Roseburg Oregon has beautiful rivers and forests. It also has a great community where people get together for things like Graffiti night and the log truck Christmas lights parade. As wonderful as Roseburg is, it still has car accidents from time to time. So, what do you do if you are in an auto accident in Roseburg, Oregon? You call a personal injury lawyer in Roseburg Oregon to help you with your claim.
A Roseburg personal injury attorney can help a person who has been injured through the stress that comes with an auto accident. A Roseburg personal injury lawyer knows the ins and outs of the insurance statutes and contracts and knows how to navigate that area of law.
A Personal Injury Attorney in Roseburg Can Help You Navigate Insurance Policies
People sign up and pay for insurance coverage all the time. Most of these people do not know the difference between their Personal Injury Protection, their Bodily Injury coverage, and their Under-Insured Motorist coverage. A personal injury lawyer in Roseburg can explain what all these coverages do and help someone who has been injured by dealing with the fact specific characteristics of their client’s coverages. When a person is injured in a car accident in Roseburg, Oregon, that injury should be covered by both Personal Injury Protection (known as PIP) and Under-Insured Motorist coverage (known as UIM).
PIP insurance in Oregon is usually at least $15,000.00 in coverage. This money is used to pay the medical bills of the insured. This PIP money covers the insured whether or not the insured is at fault in an accident. There is also additional PIP money that can be obtained to be reimbursed for lost wages. The lost wages coverage is statutory and should be navigated by a personal injury attorney because it is very fact specific.
When the insured is not at fault, PIP will have a lien on any funds recovered by their insured from the at-fault party. This PIP lien means that if PIP pays $15,000.00 in medical bills of their insured, who was injured but not at fault, PIP can choose to take that $15,000.00 from a settlement or judgment made by their insured against the at-fault party. A personal injury lawyer in Roseburg can force PIP to choose an election between whether PIP will pursue their own reimbursement from the at-fault party through subrogation, or choose to have the insured’s personal injury attorney recover that money for PIP as part of the settlement or judgement. This forced election is critical to negotiations with the at-fault party so it should be done by a client’s personal injury attorney.
If a client chooses to hire a personal injury lawyer in Roseburg, Oregon, that personal injury lawyer will help their client by dealing with all these insurance issues. The client in the meantime can just get treatment and recover from the client’s injuries.
After a car accident lawyer forces the PIP election, the auto accident lawyer will gather proof from the injured client to present to the at-fault party. The car crash lawyer in Roseburg will gather information about the three main categories of recovery: medical bills, lost wages, and loss of enjoyment of life.
A person injured in an auto accident can recover the cost of all their medical bills from the at-fault party. The client’s personal injury attorney in Roseburg will help the client gather all these bills and show that each bill is related to the accident. The bills should include all medical bills paid by PIP and any medical bills paid by the client’s health insurance.
The client can also recover lost wages from the at fault party and estimated future lost wages. It is important to have a personal injury attorney make these claims because they will help the client gather the necessary proof of future lost wages.
Loss of enjoyment of life can also be recovered in a car accident. The Roseburg personal injury lawyer knows that the law seeks to try and put the injured person in the same position as before the accident. The personal injury lawyer understands that the law cannot always make things perfectly like they were before the accident, so the law tries to compensate the injured with money damages in an effort to make things as equal as it can be to the way they were before the accident. This is why damages include loss of enjoyment of life.
The car crash attorney in Roseburg will be able to help the client to document the client’s loss of enjoyment of life. The personal injury attorney in Roseburg will add the documented loss of enjoyment of life to the demand letter. Loss of enjoyment of life can include anything in life that was harder or more painful because of the injury or trauma.
Once the client’s personal injury attorney sends the demand letter, including proof of all three types of damages, the personal injury lawyer will then negotiate with the at-fault bodily injury insurance company. The client will have final say as to any settlement. If the parties cannot come to an agreement, the personal injury attorney will explain to the client the process of going to trial and have the client decide whether to proceed to trial.
If the parties come to a mutual settlement, the personal injury attorney in Roseburg still has a lot of work to do on the case. The personal injury attorney must receive the settlement checks and put them into a trust account before paying the client. The trust account will be used to pay any outstanding liens on the settlement.
