Each year, countless individuals show up at urgent care facilities, hospitals, and other medical care centers across Maryland, seeking treatment after getting hurt in personal injury incidents. Others never make it to get help as they lose their lives in their accidents before they can. Situations where it can be shown that the harm a victim suffered is attributable to someone else’s negligence, are when a College Park personal injury lawyer like ours steps in.
At GDH Law, our attorneys advocate for you, whether you’re recovering from your injuries or grieving the loss of your family member. We take care of sorting out liability, tracking down insurance, compiling records necessary to build a strong case, and negotiating with insurance companies. We do this so you can focus on getting better or rebuilding your life after a loved one’s passing. And we want to help you, too. Call or email for a free case consultation.
Types of Cases Do Personal Injury Attorneys Handle
At GDH Law, we handle a wide range of accidents that injure, cause illness, or kill, including:
- Motor vehicle collisions: This category includes car accidents, motorcycle crashes, tractor-trailer crashes, and others, which may be caused by drunk driving, distractions, fatigue, drag racing, and other reckless behaviors, as well as manufacturer negligence
- Premises liability: Incidents like these may include slips and falls, swimming pool drownings, dog bites, negligent security, or any other dangerous property situations.
- Medical malpractice: Included in this medical negligence category are misdiagnosis and delayed diagnosis, birth injury, anesthesia and surgical error, and pharmaceutical mistake cases.
- Product liability: Cases like these center around a design, manufacturing, or distribution defect that makes a consumer good unsafe when used as instructed. Cases like these can be filed after machinery malfunctions on construction sites or if you’ve suffered health impacts after using a hair relaxer, for example.
- Nursing home abuse: This category encompasses physical, emotional, sexual, or financial abuse and neglect that occurs in assisted living facilities.
The cases referenced above comprise only a brief listing of some of the many legal matters that personal injury attorneys like ours handle. Whatever the incident that left you hurt, so long as you believe someone else’s negligent actions resulted in it, contact us so we can determine if you have a valid claim for compensation. We offer case reviews like these completely free of charge.
What Does a Personal Injury Attorney in College Park, MD Do?
There’s a lot that goes into building a case like this whereby an insurer can’t poke holes in a claim or convince a jury to enter a verdict in your favor at trial. That’s why many injury victims opt to work with an attorney — to minimize the chances of making missteps that jeopardize their ability to secure compensation. This is how an attorney reduces the chances of this happening:
We Assess for Negligence and Make Liability Determinations
We often tell prospective clients to bring the accident or incident report, any photographs or videos, witness statements (or contacts for those individuals), and medical records to their initial consultation with our attorneys. We do this because all of this helps us determine whether negligence occurred and, if so, who to pursue for damages.
While assessing for negligence may seem straightforward, that’s often not the case. Negligence is a legal construct whereby certain specific elements must be established to have a successful claim. This explains why this assessment is particularly critical in any case.
We Take Over Communication with Insurers
So many unintended consequences can occur when you talk with an insurance adjuster. Their goal is to trip you up, getting you to admit to having contributed to causing your own accident or to not feeling as bad as you really do because they can use this information to deny your claim or to limit how much in payouts they make.
That’s why it’s enormously helpful to have attorneys like ours serve as gatekeepers between you and adjusters. Since our lawyers have a better sense of how what one says can adversely affect the integrity of a case, having us communicate with insurers means better control over the narrative.
We Compile All Records and Bills
We find that clients who have suffered substantial injuries often have seen a dozen or more different healthcare providers in the immediate aftermath of their accident.
Just a single treatment, like a surgery, can leave a patient with multiple bills from different practitioners, for example, a bill from the hospital or outpatient surgical center, an anesthesiologist, and a pathologist. And, as another example, in seeing an orthopedist for a knee injury, you may have a bill from a radiologist for the X-rays or other imaging studies performed, the doctor, a physical therapist, and the pharmacy (if you were prescribed medications).
We track down all medical bills and records for your providers so we can gain a fuller picture of the extent of your injuries, the costs incurred in treating them already, and any expenses you may have in the future.
We Negotiate Settlements with Insurance Adjusters
After we take time and pull together records and bills, we must craft a demand letter, which paints a more holistic picture of how you were pre-accident, how the incident occurred and caused your injuries, and what your future is going to be like now that you’ve suffered harm (your prognosis).
We must also calculate your existing losses and account for future ones when demanding a set amount of compensation in this letter to an insurer, which generally serves as a tool to open up dialogue about a settlement. Insurance companies are obligated by law to provide timely responses to claims, and so when they do respond, our attorneys negotiate with the aim of securing an award for you.
In terms of the latter, liability isn’t always clear, and even if it is, insurance adjusters are in the business of spending as little money on their employers as possible. These two factors often lead cases not to settle during the pre-litigation process, meaning outside of court through negotiation, as hard as attorneys like ours may try. In these situations, proceeding to trial may be necessary. We’re more than qualified to source and call to the witness stand some of the most competent expert witnesses to put forth the strongest possible case for you in a courtroom if needed.
What To Expect During Your Initial Consultation
Earlier, we referenced all the different documents we ask you to bring along with you if you have them to aid us in assessing negligence and determining liability. The more documentation like this a prospective client brings to this initial case review meeting, the better the chances are that we can provide a definitive answer about whether they have a valid claim.
In other cases, it may be necessary to accumulate additional records before reaching such decisions regarding the viability of a case. And, in some rare instances, making these determinations may only be possible after bringing in crash reconstructionists or medical experts, for example, to give their input.
The goal at the end of this initial consultation or soon thereafter is to be able to advise you whether you meet the necessary requirements to take legal action under Maryland law and ensure you understand the statute of limitations that applies to your case and its potential monetary value.
Contact our office, GDH Law, to discuss your legal matter and your rights. A consultation with a College Park personal injury lawyer is completely free.
