Anaheim Car Accident Attorney

California’s licensing requirements and rules of the road are meant to keep our streets safe for automobile occupants, pedestrians, and bicyclists. Unfortunately, even one careless or negligent driving error can have severe consequences. If you or a loved one has been injured in a car accident due to someone else’s negligence, you know that recovering from your resulting injuries and financial losses can be challenging and stressful.

At ALL Trial Lawyers, we have dedicated our careers to helping those who have been injured in accidents caused by someone else. Our Anaheim attorneys know that liable parties, insurance companies, and their defense attorneys are often uncooperative when it comes to personal injury claims, and we can help. Contact our office to learn more about our law firm and how we can help you get the compensation that you deserve.

Our Car Accident Practice

• Our law firm takes a collaborative approach when working on personal injury claims, which means that you will have several legal minds working together to pursue your car accident claim. We provide unmatched legal advocacy to all of our clients in all of our cases.
• Our attorneys understand that recovering from a car accident can be a difficult process, and our goal is to help our clients as much as possible. We handle settlement negotiations, court filings, and other legal matters so that you can focus on your physical healing.
• We know that we can best help our injured clients by providing them with aggressive legal advocacy. Our attorneys will work to get the best results possible by pursuing maximum compensation for you and your family.

What to Do After a Car Accident

After an accident, it is important to seek medical attention and preserve your personal injury claim. If your injuries permit, you should contact law enforcement and wait for them to arrive at the scene so that you can share your account of the accident. Even if you do not believe your injuries and damages are significant, it is wise to make an official police report for your accident.

If you do not require emergency medical care at the scene, you should still make an appointment to be seen by a medical professional after an accident. An early medical evaluation can help discover and diagnose injuries and medical conditions so that you can begin treatment as soon as possible, if necessary.

It is also helpful to take photos of the accident scene and property damage after the accident. These can be used to help prove causation, liability, and the extent of damages sustained. You should exchange insurance information with other drivers and get contact information from any accident witnesses. These details will be useful to your attorney during the investigation phase of your injury claim process.

Car Accident Liability

To pursue a personal injury claim, it is necessary to determine which party or parties were liable for the accident. Car accident liability depends on the cause of the accident and any contributing factors. Sometimes there may be more than one party responsible for the accident, which can complicate the recovery process. Defendants in car accident cases often defend claims by placing some or all of the accident blame on others.

It is a typical car accident defense tactic to argue that the injured claimant was responsible for the accident. However, even if you were partially at fault for your accident, California’s comparative fault law allows you to pursue compensation against the defendant for the defendant’s portion of fault. For example, if the defendant was 95% at fault and you were 5% at fault for the accident, you would be entitled to recover 95% of your accident-related losses from the defendant.

Common causes and contributing factors in car accident cases include the following:

• Distracted driving
• Intoxicated driving
• Dangerous and defective road conditions
• Speed
• Vehicle defects
• Failure to yield
• Following too closely

This is certainly not an exhaustive list of the ways that vehicle accidents occur in and around the Anaheim area. If you have any questions about whether or not you have a viable claim against another driver, please reach out to an attorney at ALL Trial Lawyers for help with your case. We can fully investigate every aspect of what happened in order to determine fault. Often, we will discover that vehicle accidents have more than one contributing factor, and this can complicate the process of determining liability.

Common Car Accident Injuries in Anaheim

Car accidents in Anaheim can cause a range of types of injuries. Thankfully, the vast majority of vehicle accident claims only result in property damage or relatively minor injuries. However, we do need to point out that even minor injuries can lead to major medical bills for Anaheim residents. In fact, just going to the hospital to get checked out to make sure there are no hidden injuries after a crash can lead to thousands of dollars worth of medical expenses.

There are times, though, when vehicle accidents in this city lead to severe injuries for those involved. At ALL Trial Lawyers, our attorneys have extensive experience helping clients who have sustained the following injuries:

• Traumatic brain injuries
• Concussions
• Open head wounds
• Facial fractures or lacerations
• Broken or dislocated bones
• Severe lacerations or puncture wounds
• Crush injuries or amputations
• Spinal cord trauma with paralysis
• Other severe back or neck injury
• Whiplash
• Internal organ damage
• Internal bleeding
• Significant scarring and disfigurement

These traumatic injuries can lead to extensive pain and suffering for victims, but they are not the only type of injury that our attorneys are concerned about. We also know that Anaheim vehicle accident victims can suffer from significant psychological and emotional injuries as a result of a crash. This can include prolonged feelings of stress, anxiety, fear, and depression. Vehicle accidents are also a leading cause of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and we recognize how these injuries can affect victims.

Our goal is to make sure that clients recover total compensation for their losses. This includes coverage of their visible traumatic injuries as well as these unseen emotional and psychological injuries.

Car Accident Injuries and Damages

The value of your personal injury claim depends on the extent of your injuries and damages caused by the accident. Depending on your losses, you may be entitled to recover compensation for economic and non-economic damages. Economic damages are monetary losses that you have sustained due to the accident.

Economic damages in car accident claims include medical expenses and lost wages. If your injuries are long-term or permanent, you may also be entitled to compensation for future monetary losses. For example, if your injuries will require future medical care, you may receive compensation for those future medical expenses. If you are limited in your ability and capacity to work due to your injuries, you may recover compensation for loss of earning capacity.

Noneconomic damages are harder to calculate because there is no fixed monetary amount to recover. Typically, the amount of your noneconomic damages relates to the severity of your injuries so that you will recover more compensation for more serious injuries. Examples of non-economic damages include pain and suffering, loss of enjoyment of life, and emotional distress.

