If you have been in an accident, your life can turn upside down in a flash. Everything you knew, from living without physical pain to your emotional stability, becomes alien to you. You are hurt, you are struggling to get well again, and you cannot connect with your loved ones to express what you are going through. It gets even worse when insurance companies try to lowball you or refuse to pay your claim at all.
Dealing with insurance companies and legal representation from the person who caused your injury can be confusing and stressful. When all you want to do is get well again, having to fight every step of the way can make matters even worse and prolong your injuries. To get the best possible outcome, you should speak to an experienced attorney in Virginia Beach. The personal injury lawyers at Montagna Klein Camden are here to advocate for you and fight to earn you the maximum compensation you deserve.
Have You Been Hurt in an Accident in Virginia Beach?
In Virginia, a personal injury claim can result from any situation where a person suffers a severe injury that is the fault of someone else’s negligence. Negligence is a legal term meaning that someone acted in a way that was so irresponsible, careless, or malicious that no reasonable person would act that way under similar circumstances.
Virginia personal injury claims occur due to a wide variety of accident types. Motorcycle accidents and car accidents in Hampton Roads (or any sort of auto accidents anywhere), slip and fall accidents, dog bites, premises liability, collisions resulting in pedestrian accidents, product liability, nursing home neglect and abuse, medical malpractice, and wrongful death cases are just a few types of personal injury.
Montagna Law is a personal injury law firm with years of experience covering many cases where personal injury victims suffer serious injuries at the hands of another party. Our practice areas include almost every aspect of injury law from truck accidents and other motor vehicle accidents to workers’ compensation cases and beyond. We are not a faceless, large PLLC firm that cycles clients through for expedient wins. We get to know all of our clients, and we deeply care about everyone who comes through our doors.
For experienced help with your case, contact our law office at 877-622-8100 or use our online contact form and get a free consultation with our personal injury team today.
Why Should You Hire Virginia Beach Personal Injury Lawyers?
When you get into an accident involving serious injuries, the best case is that you file your claim and the insurance company pays out. If that were the case, nobody would need an accident lawyer. Unfortunately, all too often the exact opposite happens. People suffer serious injuries resulting in vast medical expenses and increasing medical bills, loss of consortium and comfort, lost ability to work, and physical pain and suffering, then insurance providers fail to pay out.
It starts innocently enough: A few days after the accident, an insurance adjuster contacts you and acts very compassionately. They seem like they want to help. Then, they offer you an insultingly lowball settlement. When you question the amount, they get less friendly. They start to cajole you, and they might even threaten that if you don’t sign off, you will not see a dime from your settlement. This, in turn, adds stress to your situation, which only makes your recovery harder.
An experienced personal injury law firm with proven trial lawyers can be the solution to your problem. After a free consultation, you will get legal advice and guidance. Your attorney can then take over all communications with the insurance company. You do not have to talk to them at all. The right injury lawyer can also help you navigate the complex legal process, and make sure you avoid critical mistakes like missing the statute of limitations to file your case.
The right injury lawyers, like those at Montagna Law, know exactly how to stand up to bullying insurance companies, remind all parties that you are the victim, prove that the defendant caused your injury, and establish that you deserve maximum compensation for the harm you have suffered. In short, while the law does not require you to have a lawyer, securing representation can provide you with an invaluable ally and be the best step you can possibly take.
How Do You Prove Fault After an Accident in Virginia Beach?
Negligence is the key factor in almost every personal injury case. This legal term means proving that someone else was at fault for the accident you suffered. Negligence requires establishing three important factors.
First, we must demonstrate that someone else had a duty of care that they violated. In a motor vehicle accident, for example, every driver has a duty of care to operate their vehicle safely and not put others in undue danger. In a premises liability case, the property owner or manager has a duty of care to provide a reasonably safe space for guests, free from undue risk, and to address any dangers in a timely fashion. Doctors have a duty of care to only do what is best for their patients and operate within specific ethical boundaries.