Before paying any liens, the personal injury attorney in Roseburg will negotiate with any party that has a lien on the settlement recovery. This includes PIP, health insurances, and health providers. Usually, with some exceptions like ERISA liens, a personal injury lawyer can get these liens reduced by at least the proportion of attorney’s fees. After negotiating these reductions, the car accident lawyer will pay each of these liens out of the trust account. The lawyer will also pay himself out of the trust account for his fee and costs. He will then pay the client the remaining amount.
Hypothetical Example: How An Auto Accident Attorney Can Help
Let’s look at an example of how this breaks down in real life. The following is a hypothetical example and should not be construed as legal advice. Settlement amounts in the following example are fictional and individual claims and cases very substantially. But this example is helpful for educational purposes:
Lets say a person is injured in an accident with a soft tissue neck injury, requiring $10,000 in chiropractic, 3,000 in physical therapy, and a knee ligament sprain requiring a minor knee surgery of $15,000 with an additional $5,000 in physical therapy for the knee recovery. This brings total medical bills to $33,000.
If the client deals with negotiating this injury on their own, without a lawyer, the at-fault bodily injury insurance company may offer to cover medical bills and maybe add $5,000 to $10,000 on top of that. But, the at-fault bodily injury insurance company wont tell the client that the medical bills were adjusted down. So, the total cost to the at-fault bodily injury insurance company will only be about $33,000. The client will get $5,000 to $10,000.
But things are very different if the client chooses to hire a lawyer. If the client chooses to hire a lawyer, depending on the amount of lost wages and the facts of the case, the lawyer is likely to get around $60,000 from the at-fault bodily injury insurance company. The lawyer may get even more. The lawyer will definitely need to get more if PIP chooses to have the personal injury lawyer recover from them. But, for this example, lets assume the lawyer gets $60,000 and PIP elected to recover directly from the at-fault bodily injury insurance company.
The PIP insurance will pay $15,000 of the $33,000 of medical bills. However, PIP usually pays at a contractually adjusted price. Thus, even though PIP only pays $15,000, that money will actually cover about $23,000 worth of bills. We have assumed for this example that the lawyer has forced a PIP election and PIP chose to go directly to bodily injury insurance company to recover and chose to not have the client’s personal injury lawyer recover for PIP. That means that there will only be a maximum of $10,000 of health insurance liens on the recovery because PIP covered the rest and is going directly to the at-fault bodily injury insurance company for its share.
But, even this $10,000 of health insurance paid bills will be adjusted down contractually between the health insurance and the providers. So, the health insurance actually probably only paid about $6,000 even though it paid for $10,000 worth of bills. This $6,000 will be a health insurance lien against any recovery the client makes on the injury claim.
In this example, when the personal injury lawyer gets the $60,000 from the at-fault bodily injury insurance company, he puts the $60,000 in his trust account. Before he pays the client, he must first pay himself, and any liens on the settlement recovery. Because PIP elected to pursue their own reimbursement, the lawyer only has the health insurance lien of $6,000 to pay. Before the personal injury lawyer pays this, the lawyer will try and get this amount reduced by at least a third. Thus, the $6,000 will likely end up to be lowered by at least $2,000 leaving about $4,000 as a health insurance lien.
The lawyer will pay the $4,000 health insurance lien out of the trust account before paying the client. Thus, the $60,000 will pay the lawyers $20,000 fee, and the $4,000 health insurance lien, leaving the client about $36,000 in the clients pocket after all is said and done. This $36,000 is much better than what the client would have gotten without a lawyer. Additionally, the client can be sure that all the paperwork was done appropriately and all the liens were paid properly. With a personal injury lawyer, the claim ends clean and with more money in the client’s pocket.
The above example is for educational purposes only and should not be construed as legal advice. However, it illustrates many reasons why someone with a car crash injury in Roseburg needs a personal injury attorney to help them through their case.
Disclaimer
The above article was written for educational purposes only. It is not to be construed as legal advice. If you have been injured in an accident, you should consult with a personal injury attorney about the specific facts and circumstances of your case.
Personal Injury Attorney In Medford, Oregon