Newport News Personal Injury Lawyer
Have you sustained personal injury from an accident due to the negligence of someone else? Are you wondering about the cost of personal injury lawyers or even how to choose a personal injury attorney for your needs?
Daily routine in Newport News goes out the window when you are trying to deal with a painful injury, and even the most simple tasks can become an ordeal to get through. On top of that, you likely have medical bills and lost wages piling up. Following an accident, our Newport News injury lawyers immediately get to work helping our injured client manage the aftermath of the event and receive the best outcome for their case. You can contact us today for a free consultation, and should you choose us to represent you, you pay nothing unless we win.
On This Page
- Why Work with Cooper Hurley Injury Lawyers in Newport News?
- Types of Cases We Handle in Our Newport News Office
- Damages You Are Entitled to Following a Newport News Accident
- Negligence in Personal Injury Claims and Lawsuits
- How to Prove Negligence in Personal Injury Cases
- The Challenges in Proving Negligence
- Statute of Limitations in Virginia
- Maximizing Your Recovery for Your Serious Injuries
- Contact an Established Injury Law Firm in Newport News, Virginia
Why Work with Cooper Hurley Injury Lawyers in Newport News?
Choosing Cooper Hurley Injury Lawyers for representation in Newport News, VA, offers numerous compelling advantages for accident victims:
- Extensive Experience: Our team boasts decades of practice in personal injury law across the Hampton Roads area, bringing a wealth of knowledge and expertise to every case.
- Local Insight: Led by founding partner John Cooper, a native Virginian with three decades of experience in personal injury law, we possess a profound understanding of local dynamics and legal nuances specific to the area.
- Proven Success: We have a strong track record of securing substantial compensation for personal injury victims, including achieving the second-largest car crash verdict in Virginia in 2022, and several of the top settlements in Virginia in 2023.
- Client-Focused Advocacy: At Cooper Hurley Injury Lawyers, we prioritize our clients’ interests exclusively. Unlike firms that represent insurance companies, our sole focus is on advocating for the rights and needs of injury victims, ensuring dedicated representation.
- Esteemed Legal Experts: Our attorneys are recognized by prestigious organizations such as Martindale-Hubbell, Super Lawyers, and Top Lawyers of Coastal Virginia, reflecting our commitment to excellence and integrity in the field of personal injury law.
When you choose Cooper Hurley Injury Lawyers, you are entrusting your case to a team that is dedicated to fighting tirelessly for the compensation you deserve. Contact us today for a free consultation.
Types of Cases we Handle in our Newport News Office
Damages You Are Entitled to Following a Newport News Accident
If someone has been injured through no fault of their own, but due to another’s negligence, they are entitled to make a claim for payment for their harms and losses. This money nearly always comes from the insurance companies involved. You are entitled to more than just money for your accident-related medical bills. You are also entitled to payment for other harms and losses directly caused by an accident and your resulting injuries. Virginia law permits claims for damages after a Newport News accident for the following:
- Bodily injuries sustained and their effect on health
- Physical pain (past and future)
- Mental anguish (past and future)
- Disfigurement or deformity and any associated humiliation or embarrassment
- Inconvenience caused in the past and future
- Past medical expenses
- Future medical expenses
- Lost wages
- Loss of earning capacity in the future
Ask The Car Crash Experts - What factors go into determining how much someone receives in their personal injury settlement?
Jim Hurley, Personal Injury Lawyer
“When you’ve been injured in a car wreck, people often ask, ‘How much is my case worth?’ Cooper Hurley Injury Lawyers will help you with that. You’re entitled to many things, such as lost wages, your medical bills, and the sheer inconvenience of your life—suffering, pain. We’ll get you everything you deserve based on your injury.”
Not every Newport News accident case will have all these damages. Insurance companies and their lawyers will scrutinize your injury and damage claims. Sometimes, the adverse car insurers will hire doctors to argue you are not injured as badly as you claim or the injury was not a direct result of the accident. Cooper Hurley Injury Lawyers is experienced in telling your story to insurance companies, judges, and juries to clarify the true extent of your injuries, harms, and losses. We may even hire experts to help prove aspects of your case and the extent of your damages, especially if permanent injury is involved. Some damage experts or consultants we often hire in Newport News injury cases include:
- Doctors and other health care providers to assess injuries
- Life care planners to calculate costs of future medical treatment
- Vocational experts to analyze loss of future earnings if an injury leads to a change in profession
- Videographers to create day in the life videos
- Medical illustrators to show severity of injuries and surgeries
Using experts is an effective way to prove the full extent of your injuries, harms, and losses after a Newport News accident. The local attorneys with Cooper Hurley Injury Lawyers work with these sorts of experts all the time and are skilled at telling your story and getting you full compensation for what you have been through and will go through in the future.
Negligence in Personal Injury Claims and Lawsuits
Negligence is a term many people have heard. To be negligent has a specific legal meaning in tort law. The failure to use ordinary care is negligence. Virginia state law allows you to make a claim or file a lawsuit against another person to seek compensation if the at-fault party injures you by their carelessness. Typically, we need three parts for a successful personal injury claim:
- A bodily injury,
- Caused by the fault of another, and
- A source of recovery, meaning insurance
One key issue in these cases is insurance. If there is no auto insurance, homeowners insurance, or commercial insurance, there may be no recovery.
