Table of Contents
Introduction
Personal Injury Attorney helps people injured due to someone else’s negligence or misconduct get compensation for their harm. Personal Injury law is a branch of tort law that deals with providing compensation to individuals who have suffered any physical, psychological, or emotional injury due to the negligence of some individual.
Personal Injury Attorney
A personal injury lawyer is a civil lawyer who provides legal representation to an individual injured in an accident or due to the negligence or lack of care or even deliberate intent of any person. They help their clients to recover financial compensation for the injuries or mental anguish suffered. The practice of PI lawyers typically involves cases of motor vehicle accidents, slip and fall accidents, defective products, workplace injuries and medical malpractice.
Types of Personal Injury Cases
- Animal bite injuries
- Transportation accidents
- Automotive accidents
- Boating accidents
- Aviation accidents
- Burn injuries
- Pedestrian accidents
- Construction accidents
- Defective products
- Insurance claims
- Motor vehicle accidents
- Medical malpractice
- Nursing home abuse
- Slip and fall accidents
- Spinal cord injuries
- Child daycare negligence
- Wrongful death, etc.
Types of Compensation
The various types of Compensation that you might get in a personal injury case are as follows—
- Compensation for loss of profit
- Remuneration for care and help
- Loss of income
- Loss of earning capacity
- Emotional distress
- Loss of consortium
- Mental anguish
- Future loss of profit
- Compensation for loss of pleasant/agreeable business
- Clinical expenses
- Loss of possibility of a marriage
Also, Read SECTION 130 OF THE MOTOR VEHICLE ACT,1988
What Do Personal Injury Lawyers Do?
- PI attorneys always exercise care when taking on new clients since they typically finance cases themselves, making their money through a percentage of recovered compensation rather than upfront legal fees. Before they take a case, an attorney will assess the situation to determine whether the client has a valid claim. Personal injury lawyers don’t typically agree to work on a case unless they believe they have a solid chance of winning it for the client.
- Negotiation skills are very important for a PI lawyer. They negotiate with insurance companies regularly. From reviewing the policy details to determining the maximum compensation and sending demand letters for damages, a personal injury lawyer handles all the communications with the insurance company. They ensure that the injury victim does not do anything that might jeopardize his claim.
- In case the insurance company refuses to pay the damages, the personal injury lawyer prepares a complaint against the defendant. The complaint contains all the details of the incident and the legal arguments as to how and why the defendant is responsible for the accident. The amount of compensation sought is also written in the complaint. Usually, the defendant is given 30 days to file his reply to the complaint.
- It is trite that most personal injury claims get settled before reaching a trial. However, if the case proceeds to trial, a personal injury lawyer represents his client in court and argues for him just like any other lawyer would.
- An accident victim only thinks about the immediate impact of an accident—the medical expenses, the repairs, or the insurance claim. However, a personal injury lawyer is a specialist in the field whose work includes assessing both short-term and long-term impacts of accidents on a routine basis in several different cases. He assists the client in making a real, true, and accurate assessment of the damages, both immediate and long term including the loss of earning capacity or assessing the lifetime impact, in case some disability has occurred.
- Sometimes a personal injury case is referred to an alternative dispute resolution mechanism, such as arbitration. In such a case, the personal injury lawyer presents the case of the injury victim before the arbitrator. He may also help in negotiating an out-of-court settlement with the defendant or the insurance company.