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People tend to disregard car accidents as common and forgettable. The average person might be in multiple minor car accidents throughout their lifetime. However, car accidents are not only very dangerous but also very expensive. Even a minor accident could put a great financial strain on drivers and their families.
Getting your expenses covered after a car accident is challenging, even at the best of times. Indiana follows a fault-based insurance system, meaning you must file a claim with the other driver’s insurance and prove they were to blame. If no settlement can be reached, a personal injury lawsuit may be necessary. In either scenario, the process of getting compensation can be long and very stressful.
Depending on your circumstances, it might be very difficult to get compensation for your injuries after a car accident. Our Indiana car accident attorneys can help you fight for the compensation you deserve. The staff at Wruck Paupore are prepared to review your case and advocate on your behalf. Call us at (765) 885-6269 to set up a free legal consultation.
Immediately after a car accident, your first step should be calling for help. If you have a cell phone, you can call 911 and have the police and emergency medical personnel dispatched to your accident scene. Even if you do not feel injured, you should be checked out by a doctor as many injuries could be internal and invisible from the outside.
When the police investigate a crash scene, the people involved are typically required to stay at the scene until the police arrive. However, emergency medical situations allow for injured drivers and passengers to leave the scene to get treatment. The police should speak to all parties involved and create a police report regarding the accident.
Once the accident scene has been cleared and you have gotten any necessary medical treatment, you can begin thinking about how to get compensation. Because Indiana is a fault-based insurance state, you must file a claim with the other driver’s insurance. However, the other driver’s insurance will only pay you if you demonstrate that the other driver is responsible for the accident. The insurance company may reduce your payment or deny your claim if they believe you are partially or totally responsible for the accident.
If you and the other driver’s insurance company cannot reach a settlement, you can file a personal injury lawsuit against the driver to get compensation. Our Indiana car accident attorneys have significant experience with personal injury lawsuits and can help you get your injuries and damages paid for.
The accident report drafted by the police after your accident is extremely important, and you should request a copy as soon as possible. The accident report, sometimes called a crash or collision report, can be obtained from the police department investigating your accident. Requesting an accident report requires knowing which police department responded to the crash and filed the report.
If you are not sure which police department has your accident report, our Indiana car accident lawyers can help you figure that out. In most cases, the location of your accident will help us figure out which department oversees your accident. Oftentimes, the local police department of the town or city in which your accident occurred will have your accident report. However, if your accident happened on a state highway or similar location, your crash may be under the jurisdiction of the Indiana State Police.
Many police departments, including the Indiana State Police, upload accident reports online and make them available through digital portals. Our Indiana car accident lawyers can help you find the appropriate digital portal to make your request for an accident report.
Each car accident is different, as are the victims. Therefore, there are several different types of harms that a forceful collision could cause. Below are just a few of the most common types of injury that our Indiana car accident attorneys encounter when advocating for clients like you.
You may be familiar with TBIs like concussions through their frequency in professional sports like football. However, you may not know that it does not take a direct blow to the head to sustain a TBI. Any time the human body sustains a significantly forceful impact, the brain can collide with the inside of the skull. This can cause swelling or bleeding, leading to changes in brain function. If you are experiencing any of the common symptoms of a TBI, such as lightheadedness, nausea, slurred speech, or sensitivity to light, you should seek immediate medical treatment.
The spine is one of the most vital and delicate regions of the human body. When car accident victims suffer injuries to their spine, they must take special care to heal these injuries properly to avoid any long-term or permanent deficits in function, particularly to their nervous system. This may require extended rehabilitation periods that can prevent the victim from meeting their job requirements.
The human body is not built to sustain the impact of a car accident. The force of the accident, as well as the safety features onboard the vehicle like airbags and seat belts, could cause fractures in the face, arms, hands, wrists, ribs, collarbone, and legs on impact, even if these features are functioning correctly. The consequences of the accident could be even worse if these features malfunction, so discuss whether you may have a case against the auto manufacturer for a defective safety feature with your Indiana car accident lawyer.
You may have heard about whiplash in the context of common car accident injuries. Whiplash is a real, harmful condition caused by the straining or tearing of the neck and upper back muscles. People who sustain whiplash in a car accident often experience difficulty completing even the most basic daily tasks. While some cases of whiplash may resolve on their own, some require substantial courses of physical therapy. This necessary rehabilitation comes at both a financial and time cost and can be very difficult on the patient.
Any car accident, even one where injuries are relatively minor, can be very expensive. With the rising cost of medical care combined with the costs of repairing or replacing a damaged vehicle, many people find themselves unable to financially cover their accident. The costs associated with your accident will depend on what kind of damages you claim.
Medical bills must always be included in your damages calculations. While many people can cover most of their medical treatments with their own health insurance, there are still steep out-of-pocket expenses. For those who do not have any health insurance, paying for medical treatments can be impossible. A single surgery for injuries sustained in a car accident could cost thousands of dollars. Not only that, but many treatments require multiple sessions with your doctor. Treatments like physical therapy often last for weeks or even months, and each session costs money.
