Do I Need a Lafayette Car Accident Lawyer After a Car Accident?

Car accidents are an ongoing concern in Lafayette, where 3,301 collisions took place just in 2021. If you are contemplating civil action for a crash in the Lafeyette area, you may be asking yourself “Do I need a Lafayette car accident lawyer after a car accident?” Join us as we discuss the merits of hiring […]

June 10, 2024

Identifying Every Defendant Can Be Challenging

While you are certainly entitled to handle your own Lafayette car accident case, it is important to note that your relative inexperience could work against you.

Any car accident case will need to demonstrate both “negligence” – the failure to exercise caution to avoid inflicting harm – and “damages” – another term for that harm. If you incur physical damages from a car accident caused by a defendant’s negligence, you could pursue that defendant for financial damages.

However, if you have never been in a major car accident before, simply identifying every potential defendant can be challenging. While the driver who hit you could obviously be a defendant, other parties may be liable as well, such as the owner of his or her vehicle (if separate from the driver), a company making use of the vehicle (if separate from the owner), and a host of outside contractors and even government agencies in some circumstances.

Sometimes multiple individuals and entities could share varying degrees of legal liability for the same car accident, for which they could share varying degrees of fiscal liability. If you neglect to go after everyone responsible within the time allotted by law, known as the Statute of Limitations, you could be forever barred from full recovery for your Lafayette car accident.

The Difficulty of Calculating Your Damages

Even if you manage to track down all of the defendants and their insurance companies, you may still have difficulty calculating your damages in economic terms, which is crucial to recouping what the Lafayette car accident took from you. And without knowing what your injuries are worth, you may have no basis for deciding whether a proposed settlement for those injuries is inadequate.

But should you somehow assess your injuries accurately, they might only account for a fraction of your total losses. For example, your short-term injuries could develop into long-term complications that you did not anticipate. Moreover, you may be unfamiliar with the non-monetary damages associated with your Lafayette car accident, like pain and suffering and psychological trauma, which could end up having a deeper impact than your more evident monetary damages, such as medical bills and lost wages.

A veteran insurance adjuster may try to take advantage of your ignorance about the entirety of your losses by making you an offer that merely reflects your short-term, monetary damages, even though the actual value of your case could be considerably higher. And if you accept that offer, you could get stuck covering the remainder of your losses on your own.

How a Lafayette Car Accident Lawyer Can Make a Difference

This is why partnering with a capable Lafayette car accident attorney can make a difference. Just as it won’t be the adjuster’s first car accident, it won’t be the first for your lawyer either, who will be far better equipped to square off against the insurance company, deflecting the standard negotiating tactics that are frequently used to settle car accident claims for less.

Your attorney will also be more proficient at calculating what your Lafayette car accident is really worth and will endeavor to obtain that figure by building the strongest case possible, acting swiftly to secure the evidence required to support it. When faced with an airtight case that thoroughly conveys both the extent of the plaintiff’s damages and the depth of the insured’s liability, a reasonable adjuster is likelier to tender fair compensation rather than risk a worse verdict at trial, which is why personal injury plaintiffs with lawyers receive 3.5 times more on average than plaintiffs without lawyers.

However, should a trial be necessary, a seasoned Lafayette car accident attorney will be even more essential. While only four percent of plaintiffs who represent themselves in court win their cases, plaintiffs with professional representation win more often than not, which could allow them to acquire the funds necessary to get their lives back to normal.

Getting Justice for the Everyday People of Indiana

Hensley Legal Group has been getting justice for the everyday people of Indiana for more than a quarter century. If you have been seriously injured through no fault of your own, reach out to our dedicated Lafayette car accident lawyers to discover your legal options.

Please call or text us at (317) 472-3333, chat with us online, or fill out our contact form to arrange a free consultation with an accomplished Lafayette car accident attorney at your earliest convenience.