Fremont Car Accident Lawyer

When a driver takes to the road, they have a moral and legal responsibility to drive safely and follow all local traffic laws, and when they fail to do this, they can easily cause a serious accident. Car accidents can be terrifying, and if a person is injured, they could end up facing astronomical medical expenses and a lifetime of mental trauma. Following a car accident, you may be able to receive compensation with the help of a Fremont car accident lawyer.

Winning an auto accident case will require your lawyer to prove that the other driver was negligent in some manner. Continue reading the following information to learn about the basics of car accident law and contact an experienced injury lawyer for assistance in your claim.

Rights and Responsibilities of Car Wreck Victims

Any time someone sustains an injury serious enough to require professional medical care as a direct result of someone else’s misconduct, the injured person has a right to demand compensation from the person who harmed them to make up for all the losses they have experienced and will experience due to their injury. If you are in a position to pursue this kind of legal action, you also have a right to retain legal representation from a Fremont auto collision attorney who will help you build the strongest possible claim while also complying with legal rules and restrictions.

Unlike with criminal trials, you will not be provided with an attorney free of charge for a civil case if you cannot afford one. Furthermore, there are also some responsibilities you have as a person involved specifically in an auto accident that you will need to follow before trying to file suit—not just to protect your chances of getting paid for your crash-related injuries and damages but also to avoid having criminal charges filed against you.

Under Ohio state law, everyone involved in a traffic accident resulting in significant property damage or physical injury to any person must do all the following before leaving the crash scene:

  • Move their vehicle out of the flow of traffic if possible
  • Make sure everyone else involved is okay, and call 911 for emergency medical services if someone has sustained a serious injury
  • Contact local police and provide a statement to them once they arrive and
  • Provide personal contact and insurance information to everyone else involved in the incident

Anyone who fails to do any of these things after a wreck may face criminal charges for “hit and run,” and they may have a great deal more trouble filing suit against another person for causing the wreck, which they illegally fled the scene of.

What Makes for a Strong Car Crash Claim?

Of course, if you want to maximize your chances of getting fair financial recovery for car crash injuries and losses, making sure you do not get a hit and run charge is just the bare minimum. While you should always prioritize your own physical well-being and go straight to the emergency room if a wreck leaves you with a life-threatening injury, it can be helpful to stay at the scene a bit longer than you are required to do a few things that could strengthen your future lawsuit or settlement demand.

If possible, you should take photos with your phone camera—or whatever else is handy—of the area where the accident happened, traffic signs and obstacles nearby that might have caused the wreck, and damage sustained by all involved vehicles. Later, these pictures might be key to establishing how the crash occurred and who was specifically at fault for it.

Along similar lines, you should try to get contact information from nearby witnesses, make note of any surveillance or dashboard cameras that might have captured the wreck as it happened, and get some information from responding police officers about what they are planning to write in their accident report and where you can get a copy of that report once it is filed. If you need emergency treatment and cannot do these things at the scene, though, a Fremont car accident attorney can help track down the information you will need to build a strong claim at a later date once your physical condition is stable.

Understanding The Law Of Negligence

Under most circumstances, Fremont car accident claims are governed by the law of negligence. This law essentially states that drivers have an obligation to take common sense measures to ensure the safety of others on the road. When a driver fails to honor this obligation, or behaves in a careless manner, they are unknowingly putting the lives of others in danger.

When a person behaves in a negligent manner and proceeds to cause an accident, they can be held liable for the accident in court. Being held liable will usually result in having to compensate the injured party financially.

Factors Considered In Court

In court, a Fremont car accident lawyer will be tasked with proving the defendant engaged in negligent actions. Even if the carelessness of a person clearly resulted in an accident, the court will still expect the lawyer of the plaintiff to make a case. To do this, the lawyer of the plaintiff may strive to prove that the defendant:

  • Operated a vehicle while intoxicated or under the influence of drugs
  • Did not signal prior to turning
  • Failed to adhere to traffic laws
  • Drove dangerously or above the posted speed limit
  • Did not take the weather conditions into consideration

In addition to the factors above, a lawyer may introduce eyewitness testimony, police reports, and photographs of the accident during the trial.

Who Else Besides a Driver Could Be Liable for an Auto Accident?

While it is true that the vast majority of car accidents happen specifically because of negligence by one or more of the drivers directly involved, an individual driver is not necessarily the only person who could be held civilly liable for injuries and damages stemming from a wreck. For example, if someone’s brakes fail without warning and they rear-end another driver on the highway as a result, civil fault for the incident might lie partially or even primarily with a mechanic who failed to identify or properly fix those brakes during a service stop or vehicle inspection.

Alternatively, if that same brake failure happened mainly because of a serious flaw in the design or manufacturing of the brakes or the vehicle as a whole, civil fault might lie mainly with the manufacturer that made and sold that “defective” car to you. However, this type of case falls under “product liability” law rather than standard “personal injury” law, and there are a few key differences in how these two kinds of cases work that you will likely want a skilled legal professional’s help with untangling.

Finally, there are certain scenarios under which the company that a negligent driver works for may be liable for the misconduct of their employee under a legal theory called respondeat superior. This typically only comes up if the person at fault for a wreck was driving a company-owned car and performing a work-related task at the time of the accident, but if it applies to your scenario, it can be a way to increase the total amount of compensation you have access to following a successful case result.

Common Car Crash Injuries

Injuries sustained during car accidents can be severe, and in many cases, life-altering. Fortunately for injured individuals, a Fremont car accident lawyer may be able to help them obtain financial compensation after an accident.

