated all of your economic damages using the supporting documents and evidence that you have, they will now consider what your non-economic injuries are worth.
Non-economic damages are named as they do not come with a physical, tangible price attached to them in the same way that economic damage does. It is easier to determine how much to recover following a car repair, for example, as there will be clear invoices and receipts.
Non-economic damages cover things like pain and suffering, emotional distress, and any loss of enjoyment of life.
Pain and Suffering
Pain and suffering damages cover all the pain you have been through and all the mental trauma and emotional distress you have suffered from the accident.
If you have been in intense pain for several months, have developed a phobia of driving a car due to a car accident, or have become depressed or anxious, you deserve to be compensated for your suffering.
Loss of Enjoyment of Life
When an accident results in long-term or permanent injuries, the victim may suffer for the rest of their life. When this stops them from doing the things they love, this is what we call a loss of enjoyment of life.
An example of this will be if you like to play basketball every weekend with your friends. If you can no longer play basketball due to a car accident due to your long-term pain, you should be compensated for this loss.
What Qualifies a Person To Make a Personal Injury Claim in Katy, Texas?
There are four essential elements in a personal injury claim. You will need to prove the following with your attorney if your case moves into the courtroom.
- The person at-fault must have owed you a duty of care when they caused the accident.
- The person at fault must have breached the duty of care by acting negligently.
- This negligent behavior must have caused your accident.
- This accident must have directly caused you the injuries you are claiming and the damages you seek to recover.
If, currently, you are unsure whether or not you qualify to raise a claim, speak to our team of personal injury attorneys immediately. We can arrange a free consultation and case evaluation to explore your options and advise you on the best action.
What is Negligent Behavior?
Understanding negligence is essential to raise a personal injury claim in Texas.
Negligent behavior can be seen as different from how another “reasonable” person would act in the same situation.
An example of negligent behavior could be speeding on a day with heavy rain. A reasonable driver would drive sensibly, perhaps even slowing down due to the rain. The driver running in these conditions is acting negligently in two ways. Firstly, they travel faster than the posted speed limit, and secondly, they drive recklessly in poor weather conditions. An injury lawyer in Houston can help.
Common Personal Injury Case Types
As personal injury lawyers, many cases come through our doors each year. Each of these cases will have unique circumstances and varying levels of negligence and liability. This means that no two are ever the same.
Our injury lawyers have dealt with almost all manner of individual injury cases, such as:
Slip and Fall or Trip and Fall Injuries
Widespread falls from height, slips, trips, and falls. These often happen on another person’s property, which falls under premise liability. An injury lawyer in Katy can help.
You have been injured if someone has failed to make their property safe when they should have. As a result, you should contact a personal injury lawyer immediately.
Property owners have a duty of care to anyone who may end up on their property. Sometimes, they even owe a specific duty of care to trespassers.
Car Accident Injuries
The number one personal injury type is a car accident injury. Car accidents are a common occurrence in modern times. In the state of Texas, for example, there is a drunk driving accident every 20 minutes.
Car accidents are often caused by drunk drivers, distracted drivers, or drivers who act recklessly behind the wheel. In these cases, the chances of severe injury or fatality are high.
Premises Liability Injuries
Premise liability is an umbrella for various accident types on another person’s property. Things like swimming pool accidents and electrocution both fall under premise liability. The property owner may be held liable if the injured person can prove that the owner was negligent in maintaining the property or failed to warn of any dangerous conditions.
Medical Malpractice Injuries
With the exorbitant cost of medical care that we pay here in the United States, we should be able to seek medical attention confident in our medical providers. They should be competent, well trained, and follow the standard medical practices they were taught to follow.
We call medical malpractice when they deviate from these practices or act without due care and attention.
Medical malpractice is severe and can potentially leave patients with lifelong conditions and injuries or, worse, may cause the wrongful death of a loved one.
Typical forms of medical malpractice include:
- Failed and Delayed Diagnosis – Your doctor should be able to diagnose the problem you have quickly and accurately. Failed and delayed diagnosis can lead to a delay in treatment or no treatment being given at all.
- Misdiagnosis – If a doctor diagnoses a harmful condition, the patient may be mistreated. This can prove fatal or aggravate a patient’s initial state in severe cases.
- Surgical Error – This is malpractice if a surgeon deviates from standard medical practices or acts without due care. Examples include performing the wrong surgery on a patient or leaving medical instruments inside a patient.
- Wrongful Death Claims – While no financial aid can ease your pain, a wrongful death claim can ensure you are financially secure while dealing with the grief and trauma of losing your loved one.
Which Katy Personal Injury Lawyer Should I Use?
The first step to bringing a personal injury claim against an at-fault party is to decide who you want to represent and act as your advocate.
This is a difficult decision for most people, and if you have never had to use a law firm before, researching and choosing the best personal injury lawyers may be a daunting task.
