Personal Injury Lawyer Lawrenceville, GA
Working with a personal injury attorney after an accident that someone else caused is one of the best ways to make sure that you take an aggressive and calculated approach to recover monetary compensation from the insurance company. This is especially true if you have suffered serious injuries — or lost a loved one to wrongful death — that have a substantial impact on your ability to live your life and earn an income. Injury law is complicated, and trying to navigate the process of recovering damages for severe injuries without legal representation can feel nearly impossible. The injury law professionals at The Pendergrass Law Firm are here to help.
Whether your accident was the result of negligent medical treatment, a traffic accident, a slip and fall, or any other incident that was the result of someone else’s negligence or recklessness (or, in some instances, their malice), the reality is that you are an accident victim, and you deserve to be compensated as such. Often, an accident victim will file a personal injury claim or wrongful death claim without finding the right personal injury lawyer. When the insurance company refuses to pay a fair settlement, the victim ultimately accepts a low offer and suffers the long-term financial consequences of someone else’s dangerous behavior.
Not so when working with an experienced personal injury attorney.
Contact The Pendergrass Law Firm Today For A Free Consultation With A Lawrenceville Personal Injury Attorney
We offer a free consultation for people who want to know more about working with a personal injury law firm after an accident. There are many different types of personal injury cases we handle across Gwinnett County, each of which is unique to the specific circumstances of the accident. Unfortunately, the insurance company handles each personal injury claim with a similar approach: to settle quickly and cheaply, without taking the many unique details of the situation into account. This is why working with a Lawrenceville personal injury attorney is such an important step.
You can read more below to get a general idea of some of our personal injury practice areas. If you see your accident case mentioned below, simply contact us as soon as possible to connect with an experienced personal injury lawyer in Lawrenceville, Georgia. You will go through a comprehensive case evaluation and learn more about what you can expect as a client of The Pendergrass Law Firm.
Common Examples Of Accident Cases Resulting In Personal Injury Claims
The following are just a few of the many examples that entitle victims to compensation for their injuries and damages. Whether or not your situation is mentioned here, contact us as soon as possible to speak with a personal injury attorney about your unique situation and get a sense of how an attorney can help you move forward with your case. Keep in mind that no two accidents are alike, and even if your case falls under any of the following examples or other related practice areas, reputable law firms know the importance of taking a calculated approach to any case to help clients get the money they deserve.
Car Accidents
After a car accident, it is common for the victim to file a claim with the at-fault driver’s insurance company to recover compensation for property damage, medical bills, and lost wages. However, insurance companies have years of experience handling car accident claims, and their adjusters are highly skilled at reaching low settlement agreements. When you have legal representation handling your personal injury claim after a car accident in Gwinnett County, they will fight to get you the money you truly deserve. Call our Lawrenceville car accident attorneys today.
Source: https://gdot.numetric.net/crash-data/
Motorcycle Accidents
Motorcycle accidents are extremely dangerous for the motorcycle rider and their passenger — far more so than accidents involving only cars — because a motorcycle provides no structural protection from impact. These crashes typically result in higher medical bills and other personal injury damages than a car accident for this reason, but insurance companies work aggressively to avoid paying as many of these additional damages as possible, whether in Lawrenceville, Georgia, or elsewhere.
You will likely endure significant pain and suffering after a motorcycle crash, but the sooner you are partnered with a Lawrenceville personal injury lawyer, the better your chances of receiving compensation.
Truck Accidents
Commercial truck drivers are held to higher licensing and certification standards than passenger vehicle drivers, but these standards will never be able to guarantee that a trucker won’t cause an accident. Truck accidents can be much more dangerous than car accidents due to the substantial size difference between a semi-truck and a passenger vehicle, so their commercial insurance policies often have much higher limits and premiums. While a higher policy limit may leave more room for a higher settlement in personal injury cases stemming from trucking accidents, this still does not mean that the insurance company will willingly pay for all damages owed to the victim.
Your personal injury attorney will need to fight to get you the money you are entitled to after a Gwinnett County truck crash. Contact our Lawrenceville truck accident attorneys for immediate representation.
Pedestrian Accidents
Lawrenceville personal injury attorneys are experienced in fighting to recover damages for serious injuries stemming from pedestrian accidents, motor vehicle collisions, and other incidents that can lead to catastrophic injuries and significant financial losses. These accidents commonly lead to traumatic brain injury like a concussion, as well as broken bones and many other serious injuries.
