If you or a loved one has suffered injuries in a motorcycle accident, you may be entitled to substantial financial compensation if you can prove that someone else was at fault for your accident injuries. There are many steps in the process between the time of your accident and the time that you may receive a check from an insurance company. The legal process is full of ups and downs and does not always seem to work in your favor.
You Need a Motorcycle Accident Attorney to Protect Your Legal Rights
No amount of insurance company tactics can deny you the fundamental legal right that you have to financial compensation when someone else was negligent. However, your legal rights are at risk if you do not hire an attorney. Your motorcycle accident lawyer will work with you from start to finish, providing sensible yet aggressive legal representation to hold someone else accountable for what they did and secure the money you need.
You Should Not Delay in Contacting a Motorcycle Accident Attorney
First, you should call a motorcycle accident attorney immediately after the accident. If you cannot do it yourself because of your health condition, you should have a family member do it. An attorney works on the same fee basis no matter how long they spend on your case. Therefore, you should get them on the case immediately.
You pay nothing to contact and speak with an attorney for your free initial consultation. All personal injury lawyers offer free consultations to prospective clients, where the attorney will learn more about your case and review your legal options. You never need to pay an attorney unless you successfully obtain financial compensation.
The longer you go without an attorney, the more your legal rights can be at risk. The driver’s insurance company will know about your accident because the motorist should have reported it. When liability becomes apparent to the insurance company, the adjuster may try to find ways to reduce your payment or turn some of the blame on you.
A Motorcycle Accident Attorney Can Deal With the Insurance Company
Your lawyer will begin to protect your legal rights as soon as you hire them. Otherwise, the insurance company may try to initiate contact with you before you have legal guidance and representation. The insurance company may try to pressure you into giving a statement or even attempt to trick you into accepting a settlement worth a fraction of what you legally deserve. They might even convince you to sign a release form when you do not know the full implications of it.
Accordingly, a lawyer can help protect you from insurance company overreach. The insurance company will need to go through your lawyer to deal with you in any way. Even if they tried to contact you, the answer to them should be to speak with your attorney. Your lawyer can keep the insurance company at bay while the two of you make the best possible decisions about your course of action.
The Insurance Company Will Try to Profit at Your Expense
Those who have suffered an injury in motorcycle accidents tend to suffer more serious injuries than the average accident victim. When you have suffered an injury, you have many pressing priorities before you even handle any administrative matters related to the crash. The legal process is far more difficult than the average administrative matter.
You are dealing with an insurance company and its procedures designed to keep you from getting what you deserve in an accident injury claim. The insurance company uses its full amount of resources to save itself money at your expense. They often try anything other than offering you what you deserve.
What you can have in your corner to level the playing field with the insurance company is an experienced attorney who can look out for your legal rights. Hiring an attorney can keep you from dealing with the details of the legal process and help you stand up to the insurance company. Otherwise, you may be forced into a fight (and that is exactly what the legal process can be) during a time when you have the least capacity to deal with it.
A Motorcycle Accident Lawyer Can Help You Breathe Easier
Hiring an attorney helps give you peace of mind by knowing that an experienced practitioner is handling a critical part of your post-accident process. You have enough stress and discomfort to deal with in your life without subjecting yourself to a process that is often skewed against you.
Your Lawyer Will Handle Your Claim or Lawsuit
When it comes to the case itself, your attorney will help you best decide how to obtain financial compensation for your injuries.
You usually have two possible options to recover the damages you suffered:
- You can file a claim with the responsible driver’s insurance company
- You can file a lawsuit against the driver in court
Either way, you will need to deal with an insurance company. If the other driver had insurance, the company has a duty to defend its policyholder. If the driver did not have insurance, you might need to file a claim against your own policy, and your own insurance company can be every bit as difficult.
Filing a claim with the insurance company is not as simple as telling them how much they owe you for your injuries. First, you must persuade the insurance company that they need to pay you. Your claim must include evidence that the driver’s actions were negligent and the cause of your injuries. You must gather proof of what happened to show that the driver failed to live up to their duty of care in the accident.
Your Motorcycle Accident Attorney Can Help You Prove Your Case
You likely cannot investigate your own motorcycle crash and gather the proof necessary to win your case, either in court or through an insurance claim. Some of this evidence is at the scene of the accident, and your injuries likely prevented you from obtaining it at the time. Other evidence may be available after extensive investigation or even through discovery.
