10 Tips to Strengthen Your Personal Injury Claim

1. Investigate the facts of the case

You should always investigate the facts of the case right after they happened. Whether you are in a car accident, premise liability incident, slip and fall, or product defect case, you should investigate a few things at the very least.

Who was at fault?

Was it an individual? Are they identifiable? Is it an employee of a business? Is the business therefore responsible? Are you at fault at all? Once you have identified who is at fault for causing the accident, you need to record that information. You can do this by taking down names alongside taking photos and videos of who or what you believe caused the accident. This is usually pretty easy because cell phones make excellent tools for investigating personal injury cases.

The importance of gathering your own photographic evidence

Take photos of vehicles, dangerous conditions, defects in products/merchandise, etc. The possibilities are endless but a little bit of work right after the accident can go a long way in establishing fault for a case. There isn’t much you can do to change the facts of a case, but there is plenty that you can do to make sure that the facts don’t change later on to hurt your case.

Lost evidence is one of the biggest hurdles in the litigation process. Attorneys will go to great lengths to discover and uncover evidence. If an injured party does their part in collecting evidence from the start, the Plaintiff’s attorney’s job becomes much easier. They are able to use any evidence that you create in your favor. Conversely, you must assume that the Defendants are collecting evidence that favors their position, not yours. Therefore, it is a good idea to collect your own evidence.

Do not rely on anyone else involved in the accident

Don’t take another driver’s word that they will send you photos or videos that they took. Don’t mistake an employee for a business, making an incident report as an admission that they were wrong. On the contrary, businesses will generate incident reports that favor a finding that they were not responsible. Time and time again we see businesses intentionally destroy evidence that would be helpful to a plaintiff in a case. They do this with the worst intentions (not having to pay for your damages).

How an attorney can help

Luckily, there are tactics that keen attorneys can take to turn the tables on Defendant’s that willfully destroy important evidence that favors the Plaintiff. Motions for spoliation are the litigation tools used by litigants to support a finding that a party destroyed evidence for an improper purpose. The punishment to the offending litigants is that the party seeking the evidence is able to tell the jury that they destroyed the evidence for an improper purpose and the jury is therefore instructed by the judge to make an adverse inference that the evidence was destroyed because it favored the non-offending party.

For instance, some video footage could show that the Defendant caused the accident. This is a great way to establish liability in difficult cases. It can change the value of a case from low to high depending on the circumstances. Successful attempts to secure a motion for spoliation can change the outcome of a case entirely.

2. Ask an attorney their opinion

After an accident, as soon as it is safe to do so, you should contact a lawyer to make sure that there are not any loose ends that need to be tied up. An experienced trial attorney with a great deal of experience in the field of torts law is exactly who you should be calling after an accident.

Knowing what questions to ask, and how to answer them

Whether it is a car accident, premise liability incident, slip and fall accident, or product defect related case, you should not bypass this step. A savvy personal injury lawyer will ask you the right questions to make sure that there isn’t anything that you missed.

Do not downplay your injuries

It is common for people involved in personal injury cases to forget or not look into important information, either because they are shaken up after the incident or they simply did not know what to look for after being involved in an accident. For instance, it is important to make sure that you consider what you say to everyone at the scene of the accident. If you tell everyone “I’m okay” even though you simply meant that you were “not dying.” That could end up in the police report as being “Driver of Vehicle #2 did not report injuries at the scene.” When you really meant that you were in pain, but you were not in danger of losing your life.

Do not accept any responsibility

These are the type of things that insurance adjusters love to get hung up on, even though the information contained in a police report is typically hearsay. Another consideration is whether there was anything that you could have done to avoid the accident. If you answer that question in the affirmative, guess what, you just made a negative impact on your case. For example, if another driver runs a red light while you have the green light, you might be asked the question “was there anything you could do to avoid the accident?” Well sure, you could slow down at every green light to make sure that drivers are not running red lights. However, if that is what you say to a police officer or insurance adjuster, you just devalued your case, not knowing it.

