Many people falsely believe that Seattle personal injury car accident lawyers are too expensive to hire and they cannot afford one. People believe this because they believe in general all lawyers are expensive. This could not be further from the truth. While most other areas of law such as criminal law, family law, and business lawyers are expensive and require large up front retainers of $2000 or more and charge $200-$500 an hour, Seattle personal injury lawyer are paid out of the settlement with no up front costs or hourly charges.
Seattle car accident injury lawyers are paid on a contingency fee basis. This means that if your case turns out to be worth nothing or the case is your fault, you don’t owe the personal injury lawyer anything. Only if you collect money from your insurance or the third party defendant’s insurance company will your lawyer take a cut of the settlement.
Most Seattle personal injury lawyers charge between 1/3 of the settlement and 40% of the settlement. This amount is based upon the total settlement and not just what the client recovers. This means that the lawyer takes his or her fee based on the settlement total which includes medical bills, lost wages, pain and suffering, etc.
If you have been injured in a car accident, please give us a call to receive your free consultation.
Andrew CherinHow much does a Seattle personal injury car accident lawyer cost?
A low impact designation from an insurance company can hurt your Seattle personal injury car accident in the view point of the insurance company and bottleneck settlement negotiations. A low impact designation is where there is little or no damage to your car both visibly and repair wise by the car accident. If there is underlying frame damage to your car, you may avoid the designation by the increase in the repair cost and transfer of energy showing a bigger impact. You can avoid this designation a lot of the time by going through your own insurance company.
Bumpers are not made equal but generally they have a mph threshold whereby they will dent or crush. When there is little or no damage to the bumper, insurance companies like to argue that the impact of both vehicles in the collision was minimal or the mph each car was traveling was minimal. They believe that juries will not believe that anyone could be hurt in an impact that was so little that the bumper was not damaged.
Often times people want to avoid using their own insurance company to repair their car because they mistakenly believe that their insurance rates won’t go up if they don’t go through their own insurance company. This could not be further from the truth as your own insurance company will find out that you were involved in a car accident no matter if you report it to them or not. The reason for this is because the other insurance company will report you as involved in the car accident and a record will follow you.
Here’s is possibly a bigger problem by using the defendant’s insurance company to repair your car. If you have little or not visible damage to your car without frame damage from the car accident, the defendant’s insurance company is going to designate your case as a low impact case. When you go through your own insurance company, the defendant’s insurance company is for the most part unaware of the damage to your car. In this instance, they will only have the damage estimate and pictures of their own insured’s vehicle from the car accident.
If the defendant’s insurance company has your car repair estimate and pictures of your car from the Seattle car accident but your Seattle personal injury lawyer doesn’t have pictures of the defendant’s car damage, you are at a disadvantage because the insurance company can say that there was no damage to their insured’s car and your car has little or no damage so how could you have been hurt. At this point, it is hard to get pictures of the other car unless a lawsuit is filed putting your case value lower in most cases without more evidence.
There are situations where a low impact can cause major injuries but these are where there were already pre-existing injuries that made someone predisposed to being injured in a car accident with little impact. This can be proven with prior medical records and medical records from the most recent car accident injury case that show similar injuries or injuries that would lead to exacerbation of previous injuries.
In any of these situations, it makes most sense to go through your own insurance company if you can. There are situations where you can’t go through your own insurance company because you don’t have the required insurance policy coverage to have your own insurance repair your car. You will need collision coverage in order to get your car repaired by your own insurance company in a Seattle personal injury car accident case. This is one of the more expensive coverages in an insurance policy so not everyone buys this type of insurance.
Seattle personal injury lawyers offer free consultations for Seattle car accident injury victims and we are paid out of the settlement. If you have been injured in a car accident, there are strict deadlines that could pass without intervention so you need to act quick.
Andrew CherinWhat is a low impact case and how to avoid the designation?
