Accidents happen in many different ways and result in all kinds of potential injuries. From falls down slippery stairs to car crashes to defective product injuries, you could be left with medical bills and other expenses related to the injury.
Our attorneys help victims of serious injuries get the compensation they deserve through insurance claims, lawsuits, and other actions. We can help you understand what your case should be worth and how to go about getting the compensation you need.
For a free evaluation of your potential case, call Leeson & Leeson’s Allentown, PA personal injury attorneys at (610) 890-6332 today.
Kinds of Injury Cases Our Attorneys Handle in Emmaus
When you get hurt, it does not typically matter what type of accident it was. Our personal injury attorneys can take up the case, investigate the facts, and apply the same basic legal framework to your case to help you get damages. Cases are usually filed in two potential ways, and they can be based on all kinds of injuries/accidents:
Insurance Claims vs. Lawsuits
When you are hurt, going through insurance can often be the fastest way to get compensation, given that a settlement/payout can be obtained without having to go to court. However, when an insurance company gets to decide their own customer’s liability, they will often deny liability, argue that liability was only partial, or try to leave out damages.
When you file a lawsuit, the court and the jury decide the facts, fault, and damages instead of the insurance company making these decisions. In these cases, you can potentially get higher damages, and you can get damages through a court order at the end of the case, even if the insurance company refuses to accept fault.
Our lawyers can negotiate with insurance companies, file your lawsuit in court, and continue to negotiate potential settlements. Most cases ultimately end in a settlement, and filing a lawsuit does not necessarily mean you will have to take the case all the way to trial.
Types of Injury Cases
Our attorneys represent injury victims in all sorts of accidents. Whether you were hurt in a car accident, slip and fall, premises liability accident, defective product injury case, work injury, or other incident, our attorneys can look for grounds to claim that a defendant was liable and file lawsuits to get your damages paid.
In these cases, we can represent victims with all kinds of injuries. Most accidents involve just mild or moderate injuries, but if these injuries affected your ability to work or cost you medical bills, then you have damages you can claim. More serious injuries might leave you with ongoing disabilities and ongoing care expenses, making these cases much more expensive and making these damages more dire.
In any case where you suffered injuries, you also have pain and suffering damages. Sometimes, insurance claims restrict these damages – such as in cases of work injuries or car accidents – and it will be up to our lawyers to find excuses that allow lawsuits where you can claim these damages.
Damages for Injury Victims in Emmaus, PA
If you are facing injuries from an accident, there are likely three main areas of damages you can claim, along with another potential area that arises in some cases.
Medical Bills
The money you spend on medical care for your injury should be reimbursed. If you did not cause the accident, you should not have to be the one to pay for it, even through your health insurance, car insurance, or other insurance.
When you get medical care for an injury reimbursed, it should pay for all care costs. This includes not only hospital stays but also the ambulance ride to get there, surgical costs, imaging, appointments to follow up on any surgeries, physical therapy, rehabilitation, and mental health care to deal with the mental effects of the injury.
Lost Earnings
If you miss work for, say, a week while you recover from your injuries, that is a week’s worth of wages you missed out on. Even if your accident had nothing to do with your work, your inability to work while you recover means losing money, and that money should be paid back to you.
If you face longer healing times or time away from work – or if you need to retire from work altogether – the damages you face are higher. Permanent disabilities can also affect your earning capacity by making it impossible to work or reducing the hours and abilities you can handle. If your pay is reduced going forward, you can claim the difference as damages.
Pain and Suffering
As mentioned, any injury comes with some level of pain and suffering as a natural result of the injury. Determining the value of your physical pain, discomfort, mental and emotional distress, and other effects can be difficult, as these damages have no clear price attached. This is why we refer to these damages as “non-economic,” and we use various shortcut methods for calculating these damages.
One option involves picking a multiplier, chosen based on how severe the injury was, and multiplying it by the rest of your other “economic” damages to arrive at a pain and suffering total. You can, alternatively, choose a per-day value to represent one day’s worth of pain and suffering, then multiply it by however many days the pain and suffering will last. The multiplier method often works better with open-ended injuries, while the per-day method can help in cases where your injuries have already healed, and you know how long they lasted.
Punitive Damages
Punitive damages are only available in cases where the defendant’s actions were reckless or very dangerous. The defendant pays these damages not to pay you back but as a penalty or punishment against them for their wrongful actions. These damages are somewhat rare, but our lawyers can include a claim for punitives in appropriate cases.
Call Our Personal Injury Attorneys in Emmaus Today
Call Leeson & Leeson’s personal injury lawyers at (610) 890-6332 for a free case assessment.