Archives for July 2014

Trial and Personal Injury Lawsuits

Most personal injury legal claims never go to trial. Most often, attorneys and insurance companies will negotiate a compensation settlement package that covers items such as the injured person’s medical costs, repair or replacement of the vehicle involved, pain and suffering, and lost wages.

Decisions regarding settlement of a case are made based on past amounts that juries or insurers have paid on similar personal injury claims. Personal injury attorneys have extensive experience and understanding of these types of cases. The personal injury attorney and the insurer will generally negotiate a settlement. The negotiations begin when one or the other party, the insurer or the attorney who represents the injured person, presents an initial settlement offer or a settlement demand.

Contact Gregg A. Wisotsky, Esq., Partner, Javerbaum Wurgaft Hicks Kahn Wikstrom & Sinins, PC, personal injury attorney in New Jersey.

There is then negotiation between the insurer and the attorney until both sides can agree on a settlement. When the defense, the insurance company, will not consider appropriate and fair compensation to a person injured through no fault of their own, a personal injury case may go to trial. This means that the case will be tried in front of a jury.

Between 95% and 96% of all personal injury cases in the United States are settled outside of court, pretrial. That leaves about 4% of cases that do go to trial. In most cases that go to trial, the amount of the settlement determined is higher.

Among the reasons that cases settle is that going through the court process can take a significant length of time. As well, the case and the circumstances will need to be investigated and researched by both sides. Witnesses need to be tracked down, interviewed, and the like. There is also a significant legal process that must be followed in any personal injury claim. And a trial is far costlier.

At the law offices of attorney Gregg A. Wisotsky, Esq., Partner, Javerbaum Wurgaft Hicks Kahn Wikstrom & Sinins, PC, we can answer your questions, explain your rights and represent you in a personal injury claim. Contact our office online or call us at 973-241-7468 for a free consultation. Additionally, we charge no attorney fees unless we win your case on your behalf. In addition to personal injury law, we also practice criminal defense.

“Pain and suffering” are legal terms used in personal injury cases. It refers to the emotional and physical trauma that you have suffered because of injuries caused by another person or an organization’s careless or reckless behavior. This is called negligence, in legal terms. “Pain and suffering” include many things that are not as visible as bruises and broken bones, subjective measures such as:

• Loss of enjoyment of life after suffering a permanent injury
• Loss of being able to be an active parent to your children if you have suffered permanent injury
• Humiliation and embarrassment from scarring and disfigurement
• Any accident-related emotional and mental distress
• Fear and anxiety related to driving after the accident
• Post-accident depression

Just being limited in your ability to throw a baseball or work out at the gym or socialize with friends may be potentially included in pain and suffering. If you jump every time you hear a loud noise and your accident triggered this fear of loud noises, this can be “calculated” as pain and suffering. Truly, “pain and suffering” is subjective. And it can be difficult to place a dollar value on emotional troubles that you now experience due to the accident. However, this is part of an attorney’s job. The attorney can seek to prove how your life has suffered because of a personal injury. It is helpful for you as the victim to record what has happened post-crash and how your life has changed. Journals like these can be useful in a personal injury claim.

Meantime, insurers have developed standards to help determine the financial compensation they are willing to pay for various types of pain and suffering. It can sometimes be the case that the insurer will simply take medical costs and multiple them by a certain amount and define that as pain and suffering.

At the law offices of attorney Gregg A. Wisotsky, Esq., Partner, Javerbaum Wurgaft Hicks Kahn Wikstrom & Sinins, PC, we can answer your questions, explain your rights and represent you in a personal injury claim. Contact our office online or call us at 973-241-7468 for a free consultation. Additionally, we charge no attorney fees unless we win your case on your behalf. In addition to personal injury law, we also practice criminal defense.