When negotiating with an insurance company or arguing for compensation in court, you need to include the cost of your car in your damages. Your car might have only suffered minor damage, or the damage could be so significant as to render the car unusable. Vehicle repairs or replacing a vehicle can be expensive, and you should not have to bear this burden on your own.
When people are hurt in a car accident, returning to work is often difficult. Most people take a few days or even longer immediately after an accident before they try to return to work. In more serious accidents, an injured driver or passenger may be unable to work for the foreseeable future. Some people are never able to return to work. Losing your income is incredibly serious because you are left with no way to pay for your recovery or daily living expenses. Our Indiana car accident attorneys can help you get compensation for the income you lost.
Once a police report is filed and the other driver reports the accident to their insurance provider, the insurance company will frequently reach out to the other driver or passengers who were injured in the accident. This is not a courtesy call or an effort to help out. Instead, the insurance company is acting based on a carefully calculated strategy that could ultimately limit your potential recovery.
One of the first steps in this strategy is asking the victim about the accident and their experience. Insurance representatives, also known as claims adjusters, do this to try to induce the victim to make statements that are against their own interests. The insurance company can use these statements in court to make any number of arguments. If you say that you are “sorry” about the accident, the insurance company could claim that you were admitting fault. If you say that you are “doing okay,” they could try to say that you do not feel that your injuries are too serious.
Instead of asking you for your account, the claims adjuster could recount a version of the events and then ask you to confirm them. Often, the story that the claims adjuster provides is subtly altered to reduce the effectiveness of your claim. Never confirm anything that the insurance company provides you.
In some cases, the claims adjuster could offer you a settlement, even in your first conversation with them. Settlement offers can be a useful way to guarantee compensation for the victim and avoid a drawn-out court process. However, the first settlement offer an accident victim receives is rarely fair or reasonable compared to what they might receive in court or after skilled negotiation efforts. You are not obligated to accept any settlement offer, and you can negotiate, counter, and agree to a settlement at any point up until (and even after) a jury verdict is reached if your case goes to trial.
There are a lot of dangers for car accident victims when communicating with insurance representatives. Therefore, the best way to avoid these pitfalls is to have your Indiana car accident attorney do the talking on your behalf. This alternative path relieves you of the stress and anxiety of dealing with insurance representatives while worrying about any statement you might make.
Like every other state in the country, Indiana has its own statutory time limit for how long any type of plaintiff has to formally file their lawsuit in court. For car accident injury victims, this time limit is two years from the date on which the accident occurred. Failure to file within this time limit, also known as the statute of limitations, is a complete bar to recovery, meaning that you will not be able to win anything in court if you file too late.
Preparing a lawsuit consists of many steps, including identifying the defendant and estimating damages. You do not want to have this process rushed. Evidence may dry up or be harder to obtain over time. Naturally, the earlier you file your lawsuit, the sooner you will see the compensation you deserve, whether through settlement or court order. Therefore, we urge you to reach out to your Indiana car accident lawyer about your claim well before the two-year deadline.
After a car accident, you might need help finding a way to cover all your expenses. Our Indiana car accident lawyers can help you get financial compensation for your accident. Our team at Wruck Paupore can set up a free legal consultation to discuss your circumstances. Call us right away at (765) 885-6269.
Don is a founding partner and one of the nation’s top-ranked personal injury litigators. He is a member of the Multi-million Dollar Advocates Forum, which includes less than 1% of the nation’s trial lawyers, and awarded the highest ranking given by Martindale Hubbel and AVVO.
More importantly, Don understands representing personal injury victims is about more than recovering the best settlement: it’s about helping clients get back on their feet and supporting them in every aspect of their recovery.
In nearly all cases, our clients seek compensation from the wrongdoer’s insurance company. Before forming Wruck Paupore, Jason worked for a prominent law firm representing some of the world’s largest insurers. This experience gives Jason a deep understanding of the insurance industry and the strategies it uses to pay injury victims as little as possible.
Jason -- and our entire team -- put this inside knowledge to work to force insurance companies to pay what is actually owed. Often, we use the insurance company’s own tactics against them as we fight for the full compensation our client deserves.
For more than four decades, Keith has been fighting for injury victims. During that time, he’s watched the insurance industry change, with insurers now more interested in protecting their stock price than treating injury victims fairly.
Since the beginning, Keith has put people first. From his childhood in Gary, Indiana during the 1960’s and working his way through law school, Keith has risen to become one of the Midwest’s most respected trial lawyers. He has never forgotten that being a lawyer is about helping people -- and seeing injury victims through struggles in a way that could change their lives forever.
Over the decades, Keith, Don and Jason have fought relentlessly for clients, even when other lawyers have said the case was impossible to win.
Contact Us:
Wruck Paupore P.C.
Injury Lawyers
275 Joliet St. Suite #250
Dyer, IN 46311
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