Under Nevada law, if a plaintiff is jointly responsible for causing an accident, their damages could be reduced by their percentage of fault. If the accident is more the fault of the Plaintiff than the Defendant, then there can be no recovery. These are things that very few unrepresented plaintiffs consider before speaking about the details of how an accident occurred. They often enter into “regurgitation mode” where they just say everything that is on their mind, not considering the potential negative impacts that a statement may or may not have. This is why you need to retain an attorney who has seen it all.

3. Don’t Settle Early

It isn’t common, but it happens enough for it to be worth mentioning. Say it with me, now: “I will not settle my case until I know the full extent of my injuries.”

We see this happen from time to time. An insurance adjuster will speak to a personal injury victim before the victim even has a chance to speak to or retain an attorney. The insurance adjuster will offer the victim “hush money” in an amount between $500.00 and $5,000.00. They do this in hopes that you will not file a claim. This unethical practice is part of the reason that personal injury attorneys exist—to stop insurance companies from preying on the weak and/or injured.

Be wary of immediate settlement offers

The reason why this offer might seem lucrative to an injured person is that they might need cash right away, ignoring how injured or damaged they truly might be. If you are in an accident, are offered $1,000.00, accept the offer, and then sign a release, the case is over. Even if you discover that you were significantly injured, requiring tens of thousands of dollars of medical bills out of your own pocket. This is why advise our clients over and over again — don’t settle your case early.

Low offers to avoid high future payouts

Sometimes insurance companies will offer a low amount of money to settle a case after an attorney sends a demand but prior to filing a lawsuit. This is commonly referred to as “pre-lit” negotiations because they are “prior to litigation.” These offers do not offer much more than the medical bills, ignoring the potentially large claims for pain and suffering. In fact, during the litigation process, a large portion of the damages awarded by a jury comes in the form of “pain and suffering” or non-economic damages. This is because what a person goes through as a result of an injury is a much bigger deal than the cost of the medical treatment.

If you accept a low offer, it will not cover future medical bills

For instance, if you fracture your arm in a car accident, requiring surgery, the surgery may cost somewhere between $20,000 to $60,000, depending on severity. However, that injury could cause pain that will last you the rest of your life. In that case, juries are likely to award pain and suffering damages much higher than the cost of the surgery. They might award pain and suffering the six to seven-figure range depending on the circumstances and resulting disability. But before filing a lawsuit, an insurance adjuster might only make an offer in the range between $30,000 to $70,000, thinking that the claimant will just accept it because they will want the money now rather than litigating for it later.

File a lawsuit immediately

This is why it is always a good idea to hire a car accident lawyer in Las Vegas to file suit early on in a case when there are indications that there will be a need for a surgical procedure. If you do that then you will open the doors to the adjusters wanting to avoid full litigation of the issues, fearing what a jury might award someone who was severely injured as a result of negligence.

It is important to consider the full value of a claim in order to settle a case for top dollar. This means going through a full course of treatment until you either feel better or reach “maximum medical improvement.” This will help substantiate exactly how much damages you endured as a result of the accident and will result in resolving the case for nothing less than what you are owed.

If you are injured as a result of another’s negligence, you need to contact Las Vegas car accident lawyer Brian Boyer at the Injury Firm, Las Vegas, so he can personally go over your options and let you know exactly what needs to be done to maximize your case.

4. Take photographic evidence

Taking photographs is one of the easiest things that you can do to help your injury case. The reason why it is so easy is that everyone these days seems to have a smartphone that is capable of taking pictures. You can take pictures of the scene of the accident, the vehicles involved, the dangerous condition that caused the accident, witnesses, visible injuries, the intersection, stop signs, crosswalks, really the options are endless.

Your media could prove liability

If a photograph is worth a thousand words then a video must be worth a million. Even more helpful to your personal injury case can be videos. Some people drive around their cars with dashcams. Dashcams do a great job of supporting a version of events. It is very hard to argue with a video. If a party attempts to argue with what happened in a video in front of a jury, the party will lose all credibility to the jury. They become inflamed and award high verdicts at trial. That is one reason why you should take video evidence. Photos can be manipulated but videos have a certain characteristic of being irrefutable evidence.

