When you are involved in an automobile accident and get injured, you need to hire an attorney immediately. Serious injuries can stress you and your life can change forever. Your best option is to find the best automobile injury lawyer who knows how to handle similar cases. This is because insurance companies have adjusters and lawyers who start assessing your injury claim immediately after the accident.
The importance of hiring an automobile injury attorney
As explained earlier, insurance companies have attorneys on their payroll and dealing with them yourself after an accident is not a wise thing to do. While it’s possible to handle your claim alone, you should know that you will be at their mercy. They can offer you a partial settlement or even deny your claim because it will be up to them to decide how much money you deserve for your injuries.
Besides this, keep in mind insurance lawyers usually take their chances by assuming that you don’t know your legal rights. This is more reason why you should always have an automobile injury attorney on your side, especially when the insurance company refuses to settle a full amount or make any settlement at all. An attorney can engage with the insurance company on your behalf.
What to do after a car accident
When you’re involved in a car accident and have injuries, you need to file a claim with the at-fault party’s insurance company and your insurance company. In most cases, the at-fault party’s insurance company is supposed to pay for your lost wages and medical bills.
Once you file a claim, the insurance company will determine the right amount to pay on your settlement. Unfortunately, they can also deny the claim completely. Worse still, it can be quite difficult to have compensation when an accident involves multiple at-fault parties. This is because many people might have got injured, meaning there might not be adequate settlement money to cover everyone.
It’s even much worse if you’re partially at fault because there can be claims against your insurance company from the other parties. As you can see, an automobile accident can be complex and you need to have a lawyer regardless of who is at fault.
When should you hire an attorney
It’s important to seek medical attention after an accident. But once you are stable, you should find an automobile attorney quickly. Remember that insurance companies begin working after a car accident to find ways on how they can avoid paying you a full settlement. Evidence from the accident scene can quickly be lost in just a couple of hours. Hence, you should always contact a lawyer as soon as you can to make sure that the evidence is not tampered with.
Most of the time, the insurance company can contact you and attempt to get a recorded statement. In such cases, it’s not a good idea to offer a statement without a lawyer on your side. For one thing, the insurance company can use that information against you.
Aside from this, soon after an accident, you may be in a confused state and the information you give cannot be a true reflection of exactly what happened. For these reasons, the communication with the insurance company should be handled by your attorney.