Some evidence you may use to prove a motorcycle accident case includes:
- Eyewitness testimony from people who saw the crash
- Pictures from the scene of the accident scene from those who were able to take them
- Dashcam footage from drivers in the area
- Testimony from an accident reconstruction expert
- Observation from the police report (you can only use this report during an insurance company claim and not in court because it is hearsay)
It takes a methodical and comprehensive approach to gather all the necessary evidence, which is something you likely cannot do on your own – even under the best of circumstances.
Your Lawyer Can Help You Quantify and Prove Your Damages
You will also need evidence to prove your damages. The burden of proof is on you to demonstrate your injuries. Your attorney will help you compile the documentation necessary to show how you have been affected by the motorcycle accident and build the most persuasive case for compensation.
Before you can even file a claim or lawsuit, you need to know how much to seek in damages. In other words, you must determine the exact value of your claim. The insurance company has this information. In fact, they have two separate numbers in mind: the true value of your claim and the amount for which they want to settle it.
Your Damages in a Motorcycle Accident Case
An attorney can also estimate the value of your claim and give you a starting point for settlement negotiations. Without a lawyer, you might accept what the insurance company offers you, thinking that it was the fair value of your claim. A word of advice is that the insurance company has a significant amount of room to raise their settlement offer, both the initial offer and the ones made after that.
In any motorcycle accident claim, you deserve these damages if they apply to your situation:
- The complete costs associated with your medical care
- Lost wages for what you cannot earn from your job
- Pain and suffering for what you endure on account of your accident injuries
- Loss of enjoyment of life
If your loved one died in a motorcycle accident, your family can seek damages for wrongful death if you can prove that the driver was responsible.
Your Lawyer Will Negotiate With the Insurance Company on Your Behalf
You can and must negotiate with the insurance company to get more motorcycle accident compensation. The only way to get what you deserve is to say no to a settlement offer that does not fairly pay you. Knowing the value of your claim, a lawyer will help you by advising you to say no to a settlement offer that is too low.
At that point, your lawyer can begin negotiations with the insurance company. It is a specialized skill, knowing how to negotiate with an insurance company. These businesses (and insurance companies are exactly that – a business) build their model on knowing how to negotiate down your claim.
Your counter is to have a lawyer ready to negotiate your financial compensation. Theoretically, you will meet somewhere in the middle and sign a settlement agreement with the insurance company. It is how claims have proceeded since the beginning of insurance companies and the invention of the motorcycle.
Your lawyer will also help you evaluate your options while your case is pending. The insurance company may deny your claim for a number of reasons, often trying to blame you for your own accident. In other cases, the insurance company may not raise their offer quickly enough, or may not want to pay you the amount you deserve.
At some point, you may need to file a lawsuit in court and face off against the insurance company in front of a jury. Insurance defense lawyers know their job, and you need an attorney to make your case.
You Should Not Deal With the Insurance Company Alone
As hard as it is to deal with an insurance company on your own, it will be even more difficult to file your own lawsuit. Your legal complaint needs to have enough substantiation to make it through to later stages in the case, or else a judge will dismiss it before you can even gather more evidence that helps prove your claims
Your attorney will work on drafting the complaint and lay out in detail why you deserve money. They know the personal injury process, and they can explain to you what is happening every step of the way, so you can make effective decisions when necessary.
Hiring an attorney does not require you to dip into your pocket and spend your already limited funds. A motorcycle accident lawyer does not ask you to pay a retainer, nor do you send you hourly bills while your case is pending. Your lawyer gets paid if and when you win your case and not under any other circumstances. Thus, there is no risk to you in speaking with and hiring a motorcycle accident attorney. The only risk you have is if you do not get an attorney and the insurance company runs roughshod over you during the claims process.
Do Not Wait to Consult a Motorcycle Accident Lawyer
In short, there are many ways a motorcycle accident attorney can help if you suffered injuries in a crash. You should focus on getting the immediate medical treatment you need, and then consider your legal rights.
The injury claim process is complex and confusing, and inexperienced parties often accept far less than they deserve. Protect your physical health and your financial future by consulting with a law firm in your area right away.
Case evaluations are free, so you have nothing to lose by speaking with an experienced attorney about a possible case.
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