Anaheim Personal Injury Attorney
A serious accident can lead to severe and life-changing injuries. In addition to physical and emotional challenges, an injury accident can result in significant financial expenses for medical bills, lost wages, and other economic damages. If you or a loved one has been injured in an accident caused by someone else’s wrongful conduct, you should not have to handle the consequences alone.
Attorney Christopher Lee provide compassionate and effective legal representation for those who have a personal injury claim against liable parties. Whether your injuries were the result of a car accident, slip and fall, defective product, or any other type of accident caused by someone else, an Anaheim attorney can help you navigate the legal process and pursue the compensation that you deserve.
Our Personal Injury Practice
- Our personal injury practice takes a collaborative approach to legal representation. Multiple attorneys work on each case, providing the enhanced attention and legal advocacy that our clients deserve.
- We take on personal injury cases of every size and type. Our attorneys have the resources and experience necessary to handle even the most complex personal injury claims.
- Our attorneys know that high-dollar recoveries are what justice demands for our injured clients. We never take shortcuts. We would rather take our cases to trial than settle for an amount that does not fully compensate our injured clients.
Recovering Compensation From an Insurance Company
Going through the personal injury claim process can be challenging, especially when you are also coping with and recovering from your accident injuries. Insurance companies are often involved in injury claims, and they work to keep their claims low, even if it means denying or reducing the amount of compensation that you deserve.
However, an experienced legal advocate can make the process less burdensome for you and your family. Our attorneys understand the various tactics and approaches that insurance representatives take in dealing with injury claims. We face insurance companies head-on and aggressively pursue maximum compensation for our clients.
When you are represented by an attorney, you do not have to worry about persistent phone calls from insurance adjusters. We take over all communication with defendants and insurance companies. We also handle settlement negotiations with insurance adjusters so that you can focus on healing after your accident.
Recovering Compensation From an Insurance Company
Evaluating Your Personal Injury Claim and Injuries
We do not collect any upfront attorneys’ fees. Our attorneys provide free consultations and case evaluations. We will meet with you to discuss the facts of your case and the injuries that you sustained. After we review your accident, we will ask some important questions. We will go over the strengths and weaknesses of your case to help evaluate your claim and determine the best legal path to pursue.
The value of your case depends on several factors, including the extent and duration of your injuries. Typically, you will recover more compensation for more severe and long-term injuries. For example, if your injuries impact your ability to work, you will be entitled to compensation for lost wages. If your injuries permanently affect your ability to work, you may also be entitled to compensation for loss of earning capacity.
Additionally, in personal injury cases, you may be awarded compensation for noneconomic damages, such as pain and suffering, disability, and emotional damages. Financial recovery for noneconomic damages also tends to increase for more significant injuries. In general, the greater your injuries, the more compensation you may be entitled to secure.
Types of Personal Injury Cases
- Car accidents
- Commercial vehicle accidents
- Mass transit injuries, including bus, subway, train, and
- trolley accidents
- Motorcycle accidents
- Dangerous and defective product injuries
- Wrongful death claims
- Slip and fall accidents
- Dog attack and bite claims
- Catastrophic injury accidents, including spinal and brain
- injuries
- Nursing home abuse and neglect
- Pedestrian and bicycle accidents
- Assault and battery injuries
Common Injuries We Help Anaheim Clients With
Contingency Fee Representation
We will not add to the financial burden that you may already be facing due to your injuries, medical expenses, lost wages, and other damages. Our attorneys take all cases on a contingency fee basis, which means that you will never pay out of pocket for attorneys’ fees. There are no up-front costs for meeting with attorneys, telephone conferences, case investigation, or document preparation.
When we take on new cases, our attorneys get to work right away. We will begin our investigation and witness interviews, gather medical records and other important documents, and communicate with insurance representatives at no initial cost to you. We do not collect attorneys’ fees until we have succeeded in helping you secure compensation through a settlement agreement or trial award.
Type of Compensation Available for an Anaheim Personal Injury Claim
There may be various types of compensation available to Anaheim personal injury victims. At Christopher Lee Law Firm we strive to recover total compensation on behalf of our clients, including economic damages and non-economic damages. This can involve the recovery of the following:
- All medical bills related to the injury
- Lost income if a victim cannot work while recovering
- General household out-of-pocket expenses
- Property damage expenses
- Pain and suffering damages
- Loss of quality of life damages
- Possible punitive damages against the alleged negligent party
The total amount of compensation available in these situations will vary depending on the facts and circumstances surrounding each particular injury. In general, the more severe the injury, the more likely a significant settlement will be paid to the injury victim.
What if You Were Partially Responsible for the Injury?
