Ready to Help with Any Accident Case
We handle a variety of personal injury cases, and many of our cases involve catastrophic injuries, such as paralysis, loss of a limb, back and spinal injuries, or traumatic brain injury. We are also called often to help claimants with serious car accident, motorcycle accident, and truck accident claims filed against all sorts of major insurance companies. Cases involving serious injuries require close attention to detail and experience dealing with insurance providers since there must be a significant amount of compensation recovered that accounts for a lifetime of medical care and assistance.
If you’ve been injured, it is also important to act quickly. The statute of limitations in California generally gives you two years from the date of your injury to file a personal injury lawsuit. You also have two years to file a wrongful death claim after losing a loved one to a serious injury or illness caused by another party. The sooner you retain an attorney, the better, though. You can be sure the defense team is already working to stop you from getting any compensation!
What Compensation Can You Demand?
While you are trying to recover from a serious injury, you can rapidly run out of money if you are missing work and your health insurance has hit its cap. You need to be confident that the amount of compensation you are pursuing is maximized. Otherwise, you could be sitting with debt even if you win your case through a settlement or verdict.
This is where our Santa Barbara personal injury attorneys can step in once again and make things easier for you. We can use our decades of collective experience to quickly and accurately calculate your damages to the fullest. When we bring a claim against the opposing party, we will know exactly what a fair amount looks like and will fight diligently for it.
Compensation that might be available in your injury claim includes:
- Medical bills: If you are watching your medical bills stack after being in a serious accident, then filing a personal injury claim might be the only way to take care of them. Costs related to emergency medical care, hospitalization, rehabilitation, prescription medication, and more can all be counted as part of your medical costs. For cases of severe injuries, it is important to consider future medical care and therapies, as those costs could be significant and should not be excluded from a successful settlement or verdict amount.
- Lost wages: When an injury is severe enough to take you out of work, your income will be crippled. Your job might provide you some amount of disability pay, but it will likely not be nearly enough to keep your finances afloat. You can sue the liable party for the amount of wages you have missed and will eventually miss due to the injuries they caused. The compensation amount can even count the money you will not earn due to being unable to earn a higher income due to career limitations caused by your continued disability.
- Property damage: In auto accidents, property damage can be a significant financial sum. A totaled car can cost several thousands of dollars to repair or replace. However, you should know that your property will usually be priced based on its depreciated or current value, not the cost you originally paid to purchase it. This rule could mean you end up with much less than you expect for your automobile – unless you have a convincing attorney on your side.
- Pain and suffering: Noneconomic damage is permitted in most personal injury claims filed in California. Pain, suffering, and emotional trauma are the three most common types of noneconomic damage. The more you have suffered due to the mistakes of the liable party, the more your attorney can demand in your name. Oftentimes, noneconomic damage is calculated by taking the sum of all economic damages – such as medical bills, lost wages, and property damage – and multiplying it by a factor based on the plaintiff’s experienced suffering.
California’s Pure Comparative Negligence Laws
California uses a pure comparative negligence law, which means you can file a claim against an at-fault party in your accident who is at least 1% liable. This rule is useful when more than one party causes an accident. For example, if you were in a car accident caused by five other reckless drivers and each was assigned 20% liability by accident investigators, then you could still file a claim against each of them for an equivalent portion of your damages.
Since pure comparative negligence laws hinge on each party’s liability, you need to do what you can to reduce your own liability amount. The lower your liability, the more you can recover overall. Insurance defense attorneys will try to spike your liability, regardless of what evidence they have. Our Santa Barbara personal injury lawyers are here to challenge their tactics and keep your liability down to a minimum, ideally down to 0%.
Evidence that can help keep your liability low:
- Medical records
- Eyewitness testimonies
- Photographs of your accident
- Official reports like police reports
Should You Speak with an Insurance Representative?
On the topic of liability, you should avoid speaking to an insurance representative after an accident. Even a member of your own insurance provider is not someone you should be speaking with openly. Saying the wrong thing to an insurance company representative could give them a chance to misconstrue the truth and raise your liability.
Instead of talking to an insurer on your own, call (805) 628-4967 quickly after an accident to retain our legal services. Our Santa Barbara personal injury attorneys can speak to insurers on your behalf. We can even instruct your insurance provider to correspond with us first before reaching out to you for future inquiries.
Call Santa Barbara’s Leading Team of Injury Attorneys
When you need to file a personal injury claim in Santa Barbara, Crane Flores, LLP should be the first law firm you contact. We bring a combination of professionalism and compassion to every case we accept. You can rest easy and assured that your claim is in capable hands while we dig into the details and bring the fight to the opposition. You deserve every cent of compensation available, and we intend to get them for you!
Call us today at (805) 628-4967 to schedule a free consultation with our Santa Barbara personal injury attorneys. Our Santa Barbara office is located at:
15 W Carrillo St #310
Santa Barbara, CA 93101