In general, the amount of compensation a person receives will be directly related to the extent of their injuries, and those with more serious injuries will usually receive more compensation. After a car crash, it is not uncommon for victims to sustain the following injuries:

  • Broken or fractured bones
  • Cuts, bruises, or lacerations
  • Head and neck trauma
  • Nerve damage
  • Emotional scars
  • Paralysis
  • Burns

If a person sustains a permanent injury, such as brain trauma or spinal cord damage, they will more than likely need medical care for the rest of their life. This type of care can be extraordinarily expensive, and it is unfair that the victim should be required to pay for it alone.

Recovering for All Available Damages

Ohio follows what is known as a “fault” system when it comes to car accident claims, which basically just means that there are no legal restrictions on your right to file a lawsuit over a wreck without first seeking recovery through insurance. In “no-fault” states, drivers are usually required by law to buy “personal injury protection” (PIP) insurance coverage, and they are usually barred from suing over a wreck until—and sometimes even after—they have exhausted the benefits provided by their policy. You can still get this kind of coverage in Ohio if you want, but you are only required by law to get “liability insurance” that covers injuries and losses suffered by other people in a wreck.

In any event, a comprehensive lawsuit or settlement demand after a Fremont car wreck can incorporate both “economic” and “non-economic” forms of harm. In other words, you can recover both for “damages” with objective financial values that can be proven with evidence like bills and receipts and for damages with subjective financial values that you will have to define based on your own unique experiences as well as what amounts of money courts have awarded for similar damages in the past.

Specific losses that often factor into car accident cases include:

  • All expenses related to reasonably necessary medical care, including for things like physical therapy, medications, assistive equipment like wheelchairs, and travel to and from doctors’ appointments
  • Lost work income and benefits or costs of job retraining services
  • Vehicle damage and repairs not already covered by insurance, plus any other personal property damage from the wreck
  • Physical pain and suffering
  • Emotional trauma and distress
  • Lost overall quality and/or enjoyment of life

A qualified car accident lawyer in Fremont can help you identify what damages you will need to seek reimbursement for and assist you with proactively demanding the money you deserve.

What Determines the Financial Value of a Car Crash Case?

If you look solely at the numbers, you would be forgiven for thinking that the main factor in determining how much money a car accident claim is worth in Ohio is how “bad” the wreck was. While it is true that more severe car crash injuries tend to produce more valuable personal injury claims, this is not because of any subjective decision about how severe those injuries are. Instead, it is based on how much those injuries will negatively affect the injured person’s life in both the short term and the long term.

Take a broken arm, for example: if you sustain this kind of injury in a wreck caused by someone else, you would likely be able to demand civil compensation for your medical bills, any wages you missed while you were unable to work because of that injury, and the various physical and psychological effects your injury might have on you. These are all legitimate losses that are worth building a civil claim for, but crucially, they are also temporary—after all, a broken arm will typically heal after a few months with proper medical treatment, with few or no lingering effects.

On the other hand, consider an accident that results in someone having to have their arm amputated altogether. In this scenario, the injured person may need intensive medical care for years after the wreck rather than months, and they may suffer a permanent loss of working and earning capacity—not to mention the physical and mental trauma of losing a limb.

This is why more severe injuries make for more valuable civil claims: because they require compensation to make up for years or even decades’ worth of losses, as opposed to just weeks or months. A Fremont car crash lawyer at Charles E. Boyk Law Offices can provide a preliminary estimate of the value of your possible claim during a free and confidential consultation.

Avoiding “Comparative Fault” for Car Accident Injuries

Another thing a dependable Fremont car accident attorney can help you with is fighting accusations of “comparative fault” made against you by the person or people you are suing over your wreck. In a nutshell, Ohio Revised Code §2315.33 allows courts to assign a percentage of fault to any personal injury victim they believe was partially responsible for causing their injuries through their own negligent act and then reduce the total compensation available to that victim in proportion to their share of total fault for their injury.

For instance, say you were T-boned in an intersection by a driver who ran a red light, but you yourself were driving over the speed limit when the wreck occurred. If you then tried to demand a settlement or file a lawsuit over that wreck, the other driver’s legal representative or insurance provider might try to argue that the crash would not have happened at all—or at least would not have been quite as bad—if you had been obeying the law, so you technically hold 20 percent of the fault for your own injuries.

If a court agrees with that percentage of “comparative fault,” the law mentioned above would prevent you from recovering for more than 80 percent of the losses you sustained from the wreck, since that is the percentage of those losses that the “defendant” you are suing is actually to blame for. Even worse, this law prohibits recovery altogether for any injured person found to hold a percentage of fault greater than 50 percent.

When Is the Right Time to Contact Legal Counsel?

Given everything mentioned above, it probably will not surprise you to hear that contacting a qualified lawyer sooner rather than later after an auto accident in Fremont can be vital to maximizing your chances of a positive case result. However, there is also a strict legal deadline by which you will need to formally start legal proceedings after a wreck, or else you may be forever barred from seeking the money you need to pay for your crash-related injuries and damages.

As established in O.R.C. §2305.10, almost everyone who experiences a personal injury under any circumstances due to the negligence of another person has just two years at most after the date their injury occurred—or sometimes, the date on which they discovered their injury—to file suit. Contacting legal counsel well in advance of this deadline can make a world of difference in how comprehensive of a claim they can help you construct and how effectively you will be able to pursue that claim through settlement negotiations or a lawsuit in civil court.

Contact a Fremont Car Accident Attorney Today

If you need the legal aid of a Fremont car accident lawyer, you should contact a Fremont car accident attorney immediately. Even if the person responsible for the accident was found not guilty in criminal court, you may still be able to receive compensation in a civil court. Contact us now for additional information.

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