Here Are the Answers to Our Top Three Questions Asked by Our Clients

The top three questions asked by our Coweta and Newnan clients who have recently been in car accidents, answered by Coweta personal injury lawyer, Shane Smith.

1.    How do I get my medical bills paid after a Coweta car accident?

2.    How do I hire a Coweta personal injury lawyer?

3.    What is my Coweta car accident worth?

    1.    The primary way you get your Coweta car accident medical bills paid is through submitting a bodily injury demand to the insurance company.  Normally what happens is after you are completely finished treating with your medical providers and chiropractic care, a lawyer will gather all of the medical bills and records together, write up a settlement demand and send it to the insurance company in an attempt to settle your car accident claim.  This should include a description of your injuries, a description of the medical care you received, a total of all of the medical bills to include the emergency room, the emergency room doctor's visit, X‑rays, ambulance, any chiropractic care that you received due to soft tissue injuries and any other care of specialized care.  If you need any diagnostic medical tests, such as an MRI or CT scans, the reports should also be included in this settlement demand.  It should also include loss wage information from when you missed work, a letter from your treating physician indicating you could not work and how much your rate of pay is.  Additionally, it's important to include something for pain and suffering, a description of what you did suffer and the impact your injuries had on your life.  The description of the pain and suffering will vary depending on the severity of your injuries, whether they are catastrophic or not or whether they are soft tissue, neck and back injuries.

    2.    How do I hire a Coweta personal injury lawyer?  The main thing is to make sure that you have a good personal injury lawyer for your car accident case.  I recommend any client who's interviewing lawyers for a personal injury case to ask several questions of the lawyer.  The main one is does your lawyer do personal injury only or does he do other types of law?  I am a firm believer that when you have something serious happen to you, you want to get somebody who just does one thing.  If I need knee surgery I'm not going to go to my general family doctor, I'm going to go to a surgeon and not just any surgeon.  I'm going to go to a knee surgeon.  This same applies for legal cases.  If you have something routine and not very important you can use a general practitioner, but if you have something critical or that can cost you thousands of dollars, I would always recommend talking to somebody who limits their practice to just personal injury.  Another thing to consider is does the office have staff to support your case.  In other words, are you going to be able to talk to a case manger or the attorney or is your phone call going to be in a stack of messages that don't get answered for two, three, four, or five days.  Can the doctor help you get any medical care you might need if it's something more serious than back and neck injuries or soft tissue injuries?  Another thing is how can the lawyer help you?  Is he familiar with personal injury cases?  Is he going to be able to get you a good settlement on your case?  You can ask the attorney for testimonials, the names of any other clients, you can look at case results, you can ask the lawyer if his office will file a lawsuit if you can't settle the case or will that be outsourced to a different law firm.  All of these are ways you can look to hire a good personal injury lawyer for your Coweta car accident case.

    3.    What is my Coweta personal injury case worth?  There is no way to be able to tell you what your case is worth through a phone consultation or an Internet consultation or you coming to a personal injury attorney's office and talking to them about your case.  The reason for this is because during any of those initial appointments the personal injury lawyer is not going to have your complete medical records, they're not going to have your complete medical bills, they are unlikely to know the length of time you will treat, the amount of care you will need, whether you will need any specialist care, whether you will need an MRI or what the results of the MRIs are.  Additionally, the lawyer may not know how long you'll be out of work.  There is just no way for a personal injury lawyer to be able to accurately and definitively give you an idea of what your case is worth without having all of the facts in front of him.  It would be kind of like asking an umpire to tell you what the score in a baseball game was going to be prior to the game and I would tell you that if the umpire can do that he wouldn't be umping, he'd be in Vegas, and the same goes for a personal injury lawyer.  If he can only pick out the maximum value cases he would probably only handle a few cases and would never take any of the smaller cases.  A personal injury lawyer might can tell you the average case he works on.  He can tell you the average amount he might find for a soft tissue or whiplash-type case.  He might be able to tell you the amount he settled the last few cases in Newnan or Coweta for, but there's no way he can tell you what your case is worth.  In an attempt to do that he would have to review all the medical records, the bills, the lost wages, discuss with you whether you had any prior injuries that may have been exacerbated or complicated by the car accident, whether you have any pain and suffering, any activities you could not do and whether you have any permanent impairments as a result of the accident.  What you want is a lawyer who is going to fight to get you the maximum value for your case, whether it is a large case or a small case.