Personal Injury Law
Personal Injury
If you have been injured in an accident or otherwise by someone else's negligence, you may have a claim against the person, persons or company whose negligence caused your injury. We have handled hundreds of personal injury claims over our 57-year history. Some of the issues that arise in personal injury cases are the following.
Statute of Limitations
You normally have two years from the date of the injury to file a civil action against the person, persons or company that caused your injury. Generally if you do not settle your case or file your claim with a court within two years of the date of your injury, your claim will be barred by law.
Minor Children
If a child is injured as a result of someone else's negligence and there is a resulting personal injury claim, a parent (referred to as next friend) or guardian (appointed by the Probate Court) can pursue a claim for the minor. The statue of limitations does not usually start to run until the minor turns 18 years of age. However, it is not usually advisable to wait that long to press a claim because the passage of time erodes the evidence in the case and the recovery or compensation received in the meantime could be invested and earning a return for the minor. Usually the minor would be entitled to receive the funds resulting from the settlement plus interest or dividend at the age of 18, but a structured settlement can provide for the minor to receive the funds at a later date when he/she would be more mature.
Personal Health Insurance and Auto Insurance
If you have been injured, you have probably incurred some medical expenses. Medical care is expensive. If you have personal health insurance provided by a group policy at your place of employment or private health insurance, your health insurance carrier can and should pay your medical bills. The proceeds from the personal injury case usually are not available for a significant period of time and the liability insurance carriers for the negligent party will not usually advance payment of medical bills except in the rarest of cases. Also, health care providers usually do not want to wait that long before they receive payments of medical bills.
Therefore you should consider submitting your medical bills to your personal health care insurance company. They are required to pay these bills (subject to deductibles and co-pays) unless there is some other direct insurance coverage available, such as medical payments available under an insurance policy on an automobile or property, referred to as Med Pay coverage or Workers Compensation Coverage, which would apply if you are injured on the job. Your group carrier may want you to agree in writing to pay them back out of the recovery of your personal injury claim, but generally, you are not required to do so unless the policy issued by the insurance carrier to your employer or you requires an assignment of your recovery. Also, the insurance carrier is usually not entitled to obtain any reimbursements of their payment to your medical care providers, doctors and hospitals unless you are fully compensated from the settlement, verdict or recovery from the at-fault party. We can help you navigate this complicated legal process.
However, if your health insurance provider is a government entity such as Medicare and/or the military or one of their insurance carriers, they have the right to be reimbursed a least in part from your recovery from the third party. We can help you through this process to see that your rights are protected.
There are other ways that you sometimes can receive medical care even if you don't have insurance coverage. We can also help you in that situation.
Med Pay Coverage
If you are injured in an automobile accident or on someone else's property, the automobile insurance or the insurance on the property may have a Med Pay coverage provision that will cover some of your medical bills regardless of whether or not anyone was at fault. The availability of this type of coverage varies from case to case. We can help you navigate this process.
Uninsured or Underinsured Motorist Coverage
Georgia law only requires that each motor vehicle carry a minimum of $25,000.00 worth of liability coverage. If you are injured in an automobile accident by the negligence of an individual who has a minimum amount of liability coverage, your medical bills and other damages could very easily exceed $25,000.00. Therefore, we recommend to our clients that they obtain the maximum amount of uninsured motorist coverage that they can afford from their own automobile insurance carrier. The law requires that your insurance company offer you the uninsured motorist coverage equal to your liability coverage. Uninsured motorist coverage is applicable when you are injured in an accident by the negligence of someone else who has minimum or no insurance coverage. The uninsured motorist coverage steps in and provides the insurance coverage for the negligence/at-fault party.
Damages
The damages you can recover in a personal injury case are divided into two general categories with several sub categories. The two general categories are:
1. Special damages. These are damages that can be ascertained to a definite amount, such as past and future medical bills, past and future lost wages and other out-of-pocket expenses, such as the cost of gasoline for trips to and from your doctors and nursing care that you were forced to provide for yourself, injured spouse, or child at your house. This also includes other out-of-pocket expenses associated with or caused by the injury.
2. General damages are the damages that exist but are not capable of an exact compensation, such as pain and suffering (physical and mental), inability to do things that you did before the incident either on a temporary or permanent basis, scars, loss of arms or limbs, and other permanent injury to your person.
Mediation
Almost all courts require litigates to make a good faith effort to meet face to face in an attempt to resolve or settle their claim short of trial. This is referred to as Alternative Dispute Resolution or Mediation. The attorneys of Duffy & Feemster have attended hundreds of mediation sessions. Some of our attorneys have received training to be mediators. Mediation is less formal than court, occurs without any court personal, judges or juries present and gives the parties the chance to discuss the matter face to face. Everything that is said and presented in mediation is confidential unless already said or presented outside of the mediation. Anything that is considered to be confidential in mediation cannot be used in court. This rule encourages open, frank and honest discussions. You are not required to settle your case in mediation, you are only required to attend and make a reasonably good faith effort to resolve your claim.
Fees and Expenses
Most personal injury cases are handled on a contingency fee basis. Contingency fee means that if a client does not receive a recovery, settlement or verdict, then the attorney is not paid. But if a recovery is made, the attorney is paid a pre-determined amount or percentage of the recovery. This way the client pays no fee if there is no settlement or recovery. The percentage of recovery allocated to the fees varies depending upon the amount of time expended in the case and the complexity of the issues in the case and other factors. At the inception of the case, the client and the firm execute a fee contract that spells out the relationship and responsibilities of the firm and the client.