Every day in Newport News, people get hurt, and if the accident is caused by the negligence of another, an injury lawyer may be held liable for their actions. If you suffer a personal injury due to a business or individual’s careless behavior, an attorney near you may be able to help you seek appropriate compensation.
How to Prove Negligence in Personal Injury Cases
In general, for you to hold someone else liable for negligence, that person must owe a duty of care to you and must fail to exercise the proper care needed to fulfill that duty. In Newport News car crash cases, the rules of the road set the standard of care for negligence. The at-fault person or company must owe a duty of care to you and must fail to exercise the proper care needed to fulfill that duty. Claims for negligence, like in premises liability, arise out of the relationship between the injured and the at-fault party, like store owner and customer. If you get injured at a Newport News business, the owner can be held liable if they failed to take reasonable care for safety at the premises.
The standard in most negligence cases is “ordinary care,” which is often defined as the care a reasonable person would exercise in the same or similar circumstances. That standard can vary according to the situation and impact claims for negligence. For instance, the standard that a hotel is held to, in terms of the safety of their guests, is a higher standard than in a private home.
The Challenges in Proving Negligence
Many times, proving that someone owed a duty of care is not too difficult. All drivers owe a duty of care to pay attention and follow the rules of the road, for example, and restaurants owe a duty of care to keep their premises free from dangerous conditions when they invite diners to their business.
The greater difficulty is often in proving what the standard of care should have been, demonstrating that someone breached that duty, and showing that the failure to exercise ordinary care caused the harm you suffered and are seeking recovery for. For this reason, it is important to collect as much evidence as possible, including pictures, witness statements, and doctor’s reports—as well as having help from a qualified lawyer in Newport News when pursuing a personal injury case. In some lawsuits, expert witnesses are needed to prove negligence. Cooper Hurley Injury Lawyers can find and hire the right experts, as needed.
Statute of Limitations in Virginia
Although the law in Virginia usually allows up to two years for you to file a civil lawsuit, it is generally wise to take action as soon as possible to preserve evidence and lay the groundwork for future success. The deadline can be longer in some specific instances like when minors are injured in the accident. If the deadline to file the claim in the Newport News courts passes, you lose your rights forever.
But, when you retain our services, we immediately go to work investigating your claim and preserving the evidence necessary to prevail. If the case needs to be filed in the Newport News Circuit Court to protect against the statute of limitations deadline, we know how to do that. We keep track of the deadlines so you can focus on your recovery.
Ask The Car Crash Experts
Griffin O'Hanlon, Personal Injury Lawyer
“Statute of limitations is something that basically says if you haven’t filed a lawsuit by this date you’re forever stopped from doing so . However, there are some exceptions and circumstances that could alter that deadline, so it’s important to chat with a lawyer. Once you’ve filed the claim and are protected by that statute, you can seek various damages, as well as the things that are harder to put a dollar figure on such as pain, suffering, inconvenience, and mental anguish. Also, you can seek compensation for another hard figure like lost wages or lost earning capacity. It’s important to be aware of Virginia’s statute of limitations and consult a qualified lawyer to understand the types of damages you can pursue in your case. These are general answers to common questions we regularly receive.”
Maximizing Your Recovery for Your Serious Injuries
One key to maximizing the amount of compensation you receive in your Newport News accident case is retaining the services of an experienced personal injury attorney with a record of success in similar cases. Our firm exclusively represents people injured through the negligence of others and has handled innumerable car crash and other injury cases, including catastrophic injuries and wrongful deaths. The toughest cases are certainly catastrophic injuries that permanently change victims’ lives. These permanent quality of life and health harms can include:
- Disfiguring burns and scarring
- Traumatic brain injury
- Internal organ damage
- Loss of limb, eyesight, or hearing
- Paralysis or paraplegia
- Broken bones and other musculoskeletal injuries requiring surgery
- Leg amputation
- Herniated or ruptured discs in the back or neck
No matter the extent of your injuries, you can have confidence that our attorneys will fight aggressively on your behalf for the best possible outcome. In addition to injury accidents, we also represent families in actions arising from loved ones’ wrongful deaths. We have the knowledge to help you through these terribly difficult times.
Contact an Established Injury Law Firm in Newport News, Virginia
Our injury lawyers are proud to be local Newport News attorneys who have helped many injured folks in Newport News. We know the town, its people, and its courts. The hospitals that regularly see our injured clients in Newport News are Bon Secours Mary Immaculate Hospital, Select Specialty Hospital, and Sentara Port Warwick Hospital. We are also familiar with many of the surgical groups who may be called on to perform surgery on our clients hurt in a Newport News car crash, such as the Orthopedic and Spine Center of Newport News and the Hampton Roads Orthopaedics Spine and Sports Medicine.
If you have suffered a personal injury through no fault of your own, Cooper Hurley Injury Lawyers would like to offer you a free consultation with an experienced attorney at our firm. We have a convenient meeting location in Newport News near City Center at Oyster Point. We accept personal injury cases on a contingency fee basis, so you pay no legal fees until you recover compensation through a settlement or court verdict.
Call us today to find out how one of our local injury lawyers may be able to help you recover financially for your serious losses following an accident.
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