Selecting the Best Lawyers for your Accident
If you are involved in an incident due to someone else’s negligence that causes you injuries, whether a motor vehicle accident, slip-and-fall or other incident, there is an Accident Lawyer Anchorage ready to assist you in obtaining the compensation you deserve for your medical bills, pain and suffering and whatever else you may be entitled to.
Before you get to the point of an award, however, it is important to understand that Alaska Statutes Title 28 (Motor Vehicles) and Title 9 (Code of Civil Procedure) affords you only two (2) years from the date you are injured—or at least the date you discover your injury—to file your lawsuit. Your Accident Lawyer Anchorage knows that your failure to meet this deadline will likely make you forever unable to bring your claim and receive monies for your injuries. For this reason and others listed below, if you are involved in any incident where you believe you might have been hurt, you must seek immediate medical attention and find an attorney.
Other reasons you need an Accident Lawyer Anchorage include dealing with “comparative fault.” Under this regulation, if a judge or jury finds you in any way responsible for the incident that resulted in your injuries, your award may be reduced accordingly. So if you prove $150,000.00 worth of damages, but a judge or jury decides that you were thirty-three (33%) percent responsible, you will only receive a payment $100,000.00. For this reason, your attorney must not only work to prove you were hurt, but that it was not at all your fault.
Lawyers who promise you millions of dollars for your injuries may not know what they are talking about. This is because Alaska set limits on the amounts awards for certain types of cases. In medical malpractice cases, for example, “pain and suffering” awards, or non-economic awards, are limited to the greater of $400,000, or $8,000 for each year a person is expected to remain alive. Since punitive damages are not typically awardable in personal injury cases, a million-dollar award is not likely in all certain scenarios.
You can probably tell by now that, because there is so much to know and so many pitfalls that can hurt your chances at success, it is crucial to retain an Accident Lawyer Anchorage to represent you. There are time limits and requirements for even the most basic actions, such as insurance paperwork, medical treatment, obtaining records, gathering evidence, the discovery process, depositions, trial and beyond.
Experienced attorneys will know the minutia needed to prevail. If you do not follow these rules, you may not be able to obtain the maximum compensation you are entitled to.