Not a lot of people know what it is like to hire a lawyer and for that reason they have a lot of preconceived notions based on what insurance companies or the media want people to think. Many people wrongfully believe that hiring a Seattle personal injury lawyer is going to be expensive and they may not be able to afford one. Many people wrongfully believe that by hiring a Seattle personal injury lawyer they are going to have to file a lawsuit and go to trial against the person that hit them. Many people wrongfully believe that by hiring a personal injury lawyer they are going to have to wait years to see any money if any.
After hiring a Seattle personal injury lawyer, many clients don’t have to do anything again. They can stop worrying about insurance companies and just focus on healing. Their now Seattle personal injury lawyer will handle all the insurance phone calls and stop the insurance company from pestering them. Most personal injury clients only have to provide the lawyer with updates monthly by email or text and don’t have to come into the office again until the end of the case to pick up their settlement check.
Once the client has healed up, the Seattle personal injury lawyer will start trying to collect all of the client’s medical records and bills from anyone that they have seen since the accident that is accident related. Once the Seattle personal injury lawyer collects all of the medical records and bills, they will put together a demand package to send to the insurance company that summarizes what they client went through, based on the medical records and doctor or chiropractor’s notes. The Seattle personal injury lawyer will also have an offer included in the demand to start settlement negotiations.
After the demand is sent out, usually within a couple of weeks of the client completing medical treatment, the insurance company will contact the Seattle personal injury lawyer with a counter offer to settle the case. This usually occurs two to three weeks following the demand being sent out by the Seattle personal injury lawyer. It will usually take a couple weeks to get the two sides to a point where the personal injury client can accept a settlement. Basically, the turn around for settlement of a personal injury case is a couple months following completed treatment not years like some folk lores would have you think.
If you have been in a car accident, you need to call a Seattle personal injury lawyer now as their are strict time deadlines that may lapse making it so you no longer have a right to obtain compensation for your injuries.
Andrew CherinWhat do I have to do after I hire a personal injury lawyer? One meeting and done!
If you are hit by someone that doesn’t have insurance, you may be thinking to yourself that you need to hire a lawyer to sue the person to collect any type of money from this person with no insurance. However, you have other avenues to recover besides going after a dead beat and dead end. People that don’t have insurance generally don’t have any assets going after. Meaning, even if you get a big judgment at trial, you may never see a dime of it. This doesn’t mean that the dead beat non insured gets off for free, to the contrary, the judge will most likely move all of your medical bills into their name or your insurance will put a lien on them.
UIM insurance is your best best to receive compensation. UIM or Uninsured or underinsured motorist insurance is an automobile insurance policy that steps into the shoes of the defendant and compensates you for pain and suffering, medical bills, lost wages, and more. The policy is very inexpensive but provides a world of relief when you are hit by someone with little or no insurance. Without this insurance, you would probably not see a dime out of your case that has turned your world upside down. These cases need lawyers though. These are tough cases even though you have insurance.
Some statistics show that around 25% of people on the road today have no insurance and another 25% or more of people on the road have the bare minimum insurance of $25,000. This means that the likelihood of being hit by someone with little or no insurance is probably around 50/50 so why not have UIM insurance which usually costs less than $10 per month for $250,000 worth of insurance – a great deal considering that collision coverage generally costs more than triple that to pay for the damage you cause to your own car. Isn’t your health and well being worth more than the repair value of your car?
If you do not have UIM insurance, you should get some now. However, if you were in a car accident already it is too late for that car accident but will protect you in the future. If you don’t have UIM insurance you can use Washington State’s Crime Victim’s assistance program to help recover and pay for medical bills that could be over $100,000 or more right now. It won’t get you pain and suffering money in your pocket, but it will help alleviate your financial burden.
Moreover, it is imperative to know that just because you have the UIM policy in place, you will want a Seattle car accident injury lawyer representing you in the case because the insurance company can and will use anything the defendant could have used as an argument against you for paying out any premiums. While you have the policy, the insurance company will fight hard to keep their money and offer you very little if they can to save money. They are a business and not your friend.