Calculating economic damages in the aftermath of a vehicle accident in Anaheim is relatively straightforward. An injury victim and their attorney will gather up all of their medical bills, receipts, and repair expenses, add them up, and get a total. However, properly calculating non-economic damages is more challenging. In these cases, an attorney may use a “multiplier method,” which means that they will take the total for economic damages and then multiply that by a set number (usually ranging from 1.5 to 5) to reach the total. For example, if a person sustains $100,000 worth of economic damages, an attorney may use a multiplier of “three” to reach a total of $300,000 for non-economic damages. Overall, this would mean that the attorney would request $400,000 in compensation for their client.

Will Insurance Cover all of Your Expenses?

As we mentioned above, most vehicle accident claims in Anaheim will be resolved through settlements with insurance carriers. All drivers in California are required to carry a minimum amount of insurance. In this state, the requirements are as follows:

• Bodily injury liability coverage: $15,000 per person and $30,000 per accident minimum
• Property damage liability coverage: $5,000 minimum

You will notice here that these minimums are not very high at all. $15,000 for an injury claim is almost laughable in some cases. If a person has a suspected traumatic brain injury, that $15,000 worth of medical bills will be eaten up within a day or two after the crash. $5,000 in property damage can occur even in relatively minor vehicle accidents.

Some people in California do carry insurance above these limits, but you cannot count on that. Additionally, California does not require drivers to carry uninsured or underinsured motorist coverage. We strongly recommend that all drivers purchase these additional types of insurance in the event they are struck by an uninsured driver or if their expenses exceed the total amount of insurance available from the at-fault party.

In the event an at-fault driver’s insurance does not cover all of the expenses, it may be possible to file a personal injury lawsuit against the driver in order to recover additional compensation. This does significantly increase the difficulty of an injury case, but it may be necessary, particularly for severe injuries or extensive property damage claims.

How Often do Car Accidents Affect Anaheim Residents?

Data available from the California Office of Traffic Safety shows that there were more than 268,000 total traffic crash injuries across the state during the latest reporting year available. Additionally, there were 3,606 total fatalities as a result of vehicle collisions during that same reporting year. The Office of Traffic Safety does not release data specific to certain areas of the state, such as Anaheim and other cities, though we know that this is a crowded area with plenty of traffic.

Vehicle accidents affect Anaheim residents every single day. Even though the vast majority of crashes that occur only result in minor injuries or property damage, the reality is that there are still many crashes every day that result in significant injuries for Anaheim residents and visitors.

How Our Car Accident Lawyers Can Help

After a car accident, injured claimants are often focused on healing from their injuries. It may be difficult to devote your time and attention to the injury claim process while you and your family are working on your physical and emotional recovery. Our attorneys will take over the majority of the legal burdens while advocating for your full and fair financial recovery. See below for some of the ways that we help our clients who have been injured in car accidents.

• Preserving important evidence
• Preserving your right to file your injury claim
• Gathering important information and evidence, such as police reports and medical records
• Negotiating settlement terms with defendants and insurance companies
• Trial preparation
• Litigating your case in court

What if You Were Partially At-Fault?

We know that many people are concerned they may not be able to recover compensation if they were partially at fault for a crash. However, vehicle accident victims in Anaheim can still recover compensation even if they are partially or mostly responsible for the incident. California operates under a “pure comparative negligence” system. This means that crash victims can recover compensation even if they are up to 99% at fault for the incident.

However, under this type of system, the total amount of compensation a crash victim receives will be reduced based on their percentage of fault for the incident. For example, if a driver sustained $100,000 worth of medical bills and property damage expenses after a vehicle accident, but it is determined that they were 30% responsible for the incident, they would receive $70,000 instead of the full $100,000.

We bring up partial liability for a few reasons. First, if an insurance carrier or at-fault party is trying to pressure you into taking a lower settlement or if they deny a claim because they say you are at fault, there is a good chance they are bluffing to try to get you to drop your claim or take much less money in compensation. You need to speak to an attorney immediately if someone is trying to shift blame towards you for a vehicle accident.

Second, you can fight back. An attorney can get involved on your behalf and conduct a complete investigation into the case in order to properly determine fault and assign liability. If the other parties involved are trying to say that you were 90% responsible for the collision when you were only 50% responsible for the collision, this is a major difference and can significantly shift how much compensation you receive overall. An attorney can work to prove what happened and help obtain maximum compensation on your behalf.

Will You Have to go to Court for Your Claim?

The vast majority of Anaheim vehicle accident claims will not go to court. In fact, most cases will be resolved through settlements with insurance carriers within a month or two after the vehicle accident occurs. However, that is not always the case. If an insurance carrier denies a claim or refuses to offer a fair settlement amount, it may be necessary for an Anaheim car accident victim and their attorney to file a lawsuit against the alleged negligent party.

Even after a personal injury lawsuit is filed in civil court, the chances of going to a trial are still slim. The discovery process will begin after the case is initially filed, and this will involve additional investigations and even negotiations between attorneys from both sides. Most people do want to settle a claim before it goes all the way to trial because trials are expensive and time-consuming. Again, if the other side refuses to offer a fair settlement or still denies the claim altogether, it will be necessary for an injury victim to take their case to trial.

Call Our Anaheim Car Accident Attorneys

Under California law, you are entitled to pursue compensation from all parties that may have caused or contributed to your car accident and resulting injuries. The personal injury attorneys at ALL Trial Lawyers, want to help you get the justice and compensation that you deserve. Contact our office at (866) 811-4255 to schedule a free consultation.