Legal FAQ

Immediately following an accident, you should stay in your vehicle and call the police. Once the police arrive, explain what happened in detail and make sure you get a copy of the other driver’s insurance information. If you are injured, you should immediately go to an emergency room for an examination and then subsequently follow any instructions your doctor provides. From there, you will want to reach out to an attorney and determine if you have a personal injury case to pursue. In the meantime, avoid speaking with the opposing party’s insurance company.

That is what we are here for. We will ask you a series of questions that should quickly determine whether or not you have a viable personal injury case. You will typically have a case if someone was acting negligently and that negligence caused you some harm.  If you wish to discuss your case, request a free lawyer consultation.

One of the elements of a personal injury case is “damages”. You have to have some damages to proceed with a case. You can have damages even if you are not feeling hurt. Following an accident, you should report to an emergency room to be evaluated to ensure you did not suffer any injuries. Sometimes, injuries take several days to present themselves.

It depends on the type of personal injury case, but for most negligence cases, you have 2 years to file in Kansas and 5 years to file in Missouri, from the date of the incident that caused the personal injury. In many cases, this would be the date, for example, you got into a car wreck.

Once you’ve hired an attorney, your attorney will issue a “letter of representation” to all insurance companies involved, and they will no longer be allowed to speak with you directly. Until you hire an attorney, the opposing parties’ insurance company will attempt to contact you repeatedly to get statements from you and attempt to settle the matter with you for, typically, far less than the case is really worth. I advise all my clients and potential clients to NOT speak with the insurance company about the bodily injury claim. You can work with the insurance adjusters to get any damage to your vehicle sorted out.

Special damages can include loss of wages, loss of future wages, medical bills, and the cost of future medical treatment.
General damages can include: pain and suffering and loss of consortium.

Punitive damages, include an award to deter or punish the defendant from acting negligently in the future.

Finally, in wrongful death cases, you can get damages for funeral and burial expenses of your lost loved one, the emotional distress of surviving family, loss of financial contributions, and loss of services/support/consortium.

In short, it does not matter. The “eggshell plaintiff doctrine” states that a defendant takes a plaintiff as they find them. This means if the plaintiff had a preexisting condition that made it more likely the would get a back injury after a car wreck, the defendant is on the hook for the injuries despite the preexisting condition.

To have a personal injury claim, you have to show the defendant acted negligently. If you were the one driving negligently and caused the accident, you typically cannot make a claim that the other driver was the cause of the accident and therefore, you cannot win a personal injury case. You can, however, compare fault, so in Kansas, if you were 49% at fault you could still recover damages, and in Missouri even if you were 99% at fault, you could recover damages, the damages would just be reduced by your percentage of fault.

Some claims get settled very quickly, within a month or two; others take much longer. One factor that will most heavily affect the rate at which we can settle your claim is your medical treatment. We try to wait until a plaintiff is done treating before we attempt to settle the claim.

Once you settle your case, the defendant’s insurance company will ask you to sign a release in exchange for the dollar amount you’ve agreed to in order to settle the case. The release will, in short, state that you agree you cannot come back and sue the defendant for the same occurrence ever again.

Once your case is settled, and you’ve signed a release with the defendant’s insurance company, the insurance company will issue payment immediately. Usually, they will mail a check to your attorney’s office. Your attorney will need to satisfy any outstanding liens and collect their fee, and then a separate check will be issued to you. This usually happens within a week of settlement.

If you have personal injury protection (PIP) or med pay coverage with your own insurance company, they will cover a certain amount of your out-of-pocket medical expenses before the case is settled. If your out-of-pocket expense exceeds your PIP or med pay coverage, you can ask your provider to put a lien on your account, and you will accrue medical bills as you treat, which will be paid off from your settlement proceeds. If you are unable to use either of the above options, you will have to pay for bills out of pocket and then be reimbursed from the settlement proceeds.

If you have personal injury protection (PIP) or med pay coverage with your own insurance company, they will cover a certain amount of your lost wages.

If you get injured at work, you will typically be limited to filing your claim as a worker’s compensation claim. HR&R does not handle worker’s compensation claims, but we can get you pointed in the right direction if you give us a call.

Insurance adjusters will try to take advantage of people who do not have a lawyer and will offer much lower settlements than are appropriate. Having a lawyer for your personal injury case will immediately add value to your claim.

Most personal injury attorneys are paid by way of a contingency fee. This means the attorney gets paid a percentage of your total settlement and gets paid nothing if you lose or are not able to recover from the insurance company. At HRR, we charge nothing up front and the client never pays for anything associated with litigating the claim out of pocket – like the costs associated with taking a defendant’s deposition or with getting your medical records. Any expenses we pay on a client’s behalf are recouped from the proceeds of the settlement and if the client does not get a settlement, we eat those costs.