Andrew CherinWhat if you are hit by someone without insurance?
PIP is also known as personal injury protection and is an car insurance policy that covers your medical expenses, lost wages, and lost services when you are injured in a car accident, no matter whose fault the car accident was.
PIP insurance coverage is a very valuable insurance coverage to have in your policy because contrary to popular belief, the defendant’s insurance company will not pay for your medical treatment while you are healing. The defendant’s insurance company will only pay one settlement for all your injuries, lost wages, and medical bills and will not pay for your medical treatment as you go. You cannot bill the defendant’s insurance company.
PIP insurance comes in coverage amounts of $10,000, $20,000, $35,000, $50,000, and $100,000, depending on how much you want to pay each month. Most people choose to get the $10,000 coverage. $10,000 will generally be enough to cover chiropractic, massage, or physical therapy bills. However, if you go to the hospital, the hospital and ambulance ride alone will most likely exhaust these benefits with one visit. Most people would more likely benefit from a higher amount than $10,000, for this reason.
Here are three instances where you will receive PIP coverage by default, i.e. you don’t have to pay for it:
1. No signature:
PIP insurance must be offered by your insurance company for any new policy and must be rejected by you in writing, as mandated by Washington State law RCW 48.22.085. If the insurance company is unable to produce the written mandatory rejection of the policy by you, the insurance company must then give you the benefits of the lowest PIP policy or $10,000 to be used for your medical costs, medications, lost wages, and others. 99% of the time they are able to provide a signature of your rejection of the policy, but sometimes they can’t.
2. Pedestrian:
Additionally, if you are a pedestrian struck by a car, you will be offered PIP coverage by the defendant’s insurance company. This is a rare exception where the defendant’s insurance company will cover your medical expenses and lost wages as you accrue these costs. RCW 48.22.005(5)(b) states that if you are a pedestrian struck by a defendant, the defendant’s insurance company must offer you PIP coverage for no cost.
3. Passenger or Permissive driver of friend’s car:
If you are driving another person’s car (or are a passenger) with their permission and you get into a car accident, whether your fault or not, you are afforded PIP from the insurance company of the person who owns the car. This is another instance where you are afforded PIP insurance coverage where you otherwise have not paid for it. In effect, you receive the PIP coverage by default. RCW 48.22.005(5)(b) also authorizes this type of default coverage like the pedestrian scenario above.
If you have been injured in a car accident, you need a Seattle personal injury lawyer today. Call today for a free consultation. I charge my clients on a contingency fee basis, meaning I don’t get paid until and unless you recover a settlement from the third party insurance company. The amount of money that you will gain by hiring a Seattle personal injury lawyer will more than outweigh the cost of hiring a lawyer and then some. Most personal injury victims can stand to gain at least double what they could have obtained on their own, when they hire a Seattle personal injury lawyer including all lawyer fees and medical bills that are paid. Make a claim today, the only people you are saving money are insurance companies and not the driver who hit you. Get healed and relieve stress now!
If you have any traffic or car accident questions, please leave me a message bellow in the form or on my Facebook page. Be sure to sign up for our monthly newsletter where you will receive a brief highlight of our three best blog posts from the previous month. Thank you!
Andrew CherinThree Ways to Get PIP for Free in a Car Accident Injury Case
Many people are confused about hiring a personal injury lawyer and for good reason. Many people worry about the cost, trial, insurance coverage, making life harder for the defendant, how much their case is worth, and when to settle their case. This video is designed to answer some of these questions very generally.
Lawyers are generally very expensive and most people cannot afford to hire one. Therefore, people wrongly believe that they cannot afford a Seattle personal injury lawyer to represent them for their car accident injury case. Seattle personal injury lawyers are very affordable and end up making you way more money in the end by maximizing your case value. Generally, the cost of hiring a Seattle personal injury lawyer will be offset by the gain in value that maximizes a personal injury victim’s case value in terms of the amount they receive in the settlement and their ability to get all the necessary medical treatment they need.
