You see it every day, on the television newscasts, newspapers, or you hear it on the radio. Car accident, car accident, car accident. While these incidents may cause traffic tie-ups for you, they often cause serious injuries to those involved.
For the people that are injured, there is a Vehicle Accident Law Firm sophisticated enough with the laws, rules and regulations of Alaska to help you recover compensation for your medical bills, lost wages, pain and suffering, property damage, and more.
In Alaska, as long as your accident lawsuit is filed within two years from the date it happened—or at least two years from the date you realize you are injured—you can prosecute your claim. Miss this deadline, and there will be no recovery. This is one reason why it is so important to retain trusted personal injury attorneys to advocate for you. They know the rules and will prevent you from missing important deadlines.
Also important in Alaska is the fact that it is a “comparative negligence” state. This means that the Court has the right to reduce any award you receive by a percentage equivalent to the amount of fault it believes you are responsible for. So, by way of example, you are in a car hit by a driver that ran a red light and you suffer $200,000.00 worth of injuries. But it is also proven that you were texting and failed to look out for the other driver. Even though the other driver was clearly negligent for running the red light, you may be found 20% liable, reducing your recovery to $160,000.00. In such a scenario, that’s $40,000.00 you lost. A qualified attorney will strategize the facts of the case to show that even if you did something improper, such action had little to no effect on the happening of the case, in order to not cause your award to be so greatly reduced.
Next, many attorneys fail to properly consider property damage as part of a lawsuit. Sometimes damage to your car and personal property can range into the thousands of dollars. As such, it is important to make sure your attorney asserts claims for property damage in your lawsuit—and timely—as the same two year “statute of limitations” deadline applies.
So where do the facts come from? Primarily, from you, the victim. You must provide all information—positive and negative—and allow your attorney to use the facts to tell the story in the best possible light for your case. Information will also be provided by the other party, through written demands and depositions, from investigators, if necessary, and from other documents, such as police reports, medical records, accident reports and the like.
There is a lot to do to prove a claim and earn monies for your injuries. If you fail to follow some of these factors, you may receive nothing, or at least far less than you deserve. For these reasons, make sure to retain a vehicle accident law firm to protect your rights.