Your attorney will use the media to build a strong case

Save the photos and videos to a safe and secure area. Turn them over to your attorney as soon as possible. Your attorney will know how to safely store this valuable information that could mean the difference between a successful and unsuccessful case. There is very little that can be done if a key piece of evidence is lost. So don’t just assume that the photos and videos of your accident are safe on your phone. People lose their phones frequently. People’s phones are sometimes stolen. Don’t gamble your personal injury case on evidence being saved on your phone. Make sure that your phone is backed up and saved to the “cloud”. The cloud is a great place to store evidence as it can be available from multiple sources, even if you lose your phone or laptop.

5. File a lawsuit immediately

If you file a lawsuit quickly in the claims process, the insurance adjuster might take the claim more seriously. Insurance adjusters know that a good attorney will not want to litigate a bad case. So if it appears that the attorney is “excited” to litigate the case, it must mean that the case is good and the insurance adjuster better settle the matter before it inevitably reaches a jury. There are very few things that scare insurance adjusters more than the threat of litigation. Insurance adjusters (in theory) are supposed to protect their insureds (their clients). That is why people carry insurance, after all, to protect themselves from financial liability. Oftentimes, when a lawsuit is filed the claim is reassigned from a pre-litigation adjuster to a litigation adjuster.

Litigation adjusters are usually more in tune with the potential outcomes during the litigation process and therefore more often than not are given more authority to settle cases for more money than pre-lit adjusters. Litigation adjusters are the insurance companies’ last line of defense before a matter is taken to a jury. If a matter is taken all the way to a jury and the jury renders a verdict in favor of the Plaintiff, the insurance adjuster has failed at their job to protect their insured. This is obviously not good for the insurance companies or the insurance adjusters, so they try to limit their exposure by trying to settle more aggressively during the litigation process.

Forcing the insurance companies to settle

During the litigation process, the Defendant’s insurance company will be forced to retain an attorney or lawyer to defend their insured. This can also be good when it comes to settling your case. The reason being is that attorneys and lawyers have a better understanding of the law than insurance adjusters. They know the strengths and weaknesses of a case and will recommend to the insurance adjusters that the case be settled rather than decided on the merits if they do not have a good case. If a Plaintiff has a good case, then the defense attorney has a bad case. They face the potential of a loss, which they would prefer to avoid. A loss to a defense attorney is not good for their record and insurance companies will avoid hiring attorneys that have a bad defense record. So the best possible solution to them might be to settle for a lot of money.

6. Hire a lawyer that will litigate

You should hire a lawyer that will litigate for you when necessary. This also requires that you hire a lawyer that is experienced in litigating cases and taking them all the way to trial. Many of the law firms that you see on T.V. will not litigate for you. They typically have too many cases and cannot possibly spend the proper amount of time that it takes to litigate your case. Sure they might file a lawsuit (to increase their attorney fees) but they won’t properly litigate your case. They will do the bare minimum. The bare minimum does not win cases. The bare minimum will hurt your case, resulting in less money in your pocket. At The Injury Firm in Las Vegas, we pride ourselves on our attention to details in the litigation field. This means that we narrowly tailor every one of our client’s cases to their individual needs. The results are out standing.

Cases in litigation can be won without going to trial

Cases are won during the litigation process before the case even gets to be decided by a jury. Skilled attorneys will send the properly written discovery to the other side. They will take depositions of key witnesses. They will retain experts to testify on your behalf during trial. They will not stop until every piece of potential evidence is uncovered for the jury to see. This is how trials are won.

Your attorney can make or break your case

If you go with an attorney that is lazy or inexperienced, your case will suffer. You will likely be forced to accept a low ball offer at some point because they did not do everything possible to strengthen your case when it mattered.