Trial is something that everyone worries about and many people looking to hire a Seattle personal injury lawyer do not want to go to trial. Many wrongly believe that the only reason to hire a Seattle personal injury lawyer is to go to trial. However, there are many more benefits to hiring a Seattle personal injury lawyer besides going to trial and most cases settle outside of trial for much more money than an injured car accident victim could obtain on their own. Trial is only a last option and it is ultimately the client’s decision whether to accept the highest offer that the Seattle personal injury lawyer obtains for the client from the insurance company or to file a lawsuit.
Many people wrongly believe that all their medical treatment will be paid by the insurance company as they treat. This could not be further from then truth. The defendant’s insurance company about a month after you are in the car accident, will start pushing you to settle your case, often times downplaying your injuries and the value of your case. Additionally, the insurance company will not offer to pay for any future treatment and only pay for treatment you have already undergone. However, a Seattle personal injury lawyer can stop the insurance company from hounding you to be done with treatment to allow you to get all the medical treatment that you need and on your own time.
Who is going to pay for the treatment? A Seattle personal injury lawyer can walk you through all your options to find money to pay for your treatment while you are waiting for your injuries to heal and ultimately get a good settlement for the maximum value of your case. Your options range from personal injury insurance from your auto insurance, med pay insurance from your auto insurance, medical insurance, paying cash, and treating on a lien with the doctors and chiropractors.
The person that caused the car accident is often not a bad person and many people do not want to make this person’s life harder. However, this should not prevent you from getting what you are entitled to. Moreover, the person that caused the car accident will often have car insurance that they pay a premium for each month to cover this very situation and cover all your medical bills, lost wages, and pain and suffering. Therefore, the only person you are saving money for is the insurance company and not the defendant. Do you want to save the insurance company more money than they already get every month and that you rightfully are entitled too?
Your case value is determined by your lost wages, your medical bills, permanent injuries, temporary debilitating injuries, mental anguish, and your pain and suffering. Because there are so many different variables, every case is different and it is very hard to predict the value of your case until you are fully healed and back to normal. For this reason, your Seattle personal injury lawyer will often not even try to guess on the value of your case until you are fully done with medical treatment.
If you have been injured in a car accident, you need a Seattle personal injury lawyer today. Call today for a free consultation. I charge my clients on a contingency fee basis, meaning I don’t get paid until and unless you recover a settlement. The amount of money that you will gain by hiring a Seattle personal injury lawyer will more than outweigh the cost of hiring a lawyer and then some. Most personal injury victims can stand to gain at least double what they could have obtained on their own, when they hire a Seattle personal injury lawyer including all lawyer fees and medical bills being paid. Make a claim today, the only people you are saving money are insurance companies and not the driver who hit you. Get healed and relieve stress now!
If you have any traffic or car accident questions, please leave me a message bellow in the form or on my Facebook page. Be sure to sign up for our monthly newsletter where you will receive a brief highlight of our three best blog posts from the previous month.
Andrew CherinCommon Misconceptions About People Who Hire Personal Injury Lawyers
Many people are mystified about what a personal injury lawyer can do for them and their car accident injury case. Most people think that you only need to hire a personal injury lawyer when you are seriously injured or when the insurance company is offering you nothing for your case. While those are certainly good times to hire a personal injury lawyer, many people forego hiring a personal injury lawyer for “smaller cases” with clear liability. As a result, these people are not getting fully healed nor fully compensated for their injuries.
When should you hire a personal injury lawyer?
You should hire a personal injury lawyer for all car accidents that are caused by other people where you suffer pain that requires some form of medical attention. An example of a good case is if you need to go to your family doctor to be evaluated for injuries that you sustained in a car accident and then your doctor prescribes physical therapy or massage.
