Have you sustained personal injury from an auto 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? Following an accident, our injury lawyers immediately get to work helping our injured client manage the aftermath of the event and receive the best outcome for their case.
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. Seeking medical treatment at a time when you are unable to work to pay medical expenses is stressful. The claims adjusters from insurance companies asking questions that you are not sure how to answer is the last thing you want to deal with. These are good reasons to let our injury lawyers handle your case and deal with the insurers.
The insurance company is not on your side. It is usually a bad idea to try to handle your own personal injury claim without experienced counsel. Every accident and injury attorney at our firm knows exactly how personal injury claims are handled and understands what to say to insurance claims representatives. After a case evaluation, a dedicated Newport News personal injury lawyer could identify liable parties, go over your options for obtaining compensation for your damages, and help make sure you avoid taking actions or making statements that could jeopardize your right to recovery. The attorneys at Cooper Hurley Injury Lawyers have a proven track record with decades of successful personal injury settlements and recoveries and are ready to help. Call one of our skilled attorneys from Cooper Hurley Injury Lawyers today, and know that you are in capable hands.
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 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 and everything else—for you.
An experienced Newport News personal injury lawyer could provide competent and personalized advice right from the start of your case, as well as help with the collection of the information needed to have the best chance of a successful personal injury claim to get you the money you deserve.
Skilled Advocates in a Wide Variety of Personal Injury Cases
At Cooper Hurley Injury Lawyers, we handle much more than Newport News motor vehicle accidents. Our lawyers have extensive experience with virtually every type of negligence and injury claims, including:
Product Liability
Manufacturers who market dangerous products are liable to customers they harm. If you have been harmed by a defect in an auto part, consumer appliance, medical device, or unreasonably dangerous prescription drug, you can trust our legal team to fight for full compensation, even against a powerful corporation.
Slip and Fall
Newport News is an exciting city with plenty of amenities and activities. Maybe you want to visit the history at the Virginia War Museum or The Mariners’ Museum or take in the retail fun of City Center at Oyster Point. If a hidden hazard at a business establishment causes you to slip, trip or fall, you may be in for a long, painful struggle to recover. While you focus on regaining your health, our skilled lawyers can manage your injury claim.
Railroad Accidents
Cooper Hurley Injury Lawyers is experienced in representing railroad workers for on-the-job FELA claims as well as passenger injuries on Amtrak. CSX and Amtrak operate railroads in Newport News with the risks related to workers and the public involved.
When Cooper Hurley Injury Lawyers takes on a case, we have one goal in mind: to maximize the amount of money you recover for your medical bills, lost wages, pain and suffering, and other losses. For us to help, though, you must take the simple action of calling us.
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:
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.
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
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
Life Care Planners
These experts, nurses or doctors with extra training, can help calculate the costs of future medical treatment. If you have experienced catastrophic injuries that require significant expected medical care over a lifetime, then your future medical expenses can be hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars.
Vocational Expert
Sometimes following an accident, a person can no longer continue working in the same field, and as a result, make less money. The injury can prevent you from even getting and holding a paying job. If this change in work or profession is permanent, then a vocational expert can help calculate and explain to the jury the expected lifetime of lost earnings suffered from an accident. Your vocational loss may be significant if you can no longer work or now make significantly less due to your injuries.
Videographer (Day in the Life Videos)
A videographer can film an accident victim with catastrophic injuries to help demonstrate how a person’s everyday life and responsibilities are impacted by their injuries. The simple activities of daily living can be tough if you have lost for example your use of an arm or hand, and this type of evidence can be compelling.
Medical Illustrations
In cases where our clients need surgeries because of an accident, we will often hire medically trained artists to create unique medical illustrations of the injuries and surgeries step-by-step. It is one thing for your doctor to describe the surgery, but it is often more impactful for the jury to see what you had to go through in visual form.
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.
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. Newport News is home to Newport News Shipbuilding, the largest industrial employer in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The shipyard is the only builder of United States Navy aircraft carriers and one of two builders of United States Navy submarines. Newport News is more than just a boat builder city, however. Newport News offers a variety of cultural centers, like the Ferguson Center for the Arts and Good Vibes Concert Hall. It is home to the Virginia Living Museum, a museum that showcases living species native to Virginia, including animals and aquatic life. For outdoor recreation, the city boasts Newport News Park, The Noland Trail, and Riverview Farm Park. Newport News offers almost everything you could want in Coastal Virginia.
If you have suffered a personal injury in Newport News 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. Call us today or contact our office online to schedule your appointment. We have a convenient meeting location in Newport News near City Center at Oyster Point. If you contact our office, then we can quickly set up a meeting with you in Newport News. 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 today for a free injury case consultation.
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.
Cooper Hurley Injury Lawyers could represent your interests in evidence collection, proof of what duty was breached, insurance negotiations, and all other proceedings relevant to your case. Injured people with experienced injury attorneys usually get more money than those without professional help. 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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