If you or a loved one have suffered from a serious injury as a pedestrian, contact our firm as soon as possible to connect with Lawrenceville injury attorneys for a free consultation. We will begin building our attorney-client relationship.
Wrongful Death
Any fatal accident that falls under the Georgia personal injury laws is handled like other personal injury cases. But the accident case is brought forward by certain family members or dependents (through the deceased’s estate) to recover the common damages of a personal injury claim. However, there are additional damages such as the long-term financial contributions from the deceased and things like loss of companionship and consortium, among others.
Source: https://gdot.numetric.net/crash-data/
There were a total of 40 fatal car accidents in Gwinnett County in 2020, one source of many types of wrongful deaths in the county that year. Personal injury firms have noted a decline in many personal injury claims in 2020, likely due to ongoing lockdowns and travel restrictions that inadvertently improved safety on the roads.
Lawrenceville personal injury lawyers understand the sensitivity required for wrongful death cases. They will work aggressively to recover full compensation after a wrongful death while giving the grieving family the time and space necessary to start the healing process.
Premises Liability
Premises liability is an area of personal injury law that holds a property owner accountable for dangerous conditions on their property that could lead to an accident. The most common type of personal injury case stemming from premises liability issues is a slip and fall, which happens when a lawful visitor to someone else’s property slips, trips, and falls due to a hazardous or dangerous condition.
After slip and fall accidents in Lawrenceville, Georgia, property owners may attempt to offer the victim compensation in the form of a cash payment to avoid paying the full amount after a personal injury case. Don’t sign anything, don’t make any statements, and don’t agree to any offers until you have spoken with a Lawrenceville personal injury lawyer. Personal injury lawyers will help you make sense of the situation and determine whether or not you should move forward with direct negotiations or file a personal injury lawsuit in the Georgia courts.
Dog Bites
In Lawrenceville-Atlanta, GA, and the rest of the state, dog owners are held to “negligence” standards, meaning they typically must already be aware of their animal’s aggressive nature to be held accountable for its actions. Lawrenceville personal injury attorneys understand the legal prerequisites for filing a personal injury claim following a dog bite and will work with our clients to ensure that they can recover compensation through injury law after this painful attack.
Medical Malpractice
When working with a medical professional, we have every right to trust they will take a prudent and calculated approach to our treatment to avoid additional harm. While positive health outcomes are not guaranteed when working with a doctor (meaning that you could not sue for unsuccessful cancer treatment), you can count on your doctor to use accepted practices in your treatment while minimizing or avoiding additional harm.
A failure to do so, in ways such as misprescribing medications, making surgical errors, or misdiagnosis, can lead to substantial additional medical expenses, emotional anguish, and more. A personal injury lawyer in Lawrenceville can help you seek compensation for all your damages.
These types of personal injuries can result in extensive pain and suffering, emotional trauma, and much more, all of which entitles a victim to substantial compensation.
What Are The Prerequisites Of A Personal Injury Case?
The following factors establish important elements like fault and liability and can be translated across a range of situations to make sense of unique accidents as they apply to Georgia personal injury law. When you speak with a Lawrenceville personal injury lawyer for an initial consultation, they will use these elements to gauge how strong your case may be.
The Defendant Owed The Victim A Duty Of Care
Each day, we all have duties of care for those we know and complete strangers. A duty of care is the expectation to act reasonably and prudently to avoid unnecessary accidents and harm to others. Depending on the activity we are engaged in, this could range from not driving drunk or speeding to making sure that a product a company is selling is safe for consumers.
Depending on the specifics of your Lawrenceville, GA accident, the duty of care the at-fault party owed you will be unique.
The Defendant Failed To Uphold Their Duty Of Care
When someone leaves a bar in Atlanta, GA, and drives home to Lawrenceville, GA while over the legal blood alcohol concentration limit, they are guilty of a criminal violation and have failed their duty of care to all others on the road. This is a simple and understandable failure of a duty of care, but there are many other failures that personal injury lawyers are skilled at identifying to prove fault and liability on behalf of their clients.
When you work with a Lawrenceville personal injury attorney, you won’t need to worry about identifying or proving that there was a failed duty of care — they will handle this for you as you focus on your recovery. This is why it is so important to partner with a personal injury lawyer as soon as possible. The longer you wait, the more time the insurance company has to build a counter-argument to try and pin as much blame on you as possible.