Why people don’t hire a lawyer?
People will not hire a lawyer because they believe they can successfully negotiate with the insurance company and the insurance company is treating them fair. Insurance companies will often say that their insured is responsible for your injuries and they will compensate you for your car expenses and medical bills. However, soon after they say this, they say that they will not pay for more treatment after such and such date and that they will give you $1,000 in your pocket. Many people will falsely believe this is fair and will stop treatment even though they are not back to normal because they believe the insurance company and most importantly, they insurance company holds the money.
What are the benefits of hiring a personal injury lawyer for a car accident injury case?
If you hire a personal injury lawyer to represent you in your car accident case, you will receive peace of mind that you can just focus on making your chiropractor or physical therapy appointments rather than worrying about dealing with the insurance company. You will have peace of mind that you can get as much treatment as your physical therapist or chiropractor says you need to get better. Finally, you will get compensated for all your medical bills and put a lot of money in your pocket even after your personal injury lawyer is paid.
What happens to those insurance companies phone calls threatening that they will pull the $1,000 they are offering you off the table after a certain amount of time and only pay for your first month of physical therapy or chiropractor treatment?
Funny enough, they will ultimately pay for much more treatment that your doctor prescribes later even though they threatened to stop payment at this time. They will also pay you much more than $1,000 in pain in suffering that you will receive directly in your pocket, depending on your case, even after your attorney has been paid.
Doesn’t a lawyer cost a lot of money though? Can I afford one?
Ultimately, everyone who is injured in a car accident should hire a lawyer and everyone can afford one. Personal injury lawyers are paid on a contingency fee basis, meaning that we are paid out of the settlement only if you get a settlement. If there is no settlement, personal injury lawyers are not paid anything. Most personal injury lawyers will charge 1/3 of the settlement, which seems like a lot but ultimately pays for itself in the money and treatment that you receive in the end. Clients never end up paying out of pocket as the lawyer is paid out of the settlement.
Andrew CherinWhen is a good time to hire a personal injury lawyer and can I afford one?
Here is a quick guide to the 5 or 6 things you should be doing immediately following a car accident to preserve your injury case.
1. Exchange information with the other driver.
2. Take pictures of both cars in the car accident.
3. Wait for the police to arrive or call the police to file a police report.
4. Get treatment at the scene by the EMT or the next day with your family doctor or a walk in clinic.
5. Call your insurance company.
6. Call a Seattle personal injury lawyer for a free consultation about your options moving forward to see if you have a case.
Car accidents can be very tricky when dealing with insurance companies that love to play games. Common tactics they like to use is saying that the other car involved in the car accident isn’t damaged enough to hurt anyone. Additionally, they like to offer very little money before you are fully healed stating that this is a one time offer that must be accepted soon or they won’t offer it again. All lies. Hire a Seattle personal injury lawyer now to stop these tactics and get the full value you deserve, which most importantly is the freedom to get healed without pressure.
If you have been injured in a car accident, you need a Seattle personal injury lawyer today. Call today for a free consultation. I charge my clients on a contingency fee basis, meaning I don’t get paid until and unless you recover a settlement. The amount of money that you will gain by hiring a Seattle personal injury lawyer will more than outweigh the cost of hiring a lawyer and then some. Most personal injury victims can stand to gain at least double what they could have obtained on their own, when they hire a Seattle personal injury lawyer including all lawyer fees and medical bills being paid. Make a claim today, the only people you are saving money are insurance companies and not the driver who hit you. Get healed and relieve stress now!
Andrew CherinTop 5 Things to Do Following a Car Accident
When you get in a car accident and someone else is at fault, you may have a lot of questions about why you should not make a claim for personal injury damages. However, the answer to most of those questions and assumptions about who is actually going to pay for your bills is surprising to many. Who is actually saving money by not going through the other person’s insurance after a car accident or not making a claim for personal injury damages? Hint, it is a billion dollar industry and not an average person.
