Maryland personal injury cases have some features not present in many other states including the archaic doctrine of contributory negligence. Consequently the professionals who populate your case are more important than some other places
Conceptually the healthcare providers you utilize and the lawyers you retain are your " team' and their ability to work together is quite important. Many lawyers purport to be " personal injury" lawyers but can't be bothered to brandish the one ultimate weapon they have at their disposal, the courtroom
While it may seem counterintuitive, obtaining fair and prompt compensation for a Maryland car or truck crash injury is as much a function of what you don't do as what you affirmatively do. This article will examine five practices to avoid and five to pursue in order to facilitate prompt fair compensation. They are literally DO'S and DON'TS.
DO be ATTENTIVE to to documenting how and why the collision occurred. Make sure you aren't endangering your safety or that of others but a picture is worth a thousand words and no more so then after a crash. Vehicle positioning, skidmarks, vehicle damage and red light footage can be the difference between a successful claim where the at-fault driver's insurance company promptly cooperates and a slugfest of denied liability and lawsuits.
Being attentive means making sure the at-fault driver who is apologizing to you at the scene of the crash is heard by someone other than merely yourself. Police officers are good candidates for recording who was at fault if you can elicit such an admission in their presence. Similarly witnesses who agree with your interpretation of who was at fault, need to be determined and their names and contact information saved.
Many at-fault drivers are very contrite at the scene of the crash in the immediate aftermath of the collision but later reflect on the impact your claim could have on their insurance rates and suddenly remember the incident quite differently. Don't give them the opportunity Commit them to the reality of their responsibility at the scene where they feel guilty for their mistake and its effect on you.
DON'T go it alone! It has been pointed out frequently on this website that experienced attorneys should be standard equipment on all vehicle injury cases and not merely for the injury aspect of things. Insurance adjusters are highly trained in the dark art of coaxing admissions out of untrained crash victims. In Maryland the law of contributory negligence can knock a case out in a blink of an eye.
While the insurance behemoths advertise that they are good neighbors or on your side, the fact is that their employees receive extensive training in how to exculpate their employers and insureds from legal responsibility through what innocent accident victims might say in an unprotected moment.
Your lawyer is your mouthpiece. They too are highly trained and can make your arguments strategically and thoughtfully. What they tell an insurer needs to be truthful but can't be used later to undercut your claim.
DO get thoroughly medically checked out. Many times in bad crashes ambulances are called to the scene and many times despite knowing they are hurt victims don't go to the hospital due to inconvenience or pending schedule obligations.
This is perfectly understandable but counter-productive. Crash victims who are taken from the scene to a hospital are instantly treated with greater seriousness by liability insurers. Those for whom an ambulance are called but decline transport are immediately taken less seriously. It's not fair but it's reality.
If you are hurt and don't elect to leave the scene in an ambulance or aren't offered that option, you need to make sure other people in your life are aware of your injuries. Once that happens reach out to healthcare providers both to ascertain what injuries you sustained and what can be done to alleviate them. Prompt treatment will improve your recovery and ensure that at-fault insurers can't later argue that you didn't hurt that part of your body or that an already problematic part of your body wasn't effected by an accident.
Prompt and thorough medical evaluation will also serve to make sure lost time from employment can be fairly attained and necessary accomodations made.
DON'T self-diagnose and presume to pursue a course of medical care that isn't guided by healthcare professionals. Periodically, we encounter collision victims that pick and choose what care they undergo even where it is often duplicative or ineffective. Duplicate treatment can be fatal to an injury case as it can be suggested that the care was unnecessary and indicative of treasure hunting.
Similarly, inconsistent attendance at scheduled appointments is always portrayed by insurance defense lawyers as an indication that the crash victim couldn't be that hurt or they wouldn't miss their appointments. Sometimes clients find their therapy or other care is of limited value and spontaneously quit it. Don't do that, talk to your lawyer and healthcare providers and efforts can be made to discontinue ineffective care modalities and to find effective ones.
DO make sure your employers know of the seriousness of your accident-related injuries and the impact they may have on your temporary and long-term capabilities.
Obviously if you have a good relationship with your boss or supervisor you can let them know what is going on and providing them medical support for your absence or limitations is vital. Many employers will make accomodations for employees they value but often have rules or requirements for you to benefit.
Lawyers can also be very helpful in persuading employers that are reluctant to be helpful to rethink their approaches. Lawyers give injury claims a cloak of seriousness and nobody especially wants to be sued for unfiarly treating their injured employee. There often are relevant requirements that employers must adhere to to help out their injured limited employees.
DON'T play amateur lawyer, doctor and detective and taint your case from its inception. In these days of Google anything and you can do it, this is not true for personal injury claim handling. We routinely see new clients that have attempted to handle their own cases, attempting to negotiate property damage, sculpt a course of palliative medical care and negotiate a fair settlement.
Insurance adjusters are thrilled to seem cooperative along the way, eliciting information that is harmful to the plaintiff's claims and then dropping a grossly inadequte offer on them to their disappointed astonishment. They are trained to do this it is nothing personal but nonetheless deflating.
Professionals earn their pay and their experience and time is what you are paying for. Doctors, heal. Investigators investigate and dispassionately document their findings in ways that make them useful in court. Lawyers who have done this for years as we have, have seen it all and can anticipate problems in cases before they ever occur and are skillful in addressing those problems nobody saw coming.
Lawyers know good doctors and detectives too and most importantly they have a magical power that lay people don't have, the power to litigate. If an insurance company has made a final offer to you that you won't accept, you have two choices. Accept the unacceptable or hire a lawyer who will file suit and go to court on your behalf.
