There are two parts to a successful personal injury case. You need to prove that there was a responsible party who has a legal obligation to pay you money. Then, you need to either persuade a jury of your damages or negotiate compensation with the insurance company in a settlement agreement. Never take it for granted that you can successfully meet the first test in a personal injury case. You may be dealing with an insurance company that does not want to pay you full compensation for your injuries or may not even want to pay you at all.
The best thing that you can do to prove fault in your case is to hire a Billings personal injury lawyer as soon as possible after your accident. The timing of when you hire an attorney matters. The sooner you hire them, the better a chance there is that they can gather evidence while it is still available and witness memories are still fresh. If you have not already spoken to a personal injury lawyer, now would be the time to do so in a free initial consultation.
You do not have to spend any money out of your own pocket to get help from a personal injury attorney. A lawyer works for you on a contingency basis, meaning that they do not receive any money for their time and services if you do not receive any money for your injuries. You never have to write a personal injury attorney any type of check during your case, and you do not have to pay them at all if you do not win. The biggest risk that you can take in your case is when you decide to go it alone because you can be jeopardizing everything.
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You have likely heard many times that you may be entitled to significant financial compensation when you have suffered an injury in an accident. However, that entitlement is far from automatic. You need to prove that your injuries were someone else’s fault before you can receive even a dollar for your injuries. If you cannot meet that threshold, you will not be entitled to any compensation.
It is your legal obligation to prove fault after you have suffered an injury in an accident. You need to show that someone else did something wrong to cause your injuries. You have a burden of proof that you need to carry, regardless of whether you are filing an insurance claim or a lawsuit against the responsible party.
The legal standard that you must meet in every personal injury case is proving that someone else was negligent. Specifically, there are four elements that you need to prove:
You must prove each and every single one of these elements to have a legal entitlement to money. Personal injury law requires that you have evidence that demonstrates all four of these elements before you can even talk about a settlement or have your specific damages considered.
In any personal injury case, your burden of proof is demonstrating each of these four elements by a preponderance of the evidence. This legal standard means that the facts that you allege are more likely than not to be true. Although this standard of proof is lower than the one that the prosecutor must meet to win a conviction in a criminal case. In other words, you still have a significant amount of work to do to prove that someone else was negligent.
You need to have this proof at some point in the legal process before you can be compensated. If you are filing an insurance claim, you need to include evidence supporting the negligence. If you are taking action in court, you will have to build your case during the legal process so you can present it to a jury if you do not reach a settlement agreement before that point.
The evidence that you need depends on the facts and circumstances of your case. Your core obligation is proving the liable party and what that responsible party actually did. Thus, you need evidence that demonstrates what happened before and during your accident to potentially qualify for compensation.
A personal injury attorney will know what sources of evidence to compile when they learn more about your case from you. They may start with a police report that can have the names and contact information for witnesses, along with what the officer noted when they showed up to the scene of the accident.
Witness testimony is often the most effective form of proof in a personal injury case. When you have objective third parties who have no financial interest in the testimony that they give, they can be very persuasive. They have no motivation to take liberties with the truth, and juries and insurance companies can give their testimony a serious amount of weight. In some cases, you can win your personal injury case on the basis of witness testimony alone.
There are other types of physical evidence that can help you win your case. Pictures of the scene of the accident can also help tell a story about what happened. They can reveal the dangerous conditions that someone else caused through their own careless actions. For example, if you had pictures of your slip and fall accident that showed the debris clearly in a walking path, it can be enough to show that there was negligence.
However, you do not always get pictures at the scene of the accident. While many personal injury lawyers advise you to begin collecting evidence at the scene, it can be extremely difficult when you are being treated for physical injuries. The hope is that some other witnesses may have been able to take pictures and share them with you. Otherwise, you may not have the proof of what the accident scene looked like at the time.
You may also rely on videocamera footage that may have captured exactly what happened. This footage can show the accident in real-time, and it can tell the story of what happened. However, you may not be the one who has this footage in your possession. For example, you may have suffered an injury in a slip and fall accident, which was captured on a store security camera.
The store is the one who has possession of this footage, and they will not automatically give it to you. If they did, it can make it easy for you to sue them. If the footage is vital to your case, you will need to obtain it through the discovery process after you have filed a lawsuit. The defendant will have an obligation to provide you with the relevant evidence that is in their possession.
In close cases where you may not otherwise have all the evidence you need for your case, your personal injury attorney may work with expert witnesses who can give their own opinion about liability. There are professional accident reconstruction experts who recreate accidents and give their opinion about the cause and what someone may have done wrong to cause the accident. Their testimony can be persuasive, either in conjunction with direct evidence of the accident or on its own without direct evidence.
It is essential that you take immediate action to direct the other party to preserve any evidence that is in their hands that can be used in a potential trial. A personal injury attorney can write a litigation hold letter and send it to the other party. They will then face consequences for spoliation of evidence if they destroy it or fail to preserve it. Waiting too long to send this letter can have negative implications for your case.
It will certainly be difficult for you to come up with the evidence that you need to win your case on your own. After all, you are not a trained investigator, and you cannot be expected to have the skill that it takes to get to the bottom of your own accident and gather the proof that you need to win. At the same time, you may also be preoccupied with getting the medical care that you need to make the fullest possible recovery from your injuries. It can be exceedingly difficult for you to gather the necessary proof on your own after you have been injured.
When you hire a personal injury lawyer, their job is to investigate your accident and work to gather the proof that you need to win your case. A personal injury lawyer is trained as an investigator. They know how to quickly get to the bottom of your case. They already have an idea of the potential sources of proof, so they can immediately get to work.
Your personal injury attorney must begin their investigation quickly because you only have a limited amount of time where the evidence you need to win your case is available to you. Physical evidence can disappear quickly, sometimes even days after an accident. It will be exceedingly difficult for a personal injury lawyer to gather proof in your case when you wait too long to hire them because it may simply no longer be available to you. Accident scenes can be cleared, and witnesses’ memories fade, or they are no longer able to be found. Oftentimes, you have days after your accident and not months to get the legal help you need from a personal injury attorney.
If you have presented your claim to an insurance company, and they have denied it, you can file a lawsuit against the responsible party in court. Then, a jury will hear the evidence that your personal injury lawyer presents. You can also obtain even more evidence that you did not have at the time you filed your lawsuit. The insurance company may have a role in evaluating your claim, but they do not get to make the final decision about whether you have a legal entitlement to money. In the end, a jury will have the ultimate say over whether you can receive money in your case.
By scheduling a free consultation with a personal injury attorney, you can benefit from their experience handling similar cases. They will provide you with an honest assessment of your claim and help you understand the potential outcomes. Call today.
At Colton Holm Law Firm, we look forward to learning how we can help you resolve your legal concern.Call us today: (406) 259-9986