Accident and Injury lawyers in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

At, Metzger & Kleiner – Attorneys at Law, we work hard to educate and inform our present and future clients about how the laws affect their accident or personal injury cases. We want the best possible settlement for you, and there are plenty of things to consider when it comes to your case.

Accident and injury claims are the most effective way to get compensated for the physical, emotional and mental damages you have suffered from some type of accident. They are also effective in protecting any assets or personal property that were damaged in an incident. To better guide you with your legal plight, we thought we would gather the relevant elements that can impact your compensation. Understanding the things that can hurt or help your case is important if you seek to gain the financial recovery needed to heal. As accident attorneys in Philadelphia, we have seen plenty of mistakes that we would like to help you avoid.

Calculation of Damages

When you’re seeking compensation to recover from medical issues or to fix damaged property, your Philadelphia accident lawyer and you will work together to multiply your losses. This is how you will come to the value you’re seeking from the insurance company. This “value” comes from taking your pain and suffering, bodily harm and function and your emotional distress and placing them together with other losses. The other losses include medical bills, present and future lost wages and other economic damages.

Depending on the severity of your injuries, your lawyer will consider these factors when initiating settlement discussions with the insurance company. Higher value factors may include:

• Broken Bones.
• Traumatic Brain Injuries.
• Spine Damage.
• Nerve Damage.
• Joint injuries.
• Specialty Care from Experts or Specialists.
• Prescription Medications.
• The Number of Medical Follow-ups.
• Any Permanent Loss of Body Function.
• Disfigurement or Scarring.
• Long Recovery Injuries.
• Injuries that make Your Job Harder or Impossible.
• Injuries that Result in Family Complications.
• Injuries that Impact Vacations or Social Events. 

Claim Factors

Some cases have strong evidence that is obvious and easily identifiable. For example, there may be surveillance video that shows your slipping and falling on a sidewalk that should have been cleared of snow and ice. Other cases might be harder to prove because of a lack of witnesses or debate from the other party who claims a different story.

Here are some factors that will be considered when it comes to paying the compensation you are seeking:

• Is Your Witness Credible?
• Is Your Witness Biased?
• Is The Witness Telling a Different Story?
• You Don’t Have the Medical Records to Back-up Your Claims.
• You Have a Shared Responsibility in the Injury.
• You Have Pre-existing Injuries That Contribute to Your Claim Injuries.
• You Have (or don’t have) Photographic Evidence of the Incident or Injuries.
• You Have Records Seeking Medical Treatment Immediately.
• You Have Records That Show Your Commitment to Your Treatment.
• You Meet Legal Deadlines and Procedures.

The lesson here is, if you want to get the most for your claim, you will need to maximize your efforts. Many of these factors can be controlled, meaning you can do things like follow doctors’ orders, obtain your medical records and meet legal deadlines. Everything you do will work directly in your favor for fair and accurate compensation.

How You Can Help Your Philadelphia Injury Law Firm

Favorable compensation will include layering compelling evidence and giving the insurance company little to no reason to deny your claim. We will do much of the heavy lifting in your case, but there are certainly a few things that you can do to help us.

• Collect Evidence – We want you to save every shred of evidence, and we do mean everything. The brace you no longer use, the empty medicine bottles, the cast that came off and even the receipt for the over the counter pain relievers. We will work to find the facts and get expert testimony, but we need you to help us by keeping records and documenting anything that is happening with regard to your life and the recovery.

• Communicate – If any life changes happen, we want to know about them. This can often mean something big, like a demotion at work due to your injuries or something smaller in scale like an address change. These cases can take a while to settle so we will need you to keep us up to speed on anything that shifts in your world during this time. We can work with any life changes, but it’s harder to recover from surprises.

• Stay Off Social Media – The insurance companies now try to find you online and learn about your life to see if you are as injured as you claim. They will hire a private investigator to track down if you went to a yoga class, or went skiing for the weekend. Anything is fair game if it can support their decision to deny your claim, even if you didn’t participate in the alleged activities.

• Keep Your Distance – Refrain from talking to anyone about your case until your case has been settled. It is good form to keep your case between your Philadelphia injury attorney and you so you don’t run the risk of saying something that could hurt your claim. While it seems rather paranoid, assume everyone is listening to you until your legal matters are settled.

How can our Philadelphia injury attorneys help you? No matter what stage you are in with regard to your accident case, please reach out to us about your case. If you have a claim in process but aren’t getting much back feedbackfrom the insurance company, we can help with that, too. Call or connect with us online and let us help you make the most of your personal injury claim.