Did you get a serious spinal cord injury in Florida? Check out these 5 things to learn about your spinal cord injury claim, then call us now.
1. Choosing the Best Attorney
With someone who’s been hurt in an accident and has suffered a spinal cord injury, those are very serious cases with serious consequences. When someone asks how to go about getting a lawyer to represent them in a case like that, we tell them they need a lawyer who has been around a while and taken on cases in the personal injury field.
For example, our attorneys have practiced personal injury work from the very beginning. It has been anywhere from 50 to 95% of our practice. Of that, we have handled many spinal cord injury cases. They require experience in the medicine; they require experience in determining liability of whose fault it is and a host of other considerations that you just cannot get with an inexperienced lawyer. The Number One consideration is experience.
2. Case Value
Valuing a spinal cord injury claim is a question we get from many clients. How much is a case worth? These clients are special clients; they’re unique clients. They are dealing with having their life turned upside down if they are paraplegic or quadriplegic learning how to exist and losing sources of income and various other things for the very first time.
Putting a value on those cases is important. It’s complex. It requires someone with experience in knowing what their life not only is at the moment but what it will be down the road, knowing that we will have to put together what is known as a lifecare plan, which is just what it says. It’s a plan to govern your life with medical expenses, life care expenses, and things of that nature.
Valuing a spinal cord injury case takes time, but it’s a very important thing. You need a lawyer who’s got experience like this office has. We have handled these types of cases.
3. Attorney Fees
One of the unique things about personal injury cases and spinal cord cases in particular is that it doesn’t cost you a dime to hire a personal injury lawyer to represent you. We have what is called a contingency fee contract, which means that we get paid if there is a recovery. If there is no recovery, you do not owe a dime for fees. It’s that way to level the playing field with the defense lawyers who are hired by the insurance companies with unlimited resources. This allows you to get on that playing field and be on equal footing with the other side.
Know that you’ll never owe me a penny in fees unless there’s a recovery. Then the fee comes out of the recovery.
4. Available Damages
We often get asked by spinal cord injury clients, “What are the damages that I can recover? What is it that I can get?” Spinal cord injury cases are different from other types of injuries in that by definition, this is a catastrophic injury case. The damages are generally pretty high.
You can recover your medical expenses. You can recover your lost income, your lost wages if you have them. You can also recover what are called intangible damages. Pain and suffering we’ve all heard of, but there are a whole list of others such as inconvenience. Loss of the capacity for the enjoyment of life is one that’s very large for someone who’s had their life turned upside down with a spinal cord injury. Not only that, future losses are recoverable, as well. We talk about things like life care plans which map out your future medical expenses, your other expenses down the road that will be incurred and that you can recover for.
These are all damages which are recoverable. You need an experienced lawyer to know what those damages are and put them together.
5. Case Timeline
Our clients often ask how long it will take when they’ve suffered a spinal cord injury and we’re making a claim. These are complex claims typically that require a lot of work during the course of the lawsuit. We typically have told people in the past 9 to 14 months. With us coming out of COVID, the courthouses have been closed. Cases are stacked up. We were not allowed to set trials in our cases, so they’ve been pending.
New cases are coming in. Plans have been devised to get all of these cases moving now. There is a backlog. You can expect delays in excess of two years if a case goes to trial easily on a spinal cord injury case.
Have you or a loved one had a serious spinal cord injury and have questions about these 5 things to learn about your spinal cord injury claim? Contact an experienced Nassau County Spinal Cord Injury Lawyer at Paul Boone Law today for a free consultation and case evaluation.
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