To be clear some lawyers either won't go to court or may think you are wrong and the insurer is right. If you have a lawyer who is highly experienced in personal injury in the geographic location your case is in, listen to them and take the time to understand what they are saying and why. If they are too busy to explain their analysis, move on to another lawyer who will devote the time.
Similarly second guessing doctors and healthcare professionals can prove disasterous for your health and your personal injury case. At least if you choose to play amateur detective or lawyer, you are unlikely to undermine both your long-term health and case. Sometimes doctors are too busy to hear you, sometimes they make mistakes but with patience and persistence you can help them and again if they refuse to listen you can document your medical chart to reflect their failings and your reason for departing to a different doctor or medical provider.
DO be responsive to the professionals you employ in pursuit of your case. If your doctor or healthcare provider wants you to get an x-ray or an MRI or go to physical therapy, do so. If there is some reason you can't let them know and also your attorney. As an example, it can be pretty hard to go to a doctor or diagnostic facility when your car is being repaired after the accident
Let your team of professionals know about the roadblocks to getting your care. Some medical practices will arrange transportation and some liablity insurers will arrange ride-sharing for essential appointments. Law offices also have an array of mechanisms for helping their clients get around in the immediate aftermath of an auto or truck accident.
Second-guessing can also include inattendance at therapy and other appointments. Insurers harp on these absences and often use them as a way to convince jurors that injuries can't be all that serious. Keep your appointments and if they become problematic tell your team of professionals. They can manufacture solutions or document your case in such a way that protects your interests without undercutting it.
DON'T undercut your case on social media. Everyone on facebook or Instagram loves to show their adventures, vacations and feats. If you are snow-boarding in Colorado while you are supposedly recovering from a bad crash, nobody will believe you are seriously hurt.
Liability insurance carriers and the lawyers that defend their insureds, mine social media for what amounts to self sabotage. If you are too injured to work don't post pictures from your contemporaneous vacation to Disney World. When cases go into litigation defense lawyers love probing past medical history and asking about vacations.
Perhaps, you had a long-planned family vacation to Ocean City? Its fine to take it but if you post happy family pictures, you can bet they will be utilized at trial to indicate that you were certainly able to drive 3 hours to the beach and party with your family. Happy posts by other family and friends can be almost as bad.
I am not suggesting that you should bring your life to a screeching halt because of your claim but just be aware that you may be creating a body of evidence that can be used to bolster the insurance defense lawyer's conention that you weren't that hurt.
As an example our firm tried a multi-party case some years ago and the night before the jury was set to begin deliberating, one of the plaintiffs emphatically posted on facebook to the effect that the next day was the big payoff, Our lawyer knew nothing of this posting but when the defense lawyer asked to recall this witness to the stand, all they asked was about the facebook post in an effort to make that individual seem less wronged and more greedy.
DO be completely honest with your healthcare providers and attorneys. Doctors can't effectively and accurately testify as to the injuries you sustained and what caused them if they aren't informed of prior or subsequent injuries to the same part or parts of the body.
Almost every middle-aged or older person has degenerative changes to their spines and other body parts. Many people who get a routine physical discourse on everything that occurs to them as exhibiting symptoms and then years later that they wrenched their back lifting mulch out of their trunk or fell on ice in their driveway, is not recalled.
Defense lawyers live for this stuff. Finding even minor medical inconsistencies can be fruit for suggesting to judges and jurors that you aren't really hurt and that perhaps all of your problems preexisted.
The fact is virtuallly everyone injures themselves at least to a minor degree at some point in time. If you think you can fool the other lawyer and the insurance company, you will be wrong. It can also be fatal to supportive medical testimony at your trial.,
In order to get your medical expenses and lost wages awarded to you at trial you will require medical expert testimony. That testimony will be based on the medical reports generated by the healthcare providers who have helped you and also the medical history you provided them concerning among other things, whether you have ever previously injured the same parts of your body that are the focus of accident-related care.
Defense lawyers love having treatment records from prior problems with the same part of the body, particularly when your lawyer and medical expert don't know of their existence. You can imagine the question " Doctor X you say that all of the care received by the plaintiff was the result of injuries received in this crash, correct?" Doctor Answer: "Yes". Doctor X would it effect your opinion if I told you the plaintiff had received extensive prior treatment to the same parts of their body four years before this minor collision?" " Maybe".
DON'T think you can outwit the multi-billion dollar insurance industry with its highly trained adjusters, investigators and databases. If you were in a property damage only crash ten years ago, they know about it. They will use it even if you were uninjured.
As an example they will ask if you've ever been in a crash before and you may not remember the property damage only crash until they bring it up asking something like " Mr. Plaintiff isn't true you were in a far worse crash right here in Laurel in 2015?"
You say "uh no." Question "Your Chevy Malibu was totalled as a result of a crash on Laurel-Bowie Road just South of Cherry Lane at 10pm?" You vaguely recall this crash from when you were seventeen, ten years ago and seem uncertain of the details which allows the defense lawyer to suggest that maybe you were hurt and just don't remember.
Suddenly you seem less credible to the judge or jury. It isn't that the insurance lawyers or adjusters have total recall, its that they have a comprehensive longstanding database the so-called " Index", that they run every inured party through just to see if they can be portrayed as many time claimants or malingerers.
So when your lawyer asks you at the first meeting about prior crashes and/or injuries don'y merely say "not that I recall". Think long and hard and ask your spouse or partner or family members.
The more stuff you voluntarily disclose the easier your lawyer and doctor;s jobs become in supporting you.
This DON'T is equally important when you claim PIP benefits, property damage or lost income. Be scrupulously honest because your $50.000.00 wage loss claim looks far less sturdy if you haven't filed income tax returns in a decade and all of your pay comes in cash.
The bottom-line, honesty is the best policy and trying to outwit doctors, lawyers and multi-billion dollar insurance companies will be hazardous to your health.
