How Much Does An Attorney Matter After A West Virginia Car Crash?

Car crash victims often wonder if they really need an attorney. The answer is that hiring an attorney can make a great difference, especially in two key respects:

•      Maximizing your recovery
•      Avoiding the penalties associated with mistakes

The more serious your injury, the more you should understand how a good attorney can help your case.

Maximizing Your Recovery

There are generally three hurdles you need to get over to maximize your recovery after a crash:

•      Liability

The first hurdle is liability. That’s proving fault. You have to show that the other driver did something they shouldn’t have done or failed to do something that they should have done. You’re trying to show that the other driver was negligent, meaning that the driver failed to exercise reasonable care under the circumstances. That’s the first hurdle, and if you don’t get over that one, you never really get to the other two.

Notably, you can be partially at-fault. So long as your percentage of the fault isn’t greater than 50%, the law allows you to recover a portion of your damages.

Of course, the more you are at-fault for the crash, the less you can recover. If you try to resolve the case on your own, the insurance company will likely try to assign you a greater portion of the blame. Even your own insurance company may look for reasons to throw more blame at you, so it helps to have an attorney who has experience refuting those arguments.

•      Calculating Damages

The second hurdle is damages. An attorney can help you build your claim for damages, which in West Virginia may include both economic and noneconomic damages.

Economic damages are those things that have fairly straightforward price tags, but it’s not always straightforward for injury victims to calculate their economic damages. These include the obvious things like past and future medical bills and lost wages. However, they also include things you may not know about, such as loss of services. These are tasks you or another victim did in the past but that you can no longer do because of your injury. These may include mowing the grass, raking leaves, cleaning gutters, washing dishes or doing other chores around the house. If you can no longer do these things,  you can present a claim  for loss of services.

Noneconomic damages include things like pain and suffering and loss of enjoyment of life. At trial in West Virginia, you cannot suggest a specific amount for these damages. However, an experienced attorney can do a great deal to influence a potential award. An attorney can help you decide what evidence is likely to be most effective, which witnesses might help support your case and how to present your evidence in a way that is most compelling.

Naturally, you want to support your case with documentation from your doctor or other experts, but an attorney will understand what other evidence might be allowed, as well as the standards for presenting that evidence.

•      Sources Of Recovery

The third hurdle to maximizing your recovery is identifying all potential sources of recovery. Even when the other driver is 100% to blame, you cannot recover money if there’s no money available. In most cases, the money comes from insurance, and clearing this hurdle starts with identifying all the applicable insurance policies and coverages.

The first thing to look at is the other driver’s insurance policy. In West Virginia, for bodily injury, drivers are required to carry a minimum of $25,000 per person and $50,000 per accident. Those are the minimum limits, and some policies are higher.

However, those minimum amounts don’t cover every injury. Say there are three people injured. The most any one of them could get is $25,000, and the most that insurance policy would pay out for the total accident is $50,000. So, the next thing your attorney might do is look at your insurance policy. If you have underinsured motorist coverage (UIM), your underinsured motorist coverage will be available to cover the difference between your total  damages and what the other driver’s policy covers, up to the limits of your UIM policy. In West Virginia, UIM is optional, but insurance companies are required to offer it. If they don’t make a  proper offer (i.e. “a commercially reasonable offer”) or obtain from you a proper rejection, they may have to pay anyway.

Other insurance policies might also come into play. You might look to your uninsured motorist coverage (UM) if the other driver doesn’t have active coverage. You might also have medical payments coverage that you can use to cover your medical expenses, including deductibles and copays not covered by your health insurance. An attorney can help you identify all the applicable insurance policies, advise you how you can best make use of them and work through the fine print if you need to contest an issue with the insurance company.

Avoiding The Penalties Associated With Mistakes

The second way an attorney can help is to make sure you don’t make any mistakes as you resolve your claim.

One of the biggest mistakes you can make is to resolve your claim before you fully understand your damages and how your injury may impact you down the road. When you settle a claim with the insurance company, the insurance company is going to expect you to sign a release of all future claims related to the incident. If you settle too early and later discover your injuries or damages are greater than you originally understood, you won’t be able to reopen your claim. You only get one bite at the apple. You want to make sure any settlement you agree to is in your best interest now, as well as in the future.

Generally, this means you want to wait until your doctor says you’ve reached maximum medical improvement. At that point, you should know what your injuries are and should be able to anticipate the future effects of those injuries. Or, in other cases, you may not yet have reached maximum medical improvement, but you know your damages are severe enough to reach the limits of all the applicable insurance policies.

Another mistake injury victims often make is to overlook the costs of subrogation. This is the process where your insurance expects you to pay it back after you get your award or settlement. For example, you may use your health insurance to pay for your medical expenses after the crash. Then, when you get your settlement, your insurance is going to claim it’s entitled to repayment.

An attorney can help you plan for any subrogation and can often negotiate with the insurance company to reduce the subrogation claim. This ultimately means you get more money in your pocket to compensate you for your injuries.

Experience Matters

After a crash, the general principles of recovery are relatively simple. However, the details are rarely simple. There are highly involved processes for determining liability, identifying all sources of recovery, gathering evidence, presenting that evidence effectively, deciding when to settle or go to trial and minimizing the costs of subrogation. Very few drivers have experience with these processes, but they are all things a good attorney will know.