Have you suffered an injury from a bus wreck? Read this article on important Tampa bus accident tips and call our Tampa Bay injury attorneys.
Bus Accident Case Value
One of the questions that we’re often asked through our website and by telephone calls is how we determine what a bus accident case is worth in Florida. The first thing that you need to do if you’re injured because you’re involved in a bus accident is to seek medical treatment. If you don’t have health insurance to be able to do that, you’re not able to afford it out of pocket, you need to call a lawyer so that that lawyer can help you line up the medical treatment that you need for evaluation of your injuries. There are two components to evaluating what your case is worth. The first one is liability. In other words, are we sure we can prove that another party and not you is at fault for the collision. If liability is strong, then you have to seek medical treatment so we know what the value of your damages are. If you’ve had a prior injury and you exacerbate or make that injury worse, that’s a factor. All of those things are things that need to be told to your doctors and evaluated by your lawyer. Once we know what all of your injuries are and you reach a point in your medical treatment of what we call maximum medical improvement, MMI, then we know that further medical treatment is not going to make you better. You may need future medical treatment. Your doctors work with us so that we know what those damages are. Then we put all of those things together, and based on our 26 years of experience and the information that’s available through the Florida bar and jury verdict reporters about what cases like yours have brought by way of jury verdicts, we’re able to determine a range of value for your case so that when the insurance company makes an offer to you because you decide whether you settle a case or not, you’re informed.
Choosing a Bus Accident Attorney
We handle a number of different kinds of accident cases at Morgenstern & Herd. One that’s unique is a bus accident case. If you’re on a bus in the Tampa Bay area, for example, in Hillsborough County, they call it HART, and most of you are probably familiar with that, the Hillsborough Area Rapid Transport Company. That’s a governmental entity, so there are special nuances that apply to the law in that case. Your attorney’s fees are lower, but you also have a cap on your recoverable damages. In order to select the best attorney to handle your bus accident case if you are riding on a bus and that bus is involved in an accident is to contact an attorney like our attorneys here at Morgenstern & Herd who have handled numerous bus accident cases. Do your research. Look online on the websites, but don’t just trust the lawyers’ websites. Look them up in the Florida Bar. Make sure they have good ratings and ask. You are permitted under the bar rules and when you get a client statement of rights, that statement of rights that the bar requires us to give you in personal injury and bus accident cases tells you that you have the right to ask whatever you want to know about the qualifications of the attorney you’re hiring. Do it, and if you’re not satisfied, seek an attorney who has the qualifications that you feel your case deserves.
Common Mistakes After a Bus Accident
The first thing is you can’t wait to seek treatment. Sometimes you may not feel like you’re injured because you feel stunned and you go home and you don’t do much initially. If you’re involved in a bus accident case, you’re on that bus, you don’t have a seatbelt so there’s no way that you’re fixed in a stationary position. Your body is jostled by the forces that act on the bus itself. You have to seek treatment, either through your primary care physician, through an urgent care center, but to make sure that you know what all of your injuries are, because sure enough, if you don’t seek treatment right away, you want on that, the number one mistake, then you are going to be in a position where the at fault insurance company is going to take the position that you weren’t really injured because you didn’t seek treatment right away. The truth is that once you start moving around and you try to go back to your usual activities, that’s when you start to feel the pain. The first thing that we run into all the time is people don’t get evaluated for their injuries. The second thing and the most important thing is to call an attorney. Let an attorney guide you through the process because navigating the personal injury issues and insurance coverage issues are very involved. Let an attorney guide you through that. The other issue that we find, the other mistake that people make, is talking to the at fault insurance company. Some insurance companies will get the names of the passengers on the bus, call them right away, and get mistakes made in statements that are recorded. Some people say they don’t feel injured right away because you can’t feel your injuries. That mistake will haunt you and may preclude you from getting compensation for your injuries. The other thing that we run into is that people talk to other witnesses and then those statements get repeated to the insurance company. When you’re talking about statements and talking to insurance company, that’s all evidence. That’s testimonies. Those are statements that can be used against you. You need to get legal advice before you do any of that. Sometimes clients call and tell us they were injured in an accident due to somebody else’s fault; either they forgot, they were in a hurry, or some people are just opposed to it still. What I tell those clients is you are able to receive compensation for injuries sustained in that car accident as long as the seat belt would not have prevented them. For example, if you’re struck from the side and you break your arm against the door, you have a valid claim for that injury; however, if by wearing a seat belt you would not have struck your head on the steering wheel, for example, then you are not protected. It’s called the seat belt defense. What would happen is, although we would claim all of the injuries that were caused by the accident, the defendants are allowed to assert as a defense that because you weren’t wearing a seat belt those injuries should be either precluded or diminished because of your failure to wear that device.
After reading these important Tampa bus accident tips if you still have any questions contact our experienced Tampa Bay Bus Accident Attorneys at Morgenstern & Herd today for a free legal consultation and case evaluation.