The good news is that even those partially responsible for an injury will typically be able to recover compensation for their losses in Anaheim. California operates under what is called a “pure comparative negligence” system. This means that a person can recover compensation even if they are up to 99% at fault for the incident. However, the total amount of compensation awarded to a personal injury victim will be reduced based on their percentage of fault.
For example, suppose an impaired driver strikes a pedestrian crossing through a crosswalk, causing $100,000 worth of medical bills and other expenses. In most scenarios, the impaired driver would be responsible for covering all of this amount. However, what if the injured pedestrian was crossing the crosswalk against a red “Don’t Walk” sign? In other words, the pedestrian crossed precisely when they were not supposed to cross.
In this incident, it would not be out of line for a personal injury jury to assign some liability to the pedestrian. For the purposes of this example, let us suppose that 40% of the blame falls to the injured pedestrian, even though the other driver was impaired. Instead of receiving the full $100,000 in compensation, the pedestrian would receive $60,000 to account for their percentage of the fault.
Statute of Limitations for Filing Your Claim
The statute of limitations for California personal injury cases provides critical deadlines that you must comply with to preserve your right to collect compensation from the responsible parties. If you fail to file your claim within the specified timeframe, you may lose your right to pursue your injury claim. With some exceptions, California injury claimants generally have two years or less to file their personal injury claims.
Certain facts and circumstances can impact filing requirements and deadlines, however. For example, the deadline in your case may depend on the date that the injuries were discovered, the date of death in a fatal injury case, and whether or not your claim is against a government entity. To preserve your right to file a claim, you should contact an attorney as soon as possible to discuss the applicable statute of limitations and filing requirements.
Will Your Anaheim Personal Injury Claim go to Court?
Steps to Take After Sustaining a Personal Injury
There are various steps that individuals can take after they have sustained an injury that could go a long way towards helping them recover the compensation they are entitled to. The steps that we will discuss here should take place both immediately after the injury occurs as well as in the days and weeks that follow the incident.
- Seek medical care. The number one priority after sustaining an injury must be seeking medical care. In some cases, this may include taking an ambulance to the hospital to receive emergency care, or this can include having someone take you directly to the emergency room to receive care. Not only is seeking immediate medical care critical for a person’s well-being, but this also establishes a solid link between the incident and the injuries that occur. Insurance carriers will be looking at this type of link when making settlement decisions.
- Contact authorities. Depending on the type of injury that occurred, various individuals will need to be contacted to be notified about the incident. For example, all vehicle accidents need to be reported to the police right away so that an officer can come to fill out an accident report. Property owners should be notified if an injury occurs on their premises so they can fill out the appropriate reports. No two injury cases are exactly alike, but there is almost always somebody that needs to know about the incident that occurred.
- Gather evidence If it is safe to do so at the scene of an incident, individuals involved should begin gathering as much evidence as possible. This can include taking out a cell phone and taking pictures of everything in sight (causes of the incident, injuries, debris, traffic and weather conditions, and more). Additionally, if there were any eyewitnesses, their names and contact information needs to be gathered immediately.
- Contact an attorney It is crucial to speak to a skilled personal injury lawyer in Anaheim as soon as possible. An attorney can get involved and gather additional evidence that may have been missed or was inaccessible at the time the incident occurred. This can include video surveillance footage from nearby cameras, police reports, and more. An attorney will be able to take over every aspect of the case, including discussions with insurance carriers and filing any potential personal injury lawsuits in civil court.
- Be cautious when speaking to othersIt is critical for injury victims to limit what they say to others involved in the incident, including insurance carriers. In general, it is better to let an attorney handle all communication with other parties involved. Everything an injury victim says can and will be used against them by other parties in an effort to deny an injury claim.
- Do not post on social media. It may be second nature for most people to post on social media when anything major happens in their life, including injuries. However, at-fault parties and insurance carriers will be looking for these posts to see if everything you have said is the actual truth. Anything you post on social media could be construed to work against you when it comes to your claim. It is best to go dark on social media for a little while, especially about anything pertaining to the incident.
- Continue all follow medical up care. It is important for injury victims to continue all follow-up medical care until their doctor says they have reached maximum medical improvement. This will be the time when no further medical care is likely to improve the individual’s condition. If an injury victim fails to continue follow-up medical care, this will be construed as a sign by insurance carriers and other parties involved that the injuries were not as serious as originally claimed, and this could be used to lessen the total settlement amount.
Contact a Anaheim Personal Injury Attorney
Personal injury attorneys at Christopher Lee Law Firm represent clients who have sustained injuries due to someone else’s wrongful conduct in the Anaheim area and throughout southern California. Contact our office at (866) 222-1255 to schedule a free consultation. We have spent decades fighting for our injured clients, and we want to help you and your family get the justice and compensation that you deserve.