This Failure Resulted In An Accident
If a drunk driver does not cause an accident and therefore has caused no personal injury to another, they are only guilty of a criminal violation. If, however, they cause an accident, the situation is now under criminal AND injury law because another individual suffered an avoidable personal injury due to their failure to behave reasonably.
If the at-fault party is cited for a criminal violation, this does not bar the personal injury victim from taking action. These two types of law are different, and it is even plausible that someone may have their criminal charges dropped but still be held liable for the personal injury damages due to different standards for burdens of proof.
The Accident Caused Measurable Damages To The Victim
To continue with the drunk driving example, if a drunk driver runs into someone’s mailbox, they have caused property damage but no personal injury. However, suppose they rear-end a vehicle at a stop sign. In that case, the victim may suffer physical and emotional damages, entitling them to compensation under Georgia personal injury law.
Personal injury attorneys in Gwinnett County can identify the range of damages you are owed. They also provide comprehensive legal support tonegotiateg a final settlement with the insurance company.
Our personal injury law firm is skilled in these negotiations, and if your case goes to the Georgia courts, we are ready to act. Many personal injury attorneys focus solely on settlements, meaning that a victim will need to hire trial lawyers, but you will not need to worry about that with The Pendergrass Law Firm acting as your Lawrenceville personal injury lawyers.
What You Should Do if You’ve Been Involved in an Accident
The following tips are for informational purposes only. Nothing on this site should be construed as legal advice. For actual legal advice about your personal injury claim, contact The Pendergrass Law Firm. All of our experienced personal injury lawyers work on a contingency basis, meaning you don’t have to pay out of pocket to discuss your injury claim.
Get to a Safe Location
There is no one-size-fits-all solution for this. For truck accidents involving hazardous materials, you may have to drive over a mile away to be safe. For motorcycle accidents, this might just mean trying to get out of the roadway. Just remember your safety comes before any other considerations.
Call First Responders
Depending on the type of accident, the dispatcher will need to know different information. For motor vehicle accidents, they will ask for the location and direction of travel, as well as a description of the vehicles. For slip and fall cases, you may have to describe your location within the premises. The dispatcher will always need to know the number of injury victims and types of injuries.
Talk to Witnesses
Most personal injury firms can point to a case where the jury verdict depended on the testimony of a witness. That’s why it’s important to try to get the contact info of anyone who saw the accident. If you were injured in a store, ask the manager to document the employees who were working at the time of the accident.
Take Pictures of the Accident Scene
Many accident victims forget that they have a camera with them that can record the scene as it unfolds. This will be the best way to preserve how the accident scene looked on the date of your injury.
Seek Medical Attention
Allow paramedics to examine you on scene. If they recommend that you go to the hospital, follow their advice. Keep all medical documents and medical records you collect along the way in one secure location.
Call a Personal Injury Law Firm
The insurance adjusters will probably make you an offer to settle within 24 hours of your accident. However, if you take that money and your injuries turn out to be worse than you originally thought, you will not be able to seek further monetary compensation. Instead, contact the experienced personal injury attorneys at The Pendergrass Law Firm. Our Lawrenceville injury lawyers don’t charge our clients for legal services until the case is completed — and then, only if we win. So, call today.
Frequently Asked Questions About Personal Injury Cases
The following are a few basic answers to some of the many questions we get during our free initial consultations. The answers below are not to be taken as legal advice; they are meant to give you general answers regarding personal injury.
The only way to get a clear answer about your case is to speak directly with a Lawrenceville personal injury lawyer to go over the distinctive factors of your injury case.
Contact us as soon as possible to get the answers you need to learn how best to move forward with the help of an experienced attorney.
How Long Do I Have To Take Legal Action After A Personal Injury In Georgia?
The statute of limitations for most personal injuries in Georgia is two years following the accident. This means that you have two years to file a personal injury lawsuit in the courts, but you must partner with an attorney much earlier. Your personal injury lawyer will use the time to build a case, investigate your damages, and handle settlement negotiations.
If you wait before contacting an attorney, they will have much less time to get a clear understanding of your injuries and damages and may need to file a lawsuit even if an out-of-court settlement is likely the best option for all parties.
There are exceptions to the two-year statute, particularly when injuries do not immediately appear. Still, if you even suspect that you have suffered an injury, we suggest you connect with our law firm immediately to get started with plenty of time.
Do I Need To Hire An Attorney To Get A Fair Settlement With An Insurance Company?
