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Do You Have a Vehicle Accident Case?

If you’ve been injured in an automobile accident, you might be wondering if you have a case. The best way to find out is by talking to a personal injury lawyer.

However, here is some additional information that might help you determine whether you should pursue legal action for your accident.

Factors Required for Personal Injury Compensation

In order to receive compensation for your vehicle accident case, we must establish that someone else’s negligence caused the accident and that you suffered injuries or damages from it. The three key factors that must be met are:

• Duty of Care. First, there must be a duty of care. For example, all drivers have the duty to drive in a safe and responsible manner. 

• Negligence. If someone did not adhere to that duty of care and that negligence is the cause of the damage or injury to another, then the question becomes what injury or damage did that negligence cause. Examples of negligence in a car accident would be speeding, reckless driving, failing to yield and following too closely.

• Damage or injuries. Finally, personal cases for car accidents require actual damages, such as damage to the vehicle, medical bills, provable lost wages, pain and suffering and even loss of enjoyment of living.

All three of these elements must be met for you to have a viable personal injury case.

Examples of Vehicle Accident Cases

We’ll give you some examples to illustrate how this works:

Example 1 – Wreck with no injuries

If a driver caused a wreck by driving recklessly, he meets the first two elements. But, if the wreck only caused property damage and no personal injury, there would be a claim for property damage, but no claim for personal injury damages. Most property damage only claims, where the liability is clear, are settled by insurance companies without the need for attorney intervention.

Example 2 – Wreck not caused by a third party

A person falls asleep while driving and hits a telephone pole. In this case, there would be no one for the driver to sue as the accident was not caused through the fault of a third party.

However, there may be medical payments coverage (med pay) under the driver’s auto policy which would pay a limited amount of the driver’s medical bills, depending on how much “med pay” was purchased by the owner of the policy.  

Example 3 – Wreck caused by an uninsured motorist

There is a situation where a case may meet all three criteria, but be difficult to pursue. This happens sometimes when the wreck is caused by an uninsured motorist. If there is no source of insurance, then it may be extremely difficult to recover compensation. However, if there is an uninsured motorist policy covering the vehicle in which the injured party was occupying , then that uninsured motorist policy can provide compensation to the injured parties.

In many situations where injury or death is caused by uninsured motorists, an injured person’s own policy that includes uninsured motorist coverage may provide the only compensation available to the injured party or the family of the deceased. We have successfully received compensation for clients in hundreds of these types of cases.  

Find Out if You Have a Car Accident Case

This information should give you a better understanding about the viability of your case. However, the absolute best way to find out whether you should pursue legal action is by talking to a qualified personal injury lawyer.

Discover if you have a case. Click here or call 615-444-5555 to talk to us today.