If you must file a personal injury lawsuit, then presumably, someone injured you or made you sick. Maybe a company did it, or perhaps you blame a single person. You might also file a personal injury lawsuit for a wrongful death if you believe you can hold a company or person responsible when a loved one dies.
Car accidents often bring about personal injury lawsuits. About 95% of car wreck claims never make it to trial, though. You’ll see similar stats with many forms of such lawsuits, such as premises liability claims, medical malpractice, dog bite lawsuits, etc. Often, the defendant settles or at least extends a settlement offer on their lawyer’s advice.
If you decide you should file a personal injury lawsuit, you want to make sure you get as much money out of it as you can. It’s not for the sake of greed. Often, it’s because you have medical bills, you’ve lost wages, or you want compensation for the pain and suffering you’ve endured.
Let’s talk about how to make sure you get as much cash as possible for your personal injury lawsuit.
Hire the Right Lawyer
Any time you need a lawyer, not just in the personal injury realm but for any reason, you need to make sure you hire the right one. You will notice if you look at the legal profession that you can get a lawyer who knows about the most obscure matters. As long as their expertise aligns with what you need, their services should satisfy you.
That’s the case with personal injury lawsuits. The right lawyer will know this legal niche from every angle. As you work with them to get your case ready, you should notice they project absolute authority. They should have an answer ready for every one of your questions.
If you’re seeing that, you can feel confident. If you notice the lawyer who you hired doesn’t seem fully invested in the process of preparing your case or they’re hesitant about what to do next, that’s probably a bad sign. You may need to part ways with them and go with someone else in that situation.
Collect as Much Evidence as You Can
Your lawyer should work with you to collect as much evidence as possible after you’ve notified the defendant you’re suing them. If you want to get a reasonable or even a generous settlement offer, then you should have a pile of physical evidence ready to show the jury.
You might have a medical report that indicates your injury extent following something the defendant did. If the defendant made you ill through some action or inaction, the medical report can prove that.
If you can get a police report that proves what you say happened, you can use that as well. The more of this sort of physical evidence you and your lawyer can collect, the more likely the defendant will want to settle. If they’re stubborn and they won’t do it, you can use it at trial to convince a jury.
Find Eyewitnesses
You and your lawyer should also work together before the trial to track down some eyewitnesses that can help your case, if any exist. If you have something going like a premises liability lawsuit, then maybe someone saw your injury when it occurred.
For example, if you slipped and fell on a wet patch in a grocery store that didn’t have adequate signage up, someone who saw that can get you some sympathy with the jury if they describe the scene and the pain that they saw you in. If you hurt yourself while on the job, and you’re suing the company for which you work because they allowed a dangerous condition to develop, you might have a coworker testify who saw the sequence of events that injured you.
Use Expert Witnesses
If you can’t find any witnesses who saw the accident or incident that injured you, then maybe you can use some expert witnesses instead. These individuals usually have expertise in a particular area. Your lawyer can point you in the right direction if they have used such a person before.
Maybe you’re suing a doctor who operated on the wrong body part or gave you the wrong medication after a misdiagnosis. If so, your lawyer can get someone on the stand who knows the medical profession.
They can testify that the doctor who hurt you didn’t follow standard procedures or exhibited negligence. That kind of testimony can absolutely help your cause. It might either force the defendant to give you a settlement offer, or else to increase the one that they already had on the table.
Understand How Much Cases Like Yours Usually Get
You can do one more thing to make sure that you get as much money as possible for your personal injury case. You can talk to your lawyer beforehand about how much cash such a case usually brings.
If they have handled cases like yours before, your lawyer should have this information. They can cite precedent. While every case has its own details, many times, you can find similar situations that worked their way through the court system.
When you look at them, you can see how they ended up. You can probably see the dollar amount that the plaintiff got. You can try to get a similar amount.
If you do all of these things, you should either get a settlement offer that works for you, or else you can get a jury’s verdict in your favor. If it’s the latter, you might walk away with even more money than if you and the defendant settled.
Remember that you won’t keep the whole amount you get, though. You must still pay your lawyer for what they did on your behalf. Once you pay them their contingency fee, you can use the rest of the money to get your life back on track.