You can absolutely handle your claim, but the reality is that insurers have been handling claims like yours for years and have developed playbooks for handling claims as quickly and cheaply as possible. Tort and injury law is complex, and a big part of these settlement tactics involves overwhelming a victim with legal documents and terms while making extremely low settlement offers and rejecting a victim’s counteroffers outright.
When you work with a Lawrenceville attorney, the insurers know that they are involved with someone who understands personal injury law, has handled a range of accidents, and is dedicated to getting fair compensation for their client. Unfortunately, initial negotiation talks often go smoother when carried out by an attorney, but this also means you will have more time and emotional space to focus on recovering from your injuries.
In addition to the monetary benefits of working with a personal injury lawyer, stress has a significant impact on the recovery process from physical injuries, and the claims process is often very stressful — especially for someone unfamiliar with it. Insurers know this and use this as leverage to convince a claimant to settle for a low offer and move forward with their lives. Your attorney will not settle a case to get it over with and will do what it takes to get you the money you deserve, whether through direct negotiations or in front of a judge and jury.
Will My Case Go To Trial?
There are no clear statistics about how many personal injury claims are settled without going to court. However, many estimates put the number above 50% settled out of court and upwards of 95% of all cases resolved before trial. These numbers are difficult to gather because many settlements are done to avoid any publicly available record of the compensation amount or other details about the accident. These settlements are not reported to a central authority, meaning that the settlement rate is speculative.
However, the fact remains that most personal injury cases are resolved before a trial. Whether or not your situation follows the trends is to be determined, though, and there are some injuries that an attorney may deem deserving of litigation without exhaustive negotiations. This is common in instances where your situation may warrant punitive damages, which are only awarded by a judge or jury at the trial resolution.
Punitive damages are added to compensatory damages and are intended to serve as a punishment to the defendant.
How Long Will It Take To Get A Payment For My Personal Injury Claim?
Like most general answers about personal injuries, it depends. Some cases are extremely straightforward and can lead to a settlement agreement in a matter of months, while others may be drawn out over a few years and can be contentious and complex. If your case goes to court, this will naturally extend the time necessary to reach a settlement agreement because the case will then be moving at the speed of the courts.
Even as we are working on a Gwinnett County personal injury case, it can be difficult to determine whether or not we are closing in on an agreement. We make sure to keep our clients informed about every development and can generally give a sense of what to expect as our conversations proceed with the at-fault party’s representation.
What If I Am Partially Responsible For My Car Accident? Am I Still Entitled To Compensation?
The Georgia Code uses a legal tool known as comparative negligence when assigning liability for personal injuries. It allows a victim to recover damages proportional to the amount that they are responsible for the accident. For example, if you accept 25% fault for a car accident, your final settlement will be reduced by this amount.
Comparative negligence is a beneficial law, considering that the alternative would block victims from compensation even if they were 1% responsible. But insurers use this tool to their advantage by attempting to pin additional blame on a victim to lower their financial obligations. An experienced attorney will push back on these unfair tactics and will only accept fault that you rightfully deserve to be held liable for.
Insurers count on victims to tire of going back and forth about “minor” details, such as a quarter of a percent of fault, but these seemingly insignificant cuts add up. You do not deserve to take on the financial burden of someone else’s dangerous or reckless behavior.
What Are the Deadliest Accident Injuries?
Source: U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Accidental injuries are one of the most common causes of injuries in the U.S., and automobile accidents are among the most common causes. Even in non-fatal car collisions, accident victims often suffer serious bodily harm, such as traumatic brain injury, back injuries, loss of limbs, severe burns, etc.
How Much Money Am I Entitled To For My Injuries?
To determine how much money you deserve after a car accident, product liability injury, or any other personal injury accident, you will need to sit down with a Lawrenceville lawyer and go through the details of your situation. The basis for your damages is predominantly things like your medical bills and lost wages, each highly dependent on your unique situation.
From there, your lawyer will need to determine the non-economic damages you have suffered, using a number of tools at their disposal.
After your initial consultation, you will have a better idea of what your case may be worth, but your attorney will spend a substantial amount of time at the outset of your work together investigating each possible damage before reaching a final calculation. However, even this final calculation will not likely reflect your actual final settlement for various reasons.
Aggressive Legal Representation for Lawrenceville Personal Injury Cases
If you’re seeking full financial recovery for you accident, contact The Pendergrass Law Firm, serving Lawrenceville and surrounding areas. Call today for a free consultation.