After establishing the duty of care, we must show that the defendant egregiously violated that duty. For example, the motorist acted recklessly, the property owner failed to clean up an oil spill in a timely fashion, or the doctor made a careless action.
Second, we must show that this violation of the duty of care led directly or indirectly to the accident. In the case of a car accident, for example, the at-fault motorist need not necessarily be directly involved in the crash, but if their accident forced you to wreck into a wall, or even caused two other cars to crash, they can still be held responsible.
Finally, we must prove that the accident was the direct cause of your injury. You must have gotten hurt in the actual car wreck to prove direct cause.
Proving Fault in Product Liability Cases
Product liability cases can be a bit more complex than car accidents or premises liability, but the concept of negligence still holds. Several types of product liability exist. The first is products with a design defect. This means there was something inherently dangerous about the product from its core design. A good example is a new type of battery whose core design creates a short circuit that can result in the battery overheating and exploding under normal conditions.
The second is a manufacturing defect. In this case, the design of the product is sound, but something in its physical creation caused a danger. For example, brakes on a car that use materials that are prone to cracking and failure when exposed to heat and friction are a manufacturing defect.
Finally, failure to warn means that the product had a risk that the manufacturer or vendor of the product failed to warn the user about, or that the product did not include clear instructions as to its proper intended use. A pharmaceutical product with known side effects must carry a warning about said side effects. Failure to provide such a warning can open the company up to a product liability case.
The key to product liability is that you must have been using the product as intended and instructed when you got injured. Multiple types of liability can apply. A product that has a design defect, for example, may make it to market as long as the manufacturer and vendor provide a significant warning about the risks of its use.
Why Might Contributory Negligence Affect Personal Injury Cases?
Contributory negligence still exists in Virginia, one of only five states in the nation that still follow this concept. Pure contributory negligence states that if you are at all responsible for the accident in which you got injured, you cannot collect any compensation at all. No matter how little your fault was, even 1%, it can cause you to lose your entire case.
For this reason, the insurance company will go to almost any length to deflect responsibility onto you in your injury case. This is also a common threat they use to get you to sign off on lowball offers: If you go to court, they will blame you and you will lose everything. It can be very tricky and complicated to establish that the other party was 100% at fault for the accident in which you got injured, but that is precisely what must be done in Virginia.
This is another reason why it is so vital that you contact a qualified and experienced Virginia Beach personal injury lawyer to back you up in your case. When you are fighting for compensation, you will face experienced attorneys and insurance providers on the other side who know exactly how to use the law against you. The right attorney can stand up for your rights and fight back, using the law in your favor so you get the fair compensation you deserve.
What Is the Duration of Personal Injury Cases in Virginia Beach?
In a perfect world, an injury case is settled quickly and neatly: A claim is filed, or a demand letter is issued, and the other side pays up. Unfortunately, this rarely happens. Sometimes it’s important to wait to see what your medical bills and expenses look like, or to find out how long your doctor thinks you will be out of work, so we can put a proper value on your case. Other times, it just becomes a difficult back-and-forth between us and the defendant’s team to negotiate a settlement that satisfies everyone.
Even if things all fall into place neatly, settling a personal injury case can take months. If things get difficult, it can take years to get your settlement worked out. This is why patience is required in these cases.
What matters is that you have a legal team in your corner that will stand by your side the entire time, keep you apprised of what is going on throughout the process, and fight for you every step of the way. It is important not to go with a big corporate entity like a huge PLLC that will just funnel you through without ever really communicating with you. Go with a law firm like Montagna Law that is personal, that gets to know you, and is a confidante as well as an ally. Call us at 757-622-8100 or use our easy online contact form for a free consultation today.
What Is My Case Worth?
Much like the duration of your case, it is impossible to give you a solid idea upfront of what your case is worth. To do that, we first need to review what happened to you, hear your story, and look at the documentation. Only then can we give you an idea of what compensation we think you deserve. We can, however, tell you the kinds of things that might contribute to your case value. These include, but may not be limited to:
- Medical bills, including the costs of doctor’s office visits, medical procedures, physical therapy, medications, and even transportation to and from medical appointments.
