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I’ve been hurt in an accident and I want to file a claim for my injuries. What’s the first thing I should do?

Personal Injury

Accidents happen all the time, and many people aren’t sure what to do when they occur. If you’re involved in an accident, there is an appropriate timeline to handle the situation. The first thing you do, if you are able to do it, is contact the police to file a report. This is one of the most important things you can do in an accident, especially if it was not your fault the accident occurred. The police will perform an investigation at the scene to determine who is at-fault, which is how you get the ball rolling on your claims. If you’ve been injured in the accident, it’s best to seek medical attention right away.

If you’re considering filing a claim, you should go through the proper channels prior to calling a personal injury attorney. You want an accident report filed first and foremost, and you want to see a doctor right away. The longer you wait, the worse it is for your claim. If you seek medical attention at the scene, it’s for the best. If you choose not to do that, you should seek the help of a doctor in the first day following your accident. You want any injuries documented, treated, and discovered right away. This not just for you claim, either. You want to know if you have any invisible injuries so they don’t become worse before they are treated.

Now that you’ve sought medical attention, it’s time to file a claim. The first thing you do when you make this decision is call a personal injury attorney. Our job is to help you file a claim with the insurance company of the other driver, but we also provide you with several other services.

Call An Attorney

When you are injured in an accident, call our personal injury attorneys. Our job is to help you find the compensation to which you are entitled long before you are offered a settlement by the other driver’s insurance company. Our initial consultation is free of charge. What we do during this meeting is provide you with insight. We need and want to see your accident report and your medical records from the injuries you sustained during the accident.

When we have the facts in front of us, it’s easier for us to determine what we can help you with if we can help you at all. You are entitled to damages when you are the victim of someone else’s negligence, and that means we want to help you. If you want to file a claim, you should know what you’re doing, how you proceed, and what you might want to ask for.

Medical Bills

The biggest reason to file a claim against another driver when you are injured in an accident is for medical bills. If you’re injured, you’ll have them. Your insurance might cover the cost of some of your medical bills if you have health insurance, and you might think that the other company is required to pay the rest of your medical bills. The problem lies in the fact you have to pay out of your own pocket until the insurance company pays. The other problem is insurance companies are only required to pay up to a certain amount of your medical bills. This is dependent on the kind of policy the other driver carries, and where you live also plays a role in this amount. If the insurance company is only required to pay up to $10,000 worth of medical bills and you’re catastrophically injured, you might have hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills before long.

Medical bills are not something that go away after a few days if your injuries are serious. They might be something you incur for the rest of your life from this one injury. If you need lifelong medical care, special equipment, if you need to change the layout of your home to accommodate a newly acquired wheelchair as a result of your accident, you must file a claim or a lawsuit. We can help.

Other Damages

If you make the decision to file a claim, you are also entitled to other damages.

– Funeral costs
– Lost wages
– Diminished earning capacity
– Pain and suffering
– Emotional and mental distress

There are many things you are entitled to, because your life can change dramatically as a result of an accident injury. Depending on the severity, you might not be able to return to work right away. Your employer cannot fire you for being injured and being in the hospital, but they can stop paying you. More serious injuries might prevent you from ever working again, or it might mean you cannot go back into the same line of work in which you previously worked. This can seriously hinder your ability to earn the same kind of paycheck you once earned, and that’s a problem.

Your life is going to change if you are seriously injured, and you are entitled to damages to help you get though the financial strain of an accident. Now is the time to call an attorney. We can help you figure out what to do next, what you are owed, and how you can get what is rightfully yours. You’ll call the police, call a doctor, and you’ll call a personal injury attorney in that order. It’s the best way to ensure you have what you need, you know what you’re doing, and you have the help of a professional attorney with ample experience in the personal injury field.