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February 1, 2025
- Blog
- By Cesar Ornelas
The consequences of a car accident can be devastating. You might be facing huge medical bills, lost wages or salary, property damage that you’re struggling to get fixed, and a lot more. An Odessa car accident attorney will know how to help you recover the damages that you are rightfully owed under the law when someone else causes a car accident and injuries you.
How Can an Odessa Car Accident Attorney Help You Recover Damages After a Car Accident?
By Investigating
After an accident, the insurance companies involved will do an investigation. However, the insurance company responsible for covering the person who caused the accident has a lot of incentive to “find” evidence that suggests your injuries and losses are not as bad as they are or that the person they cover is not responsible, or not as responsible, as you claim. Your lawyer can start an independent investigation to make sure that all the evidence is properly uncovered and used to show what really happened.
One of the things that your lawyer can do, for example, that you might not be able to do is to subpoena traffic camera or security camera footage that may show what happened. It’s important to get your lawyer working on this as quickly as possible. Say, for example, that a local store had a security camera pointed at the road where the accident took place. These security cameras very often record over footage after just a couple of days to save space if nothing has happened that warrants saving the footage. Your lawyer can contact the store before this happens and make sure that footage gets kept.
By Properly Calculating and Proving all Your Losses
To get the damages that you are owed, you have to calculate what they are and then be able to provide evidence to prove them. This can be more complicated than it sounds. Some of it may seem quite straightforward, such as gathering up your medical bills, but even here your lawyer will help you not to miss anything. You’d be surprised how easy it is to forget about a pharmacy receipt or a taxi receipt from a ride to a doctor’s appointment.
Beyond that, things can get quite complicated. For example, calculating your lost wages is a lot more than just figuring out how much you’re normally paid an hour. Say that your company has a bonus program in place where workers who work a certain number of hours per month or year are eligible for a year-end bonus: if your injuries kept you from being eligible when you otherwise would be, you should be compensated for the loss of that bonus. However, proving that you would have worked enough hours to make the bonus can be quite tricky, particularly if the margins are slim. This is just one example of how important it is to have a lawyer to help you recover all your damages.
By Keeping Things Moving
There’s a lot of paperwork involved in bringing a claim, and all of it has to be done the right way, filed in the right place, and accompanied by yet more paperwork to prove what’s being claimed in the main filing. There are opportunities for delays here at every point, but your lawyer takes care of the legalities and bureaucracy for you. This ensures that your compensation and damages aren’t delayed, or even lost, because of some red tape.
By Protecting You From the Insurance Company
Once you have a lawyer, any time the insurance company contacts you, you can say that magical phrase, “please talk to my lawyer.” Even the most innocent sounding questions can be designed to elicit an answer that will allow your insurer to claim you deserve more blame than you actually do, that your injuries are not as bad as you claim, or that your injuries are due to something other than the accident.
Your lawyer will also give you sound advice on how to talk to the insurance company when it is necessary to do so and is someone you can run all your communications past, just to be safe. For example, you may wish to assure your family and friends that you’re doing OK in a way that will minimize worry, but if you do this on social media or to the wrong person, the insurance company might find out and use it against you. When you have a lawyer, you can ask about how to protect yourself.
Another way the lawyer will protect you from the insurance company is by stopping you from signing any settlement that is not in your best interest. Insurance companies often offer an early settlement that’s much lower than what you’re asking for in the hopes that you will either be desperate enough to sign or will not be aware of what you’re truly owed.
By Helping You With Creditors
If you’re facing mounting medical bills, for example, and the hospital or doctors involved are becoming increasingly belligerent in their demands, one of the things your lawyer can do for you is to make sure that they’re aware that you’ve brought an official claim against the at-fault party so that they will delay collections until the settlement.
Once your settlement comes through, your lawyer will also protect you from creditor overreach. It’s not uncommon in these situations for hospitals to pad bills, refuse to give discounts that they would normally give under similar circumstances, or even rescind discounts that were initially applied. Your lawyer will make sure that the hospital and any other creditor gets only what they are actually owed for their part in helping you recover from your accident.
By Proving Your Degree of Fault
Texas has rules that allow anyone who is 50% or less at fault in an accident to collect damages, but their damages will be reduced by the same percentage as their fault. This makes it important that you not be assigned any more fault than you are actually owed for the accident. You can expect the other side to attempt to blame you as much as possible in order to minimize their losses, and your lawyer will protect you here.
By Handling Court and Negotiations
The insurance company has a lot of experience in negotiations, and most of these cases are settled outside of court. By having a lawyer, you have someone on your side who knows how to negotiate effectively and knows exactly what kind of tactics the insurance company will use. Your lawyer knows when to press hard and when to compromise and will keep you apprised at every step so you have the best possible outcome. If your case does make it to court, you’ll want your lawyer more than ever. At this point, a lawyer will make a convincing case, challenge any evidence brought by the other side, cross-examine their witnesses, and even bring expert witnesses along to support you as necessary.
A lawyer can do a lot to make sure you get the compensation you’re owed after a car accident. Reach out to us at Cesar Ornelas Injury Law in Odessa for help. We also serve El Paso, Laredo, Midland, San Antonio and areas of New Mexico and California.