Conversely, if you retain the proper personal injury lawyer, like those at Brian Boyer’s The Injury Firm, Las Vegas, you will be met with a great experience. They will maximize the value of your case by handling your case in the best way possible. Whether it is to fully litigate your case or settle your case quickly, the Injury Firm will have your best interests at heart.

Litigation is no laughing matter. There are quick deadlines. Expensive expert report requirements. And to top it all off the attorneys need to orchestrate a “show” for the jury to demonstrate that their client has the better case. These are daunting tasks, reserved for only the best attorneys.

7. Releasing medical records

Insurance companies will push for you to give your authorization to obtain your complete medical history. You should avoid this. This is an open invitation to dig for information that could potentially hurt your case. You have no duty to provide authorizations to your medical records outside of your medical treatment for your personal injury case. Even during the litigation and discovery process, a skilled personal injury attorney will fight the other side’s attempts at obtaining irrelevant and unrelated medical records. Such records are never beneficial to the Plaintiff. They can only hurt their case. So listen to the advice of your attorney. Only provide these types of releases unless absolutely necessary.

Do not overtreat

Sometimes the release of pertinent medical records is helpful. In fact, if the insurance company provides a release for medical records and you have your client sign it, the insurance companies are required to disclose the policy limits. This can be helpful from a tactical standpoint because you will figure out how much money is in the purse. If you know how much money is at stake, you can direct your medical treatment accordingly and avoid “overtreatment” of the personal injury case.

Overtreatment occurs when a personal injury claimant incurs more costs in medical treatment than the insurance policy limits. This can create severe problems with not enough money to go around at the end of the case. This is also why it is important to monitor medical treatment in relation to potential policy limits. Even if you don’t know the exact policy limits, there are things that smart personal injury attorneys can do to estimate the policy limits, including investigating the assets of the defendant, analyzing the car driven by the defendant, sending a preliminary demand package to the insurance company, or having a third party company investigate the exact policy limits.

Preexisting conditions

Prior medical records can be fatal to a personal injury case. If it is revealed in prior medical records that you had pre-existing issues with a body part that you injured in an accident, the insurance company will try to say that the injuries are not causally related to the accident and avoid paying any real money on the claim, even if you fully recovered from the prior injury, it will give them ammo against you.

8. Ask the insurance company to set up a high reserve account

Getting insurance companies to set a high reserve amount for your claim is paramount to settle your case for top dollar. Setting a high reserve means that the adjuster believes that the case could have high exposure, in other words, a high dollar amount. There are multiple ways that high reserves are set on personal injury claims. The first is claims involving serious injury or death. Now you can’t change the facts of the case but you can make cause for alarm for the adjuster by carefully investigating the details of the accident. For instance, were you knocked unconscious? If so, make sure that the adjuster knows there is the potential for a traumatic brain injury. Did the airbags deploy, resulting in whiplash? Make sure the adjuster knows of the potential for disc injuries. You can obtain high reserves without broken bones if you know what are the most serious types of soft tissue injuries.

How to set up a high reserve account

Another way that you can obtain a high reserve is to disclose a high medical bill in the very beginning. If there is a trauma workup at the hospital, the insurance companies are likely to set a high reserve. This can be assisted if there is immediate follow up with a PCP and you complain of a high degree and persisting symptoms that were reported at the hospital. This demonstrates the potential for permanent injuries. Permanent injures are likely to bring in large amounts if a case goes to trial.

High reserves can mean a higher settlement award

High reserves will almost always result in a higher settlement than if low reserves are set on a case. However, there are hidden dangers when high reserves are set. Often times, when high reserves are set, an insurance company will reach out to defense attorneys to monitor the case. They will also consider doing deeper investigations into the character of the claimant to see if there is anything that will provide a solid defense to the case. Such things as prior criminal history, prior litigation history, prior injuries, etc. If they uncover this type of evidence they may even close the high reserve and consider the case to be weak in merit.

