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Peoria Personal Injury Overview

Peoria Personal Injury Attorney

What is a Peoria, AZ Personal Injury Attorney, and what can he do for you?

The term "personal injury attorney" is bandied about in regular conversation from time to time. However, the services a personal injury attorney can provide for a resident of the Peoria, Arizona area is not widely understood. This is in part because personal injury lawyers do many things. The injury aspect of a personal injury lawyer's job is focused on helping those who have suffered physical injury. The primary purpose of this is to help citizens receive compensation for injuries they suffer as a result of the negligence of another person or organization.

And people can be injured in many different ways, under a multitude of different circumstances. A Peoria, Arizona personal injury lawyer will frequently help people who have been injured in car accidents. The same personal injury attorney can ably assist clients who are wounded due to a defective product, a dog bite, a slip-and-fall accident, or virtually any other type of injury situation. The Breyer Law Firm has provided this resource center for those injured in Peoria, Arizona in all types of accidents, including:

Peoria Personal Injury Resource Center

Even the best personal injury attorney cannot guarantee that she will secure an award for every injured person who retains her. One of the many misconceptions about personal injury law is that the injured party always has a right to recover expenses and damages after being hurt. In reality, under Arizona personal injury law the only time someone has a right to compensation for an injury they have suffered is when someone else directly or indirectly caused that injury. In addition, the harm that was caused must have been due to negligence or intentional acts on the part of the person who is blamed for causing the injury.

It may seem like finding a top Peoria, AZ personal injury lawyer is not really necessary since it is obvious that when somebody has been hurt, that person is entitled to compensation. In reality, deciding when compensation is warranted is much more complicated. Our analysis and professional experience have shown that there are four major points to consider when deciding whether or not a cash award is a reasonable goal in a personal injury case.

First, the question of whether or not negligence was a factor in the injury is essential. Second, the question of whether or not causation can be proven must be answered. (That is, can it be proven that negligence directly led to the injury?) Third, there is the issue of whether or not any damages at all are justified in the case. If they are, the fourth point is the issue of how much money would be appropriate to award.

The first item that a Peoria personal injury attorney must consider is negligence. This is not just a question as to whether or not a person or organization was negligent and their carelessness led to an injury. The most important question is whether or not enough evidence exists to prove that an involved party was negligent and therefore caused an injury. An adage that legal professionals repeat applies here: "It's not what you know, it's what you can prove." This rings true in almost all areas of law, and it is absolutely crucial in personal injury litigation. The ability to prove that someone else was negligent is must be established before making the argument that an injury victim deserves to receive compensation. This is the stage in a claim where retaining a competent personal injury lawyer is vital. Even when the injured person knows without a doubt that another party was negligent, he may have trouble proving it without the aid of an experienced professional.

The next issue to address is always causation. Once it has been proven that somebody else is negligent, the next question is whether or not it can be proven that the person or corporation's negligence caused injury. On its own, the simple fact that someone acted negligently is not a valid reason to bring a personal injury lawsuit. The irresponsible act must also be proven to have caused the injury. Many personal injury cases fail when the injury suffered cannot be proven to be a direct result of the negligence. A good attorney must gather authoritative evidence to demonstrate that the injury resulted from the negligence of another person. This is critical to any personal injury recovery.

The third issue to deal with is the question of damages. Damages are a rather vague matter, one that is usually not easy to tackle since damages relate to compensation for something money cannot truly fix. Of course, almost every personal injury case revolves around things like medical bills, lost wages, and other out-of-pocket expenses-- actual dollar amounts that can be tallied. But the law also allows compensation for what is popularly referred to as "pain and suffering." Thanks mostly to its depiction in popular culture, the term "pain and suffering" has come to be associated with frivolous lawsuits. The truth of the matter is that money is owed for much more than just pain and suffering. When a negligent person causes an injury, compensation is owed for loss of enjoyment of life, anxiety, frustration, and the inability to perform the normal daily activities that one could prior to the injury.

In other words, the law does not allow someone who is negligent and has greatly impacted someone else's life off the hook when the medical bills are paid. When the injured person is forced to suffer a life-changing situation, they are entitled to money.

The first three aspects discussed here - negligence, causation, damages - are outlined in any law school textbook. Certainly these factors are far more complicated than what has been covered here, and years of training and experience are required before one can truly claim expertise even in those three elements. We believe that summarizing those three points alone does not give an accurate, thorough picture of a typical case. It is our view that there is a fourth element to any personal injury claim. The last aspect - money or, specifically, the amount that fits the injury - is equally as important. The money question relates to whether or not any compensation is available even if all three of the first items have been proven.

For instance, many times the person who causes an injury has absolutely no money. They have no insurance. They have no assets. In other words, a plaintiff could win a $1 million judgment against many defendants, and that judgment may not be worth any more than the paper it's printed on. Thus, it is crucial to find out which insurance policies apply in any particular situation. There have been many cases in which an injured party's litigator has proven the first three elements of a case and not collected a single dollar. Sometimes, the failure to collect is a result of the personal injury lawyer or the injured person's poor or hasty initial investigation to make sure that if the case is proven there is money available.

Inexperienced attorneys or those who attempt to handle personal injury claims on their own often miss the fact that there may be insurance policies available that are not readily apparent. Assets that have not been considered may be available to pay a judgment. There may be defendants who contributed to the harm who should also be held responsible for paying any judgment; these defendants must also be pursued. For reasons like this, before accepting a personal injury case it is significant to make sure that if the injured person wins the case, they can actually receive the compensation they are entitled to.

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Witnessed a hit-and-run traffic accident? You could earn a reward.

Witnessed a hit-and-run
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You could earn a reward.