Why do so many people believe that it is better to not make a claim or to just accept cash from a person that causes a car accident to pay for only the repair damages? It may be due to cleaver advertising and news reporting by insurance companies and their agendas. Insurance is great, don’t get me wrong. However, the reason why many people are not making claims is based upon wrong assumptions.
Many people use the following excuses as why they don’t want to hire a Seattle personal injury lawyer to represent them in their car accident injury case or why they don’t even make a claim against the insurance company:
1. They don’t want to cost the person that caused the car accident more money. This could not be further from reality. When making a claim for personal injury or car repair following a car accident, the person that caused the car accident will not pay a dime because they have insurance. If there rates go up, it is rightfully because they are a bad driver and they will only go up a couple hundred dollars a year compared to the thousands of dollars the insurance company probably owes you.
2. They are not that injured and don’t want to be greedy. This mostly stems from the false idea that the other person will have to pay more money or the idea that they don’t want to be like the McDonald’s lady who sued for a million dollars because of spilt coffee. However, not many people know that the person that sued for a million dollars had severe burns that required her to get a skin graph of her nether region. That was not something anyone would want to go through but some how the media and the insurance companies have made everyone think this was just warm coffee that caused irritation? Moreover, your health is really all you have in this life so to say it is not worth anything is ridiculous. Would you rather go to the chiropractor now to get your spine in alignment and get compensated for your injuries or rather have arthritis and require back surgery because of uncorrected spine alignment in the future without getting it paid for or any compensation?
3. They don’t know what their case is worth. Many people don’t make a claim because they don’t know their case is worth medical bills being paid, lost wages compensated for, and pain and suffering. Your car accident injury case could be worth $10,000 or more.
Andrew CherinAre you saving the person money or the insurance company money?
As a Seattle personal injury lawyer, I come across a lot of Seattle car accident injury victims and a lot of police reports. The most common reason that I come across for the cause of these car accident injury cases in the police report is distracted driving. It is hard to pinpoint which of these distracted driving cases are related to cell phone use or something else, but we can assume that most of them are due to technology distracting people in some way or another.
Distracted driving due to texting while driving or manipulating or reading a cellphone while driving is extremely under reported because of honesty of the victims. Let’s face it, not many people are willingly going to admit to a police officer that the cause of the car accident was that they were looking at their cell phone, which caused the car accident injury case. Most people are going to say that they either didn’t have enough time to stop because they looked at their radio or just didn’t leave enough space for the sudden stop of the vehicle in front of them.
Tailgating is another one of the major causes of car accident injury cases in Seattle. Tailgating is dangerous but many people do it because they don’t want another car to squeak in between them and the car in front of them, especially during rush hour traffic. Couple this type of driving with distracted driving and the ever growing number of apps on our phones and you get a recipe for many car accidents.
Seattle texting and driving laws are very lax due in large part to the specificity of the type of conduct that is illegal. The only thing that is outlawed as of this date is actually reading or texting a text message while driving. This means that people can text while their car is stopped and not moving. People can text at a stop light or stop sign. People can even search the internet or Facebook while driving because the only thing that is outlawed is texting while driving which is very strictly construed to literal text messaging. Text messaging does not include Facebook, email, internet, games, etc. I don’t understand how it doesn’t encompass all of these very similarly distracting means but it doesn’t.
Due to the strict meaning of texting while driving laws in Seattle, Seattle police have a hard time enforcing this law. For this reason, we will continue to see Seattle drivers continue to text and drive with little or no ramification, save for getting in a car accident and severely injuring themselves or others. Additionally, there is no punitive damages for car accident injury cases so your Seattle personal injury lawyer cannot get punitive damages to further penalize texting while driving people to send a message that this is highly dangerous driving.
Andrew CherinTexting and Driving Car Accident Injury Cases: Why Seattle laws aren’t working