- Lost wages, including those you have already lost from being unable to work as a result of the accident, and those you may have earned in the future if your work had not been interrupted.
- Costs of necessary in-home care to help you accomplish your normal daily tasks that you can no longer accomplish on your own.
- Emotional trauma, including depression, mood swings, PTSD, and other invisible injuries.
- Loss of consortium if you can no longer be intimate with your spouse.
- Loss of comfort and support that comes from your inability to earn a living and your inability to enjoy the presence of loved ones, or their inability to relate to what you are suffering from.
- Loss of enjoyment of life because you simply cannot do the things you could do before.
- Physical pain and suffering, from aches and pains to loss of function in limbs.
- Wrongful death benefits if you have lost a loved one, which can include medical costs up to the date of death, burial and funeral expenses, and a variety of compensatory damages for the emotional loss of your close family member.
Special vs. General Damages
The damages listed above come in two categories: special damages and general damages, also called economic and non-economic damages, respectively. Special damages are very easy to value. We can put a straightforward price on the costs of your medical bills, your lost wages, the costs of in-home care, and the like.
Paperwork will exist to back these things up. We know how much you made at work. We know what your doctor’s office visits cost. We can see how much surgery and medicine cost.
General damages are more difficult to value. These are things like your pain and suffering, impairment, disfigurement, mental anguish, reduced quality of life, loss of companionship, loss of comfort, loss of consortium, and all the other invisible injuries that go along with the harm you have suffered.
Your Virginia Beach personal injury lawyer will be able to work with you to determine what these are worth. Usually, they are valued as a multiple of your special damages; your attorney, for example, might determine that your noneconomic damages are worth double, triple, or quadruple your economic ones.
Each attorney and insurance company has a different formula to determine these things, however, and nobody shares their method with anyone else. Therefore, negotiation is all-important in these cases. This is why it is vital to have a qualified attorney in your corner who can put a value on your injuries and fight to see your case through.
You Focus on Recovery — We Will Focus on Your Compensation
Montagna Klein Camden is an experienced, award-winning personal injury law firm that is ready to fight for you. We have represented clients all across Hampton Roads, including those in Chesapeake, Suffolk, Portsmouth, Norfolk, Newport News, and right here in Virginia Beach. Our experienced team of paralegals and trial lawyers are aces at research and fighting for the rights of injury victims.
You do not have to go it alone. Whether you have suffered broken bones, a traumatic brain injury, loss of limb function, or even the loss of a loved one to wrongful death, we will listen to your story, provide legal advice, and fight for the maximum compensation you deserve. You can read our customer testimonials to find out just how personalized our service is.
We will not treat you like a number. We care deeply about your well-being. There are no disclaimers and no catch. Get in touch with us at 877-622-8100 or complete our online contact form for your no-obligation free consultation today.
If you’ve been injured on the job in Virginia Beach, get a personal injury attorney with experience that you can trust. The worker’s compensation and social security disability lawyers at Montagna Law have been representing the Virginia Beach, Virginia area for over 50 years and have been named in the Top 100 of National Trial Lawyers and Lawyers of Distinction in 2020.
We’ve won our clients millions of dollars for thousands of clients in Virginia Beach from insurance companies that want to deny hard and dedicated workers the money they deserve for accidents on the job or in auto accidents. Contact us today if you were hurt in an automobile accident, fighting for Social Security disability, or were injured at work in Virginia Beach. We discuss all fees upfront so there are no surprises later, and we work hard to earn and maintain your trust.
If you are in need of an experienced personal injury attorney in Virginia Beach, Montagna Law is the right choice. Our lawyers always put clients’ needs at the forefront and by making our clients’ needs and rights a priority, we can promise you will never feel dissatisfied with the legal representation from our Virginia Beach personal injury lawyers.
We work on a case-by-case basis to provide clients in Virginia Beach with the personalized care they deserve. The statute of limitation for worker’s compensation cases is not long, so don’t delay. If you’ve been injured on the job in Virginia Beach, call our offices at 757-622-6851.