We advise you to avoid making choices based on flashy advertisements. Instead of relying on billboards and TV ads, we recommend that you check the law firms’ past victories and referrals.
A good law firm will be more than happy to showcase its wins and victories and will usually have a long list of satisfied clients to back its claims.
Once you have found a firm with a strong history of success, you need to ensure that the attorney they plan to assign you is up to the job.
Free Consultation
Arrange a free consultation with your potential attorney and use that time to ensure that your attorney meets the following requirements.
- Personable – You will need to spend a lot of time in your attorney’s company, which means that you need to ensure that your personalities don’t clash. Take your time to speak to them and ensure you feel comfortable with them. Try and figure out a little bit about their ideals and ensure they align with yours.
- Past Victories in Similar Cases – Ask them about their previous victories in similar cases.
- Time Management – Any skilled and reputable attorney usually has a busy caseload of clients. A reasonable attorney will have a full caseload and will use their excellent time management skills to ensure that their caseload is not too full and that they make adequate time for each one of their clients. You shouldn’t expect 24/7 access to their time, but you should feel they answer queries quickly and allocate your time in their schedule.
- Organization Skills – To investigate to the best of their ability and keep the case moving at the speed it should, your attorney should have excellent organization skills.
What to Do at The Scene of the Accident
You can take specific steps at the scene of the accident to ensure that you are safe and protected.
Prioritize your safety
Always remember, your safety takes top priority. If you have just been involved in an accident, you should check once it’s over to see if you have hit your head or hurt your back. Whether you suspect either of these is true, remain still and tell anyone who tries to move you to call an ambulance, as you may have spinal damage or head trauma.
If you are confident you have not suffered a spinal injury or head trauma, check yourself for damages.
If you are at risk of further danger, move to a safe location as a priority.
Call an ambulance if there are injuries.
If you have injuries or any other party has damages, you must call an ambulance immediately. They will be able to treat everyone on the scene. They will also look over any parties who do not have any outward symptoms. Adrenaline and shock can mask many pain and symptoms, which means that internal injuries may lie hidden until they become much worse later on down the line.
The ambulance team will also file a report that can be accessed by your attorney later on. Reports like this are excellent pieces of unbiased evidence to support your claim.
Call the police/fire department.
The police must be called in car accident cases and any cases where the at-fault parties threaten others. One example where the police prove crucial is in the case of DUI accidents. The police will be able to administer a blood alcohol test to the at-fault driver. The police will also Corden off and divert oncoming traffic.
You need to call the fire department if the accident involves electricity, fire, explosion, gas, or structural damage. They are trained to contain this incident, preventing further injury to others.
Collect evidence
When you are confident that you are safe and have done everything you can for yourself and others, now are the optimal time to start collecting evidence if your injuries allow it.
We recommend taking a video of the accident scene and the most incredible photos of anything you thought was instrumental.
If there were any witnesses on the scene, try to collect their details. The brilliant idea is to ask them if you can record a quick voice note statement. Witnesses can prove unreliable later on down the line when asked for an account, but if they can confirm their previous information, they are much more likely to help.
Call a team of Katy personal injury attorneys.
At any point after the emergency services have been called, it is a brilliant idea to contact your injury lawyers. The sooner you call them, the better their chances of conducting a successful investigation.
They will also advise you on what to do and what to say, which can prove instrumental, as it will protect you from admitting any fault and remind you what to do next.
The sooner you call your Katy personal injury lawyer after the accident, the better. Individual injury cases are always time restrictive. The sooner you call, the sooner they can take over all liaising with your insurance company and the other parties, giving you room to breathe.
Katy Personal Injury FAQ
How Long Does a Personal Injury Claim Take?
Every personal injury case that we deal with is unique. There are so many factors and circumstances that lead to a personal injury case that there is no average time for them to take.
The length of time that a personal injury case will take will usually depend on its complexity. More straightforward patients with clear liability will be over quicker than complex cases with multiple parties and varying degrees of harm.
Do All Personal Injury Cases Go To Court?
If your case is simple, the other party is liable, and you have an excellent attorney behind you, many insurance companies may choose to settle out of court as they know their chances of winning a drawn-out legal battle are low.
If your case is more complicated, there is a good chance it may end up in court. At this point, your attorney’s experience and skill will come into play as they fight your case and convince the courts that you deserve the compensation you seek and the damages you wish to recover.
Call Houston Injury Lawyers, PLLC
At Houston Injury Lawyers, PLLC, our Katy personal injury attorneys team has extensive experience and a long history of success. They are exceptionally skilled at calculating fair and reasonable damages and are aggressive litigators, unafraid to stand up to the insurance company and their legal teams in court.
We never settle for less, we never back down from a fight, and we won’t rest until we have exhausted every avenue in seeking the total and maximum compensation you deserve.
Contact us today for a free consultation and case evaluation at 936-251-5246.
