What Personal Injury Lawyers Do in Car Accident Injury Cases

What Texas Accident and Injury Lawyers Do (What We Do): "What do personal injury lawyers do?" is a common inquiry we get from clients. Overly simplified answer: We handle your accident and injury claim. Which leads to the next question, "What does that mean?" Your accident attorneys in Dallas with the Law Office of Doug Goyen represents people needing help dealing with their accident and injury and/or loss. We are a personal injury law firm. So when you ask, "what does an accident and injury lawyer do?", the first answer is that we represent those who are injured due to negligence or other wrongful acts. Your accident and injury lawyer specializes in helping individuals and families who have been injured or had someone else in their family suffer an injury or death due to negligence or intentional acts.

What Dallas, Texas accident and injury lawyers do: The accident and injury, or personal injury lawyer working with your case will deal with the insurance company or risk management department in order to ensure that your claim is presented properly, and so you are taken seriously when they evaluate your claim for settlement purposes.

The personal injury lawyer on your case will ask that you stop talking to any insurance company regarding your claim until we can discuss what you can and cannot talk to the insurance personnel about. Often, when you are talking to people who have positions "adverse" to yours, they listen for and "hear" what they want to hear. This means that they will misconstrue what you tell them in a light more favorable to what they wanted you to say, rather than what you actually did say. What an insurance company "wants" you to say is something that gives them a reason to not pay you at all, or to reduce the amount they owe on your full claim.

What else does a Texas accident and injury or personal injury lawyer do?: You need to have your lawyer deal with the insurance company or at least be on the phone with you, so the insurance company personnel does not twist what you tell them into something that you did not say.

We will evaluate the facts of your case, and speak honestly to you about your strengths and any weaknesses you may have with your case. This is so you will be able to make an educated decision regarding the next steps to be taken in your case.

We will determine from the facts of the case what insurance coverages may or may not apply. The accident and injury or personal injury attorney in Dallas on your case will then notify each insurance company that may have coverage to ensure you trigger coverage and can recover any amounts owed on the claim. We will keep in contact with you, and ask that you keep in contact with us in case you move, change phones, or have a change in your condition.

When your case is ready to be settled we will evaluate your claim and review this evaluation with you. We will then submit a settlement proposal to the correct entity or entities to ensure you claim receives proper compensation.

If a lawsuit is needed, we will evaluate your case for the purpose of litigation, to let you know the costs involved, our evaluation of your likelihood of success, and what evidence we will use to prove each and every element of your case. Each case is different, and each case has different factors to take into consideration for settlement purposes. When you ask "What does a Dallas personal injury attorney do?", the answer will depend on the case. To successfully pursue a case, different actions may need to be taken, depending on the facts of that particular case.

Types of Cases We Take:

Examples of types of Texas accident and injury cases we pursue include and cases where someone has been harmed in some way by a car wreck, an unsafe condition, criminal behavior, breaking regulations, or unsafe behavior.

Typically this will include a people who disregard traffic regulations and rules. It can also include a person's job or work breaking the law or a well known safety rule which puts their employee or others in harms way; corporations or companies who break regulations, laws, and do not follow rules which leads to harm; commercial trucks and 18 wheelers committing crimes and traffic violations; these and various other high risk and illegal behavior which usually boils down to someone breaking a law or a well known safety rule that ends up causing death or injury to an unsuspecting person or a person who did not deserve to be placed in the situation they ended up in.

Courts, insurance companies, and big business tend to label this as negligence, or torts. Often, its more than that - depending on the level of knowledge of the wrongdoer. Often the behavior can so disregard the safety of others that it is actually criminal behavior. Too many times the objective of the insurance company is to hide their insureds behavior, negligence, and crimes in the dark (to avoid having to pay). Its my objective to bring the actions that led to the injury into the light, for all to see, and to send a message to the community that this type behavior is not tolerated where families (parents, children, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, grandparents, grandchildren) are put in dangers where they live, work, and travel through.

We represent people who the insurance companies like to say have been involved in "automobile accidents, truck accidents, motorcycle accidents, auto accident with a pedestrian, traffic accident with a bicycle, negligent slip and falls, dangerous and well known dog bite incidents, and other premises liability incidents". Insurance companies have learned to twist the meaning of these words "accident" and "incident" to attempt to give them innocent connotations - this is done to minimize the bad behavior involved. They have become expert marketers in attempting to convince courts, legislators, and jurors that "accidents" are not the fault of anyone, and therefor nobody should have to take responsibility for those actions (especially when there is an accident and injury involved).

Insurers, big business, and others who wish to avoid responsibility for bad behavior which results in harm try to convince others that since the result (death, personal injury, and harm) was not intended, then nobody should have to pay anybody for anything that was a result; including them wishing to avoid responsibility for death, hospital bills, emergency care, surgery, medical bills, therapy, care from a chiropractor, visits to your general practitioner, ambulance rides, lost income, lost earning capacity for those who are self employed, property damage to the vehicles involved, towing, rental bills, diminished value of the auto or vehicle, or anything else that was a result of their "choice" to break a law, regulation, or rule that caused harm and personal injury to others.

In reality though, the "accident injury" is usually due to people deciding to speed, deciding to talk on their cellphone, deciding to drink and drive, deciding to turn without looking to ensure the way is clear, and a whole host of other "actions" that they take to actually cause the collision.

Someone "chooses" to talk on their cellphone and drive. Someone "chooses" to not pay attention to their driving. Someone "chooses" to try and beat the red light. Someone "chooses" to allow a small child to play near their pit bull that just had puppies. Someone "chooses" to leave their gate open or their fence in such bad condition that their animal can get loose and cause an accident and injury to others. Someone "chooses" to not follow safety regulations, when they knew the regulations were meant to keep people safe. Someone "chooses" to speed, "chooses" to not get enough sleep before operating a several ton vehicle, "chooses" to mess with their radio while in heavy traffic. Injury and death cases most often ultimately boil down to someone making a choice. That choice is to break a law, break a safety regulation, or choice to engage in behavior that they know can or will eventually kill or hurt someone but they play Russian Roulette with everyone else in the community so they can save a dollar, save some of their precious time, or just act out aggressively towards others due to some issue they are having.

By Doug Goyen, douggoyen@goyenlaw.com