9. Keep a diary of your injuries

Keeping a diary of events and injuries is a great idea for several reasons. First, diaries are made when events are fresh in your head will be more accurate than trying to remember events 2 years after they occurred. A diary is a great way to refresh your recollection of events. If you go over a diary of events related to your personal injury case right before a deposition, you will be more likely to testify clearly. It will also help you determine whether or not medical records are accurate after they are produced. Medical records are not always accurate. Even simple matters in medical records are commonly misinterpreted. Things such as the gender of the patient or the type of accident are often incorrect.

Tips on keeping a successful injury diary

The way that you populate the diary of your injuries and medical treatment is important. You want to make sure and date everything. That way, you know when you wrote the entry. For every entry go through the body parts that are hurt and attribute a pain scale (1-10) to rate the severity of the pain. This way you can confirm that the medical records are accurate for a certain time frame. Plaintiffs in personal injury cases get tripped up when testifying about these pain scale ratings. Their recollection (if they don’t keep and review a diary prior to testifying) is cloudy. They are then easily tripped up when the Defendant’s attorney asks them questions about how they were feeling on a particular day. Then the Defense attorney pulls out medical records and the responses end up being wildly inaccurate. This causes issues with credibility on the stand. However, if a Plaintiff makes a diary and reviews the diary before providing deposition testimony, their recollection will be refreshed. They will be able to provide testimony that coincides with what they told the doctors at the time of the treatment. They will come off as a credible witness. The jury will love the testimony provided by the Plaintiff and give them a bunch of money because they are so believable on the stand.

Your diary may become admissible evidence

The one issue with diaries is that they do potentially become discoverable evidence at trial. The defense attorney will technically be entitled to review the diary. This is why it is important to make sure that the diary does not contain any information that you do not want them to have. You should retain an experienced personal injury attorney to make sure that you are putting the right information in the diary and leaving out information that you do not want to be discovered by the Defendant. A smart lawyer on your side will help you achieve your goals in your case. Contact attorney Brian Boyer at the Injury Firm to speak to him directly and set up an in-person meeting. He will be able to help you if you were involved in a car accident, slip and fall, or product liability case.

10. Keep track of all bills and receipts

If you want to be fully compensated for all of your damages, make sure that you keep all related bills and receipts related to your accident. Many do not consider the high amount of bills that are related to accidents. There can be expenses for prescriptions, over the counter medications, medical braces, rideshares, rental cars, body shops, auto mechanics, etc. These are all damages, known as economic damages, that you can be entitled to if they are caused by an accident. It is important to keep these bills in a safe place, preferably, send them to your attorney, who can keep them safe in your file. They can be used by your attorney to make sure that you receive every penny that you are owed.

Lost wages and income

Other types of economic damages are lost wages and income. These are very difficult damages to secure during litigation but it is important to know what needs to be done to stand a chance at recovering on a lost wages claim. First and foremost, a medical doctor needs to opine that you are excused from work due to your injuries. The doctor needs to put in his or her records that you cannot work due to your injuries. If a doctor does not opine that you cannot work, a lost wage claim will be difficult. There is a high burden on Plaintiffs to demonstrate that they could not work due to the accident. If the injuries are not severe enough, you need to keep working to mitigate your damages.

Once a doctor tells you that you cannot work due to your injuries, it is time to start thinking about how to calculate your lost wages. If you are an employee, it is simple. You just calculate how much time you missed from work and arrive at a figure based on what you make per pay period. It can get more complex if a good portion of your income is from tips or bonuses. It becomes exponentially more complicated if you are self-employed or are paid as a 10-99 independent contractor. Under those types of circumstances, the parties are likely to rely on tax returns to arrive at a calculation for lost income. It is important to look at multiple years of earnings to arrive at an average in most cases involving self-employment.

If you believe that your future earning capacity may have been affected by an injury or injuries after an accident, then you must consider hiring an economist expert to present evidence at trial. Without an economist’s loss of future earning, capacity claims are difficult, if not impossible to secure as damages.

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Contact our law firm

If you or a loved one have been injured in Las Vegas, NV, do not leave your recovery to chance. Contact our law firm for a completely free and confidential case review. We are available to take your call 24/7. Call 702-514-1414 or contact us online.