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Mesa Personal Injury 101

Mesa Personal Injury Attorney

What is a Mesa personal injury attorney?

A Mesa personal injury attorney is a lawyer who provides legal representation to people who claim to have been injured - either physically or psychologically - as a result of the negligence or wrongdoing of another person or entity.

The Mesa Personal injury lawyers at Breyer Law Offices have experience dealing with many different varieties of personal injury claims, including, but not limited to:

Mesa Personal Injury Resource Center

What can a Mesa personal injury attorney do for you?

The overall goal of a personal injury attorney is to help those who have been injured receive compensation for their injuries. There are a variety of types of injuries that personal injury attorneys deal with. These include injuries resulting from car accidents, dog bites, defective products, slip and fall accidents, and on the job accidents.

That being said, not everyone that is injured in an accident has the right to recover damages as a result of their injury. Under Arizona law, the only time someone can receive compensation for their injuries is when the injury is caused by the negligence or intentional acts of another party. Therefore, even the very best personal injury lawyer can't always help someone whose been injured, particularly if there was no negligence involved.

Why should you hire a Mesa personal injury attorney?

Your case may seem cut and dry at first, especially if you have indeed been injured by the negligence of another person. You may think your case is a "slam dunk." But the reality of the situation is far more complicated than that. In fact, every personal injury case has four different elements, each of which requires years of training and experience on the part of a personal injury attorney. They are:

Negligence
Causation
Damages
Money

Let's examine each element further.

Negligence in a Personal Injury Lawsuit.

The first element of any personal injury case is whether or not there is negligence involved. This is more than just being able to say that someone acted in a negligent or reckless manner and caused the injury. You have to be able to prove it with hard evidence. As the old legal saying goes, "it's not what you know, it's what you can prove." This is where an experienced personal injury attorney becomes vital to the case. A skilled attorney knows the right questions to ask and has the resources available, such as investigators, to help gather critical evidence. Without solid evidence proving negligence, there's really no way for you to receive compensation for your injuries.

Causation in a Personal Injury Lawsuit.

The second element of a personal injury case is causation. Once you've proven that a person or entity acted in a negligent manner, you must then be able to prove that their reckless behavior resulted in your injury. Just because someone was negligent doesn't mean you can necessarily draw a correlation between their behavior and your injury. This is the point of the case that can be hardest to prove and where many personal injury cases fail. But an experienced Mesa personal injury lawyer knows how to best gather the evidence that will be vital in proving causation.

Damages in a Personal Injury Lawsuit.

The third element of a personal injury case is damages, which is a general issue. Damages refers to compensation for things like pain and suffering. While money can help with lost wages, medical bills, and other out-of-pocket expenses, damages are meant to deal with the more abstract results of an accident that money cannot fix. Therefore things like pain and suffering must be translated into fixed dollar amounts and compensation is owed for things like loss of companionship, loss of enjoyment of life, anxiety, and inability to do normal daily activities that could be performed prior to the injury.

In other words, the law does not allow for someone who caused your injury to simply just pay for medical bills and walk away. If your injury has changed your life for the worse, then the person responsible must pay.

However, the amount that you can receive in damages is up for great debate in each Mesa personal injury suit. Even if everyone agrees that the defendant was negligent and that their negligence resulted in your injury, the amount of damages that should be awarded varies depending on whom you ask. For this reason, it's important that you hire a top Mesa Arizona personal injury attorney who can best explain to a judge and jury the negative impact that your injury has had on your life. A top attorney is also more likely to be able to come up with a fair amount and to convince a jury, a judge, an insurance company, or a corporation (depending on who is making the decision) that that's the amount that should be awarded.

Money in a Personal Injury Lawsuit.

While you'll see the first three elements - negligence, causation, and damages - discussed in any law school textbook, there is a final and fourth element that is often missed. This element revolves around money and whether or not there is any compensation available even if the first three elements of your personal injury case are successfully proven.

Many people injured in personal injury cases don't even think about the possibility that the person who caused their accident has absolutely no money, no insurance, and no assets. In fact, a jury may award you $1 million dollars for your injuries, but the judgment isn't worth more than the paper it's printed on. Sometimes this failure to collect compensation is due to the lack of experience of a personal injury lawyer to make sure that if the case is proven, there is money to be paid, or the fact that an injured person tried to handle the claim on their own.

But experienced Mesa personal injury lawyers, like those at Breyer Law Offices, know how to find insurance policies and other assets that may not be readily apparent to an untrained eye. There may also be other parties who played a part in or contributed in some way to the accident that resulted in your injury. As experienced Mesa injury attorneys, we know how to look for these policies, assets, and responsible parties at the very beginning of the case to make sure that if the case if proven, you can collect the compensation you deserve.

To schedule a free, no obligation consultation to discuss your case, please contact our offices at 480-753-4534.