If you have been injured in a motor vehicle accident or a slip and fall, you are eligible to seek compensation by filing a personal injury claim. Additionally, you may also seek out an attorney’s advice for personal injury claims. There are some universal rules that apply, in the most part, with all of these cases. One of these being the statute of limitations.
Advice for Personal Injury Claims | Statute of Limitations
In California, you will have two years from the date of your injury to bring your claim or to settle. This might differ for certain cases such as slip and falls on municipal property as well as medical malpractice. It would be wise to sit down with one of our California personal injury lawyers to determine if your statute of limitations is two years, or if your case is different.
Our advice pertaining to the statute of limitations is to not wait them out. You should not be bringing your claim to an attorney with a week to spare. There is a lot of preparation that goes into these cases and we need time to do them. There is also a significance to calling an attorney as soon as you possibly can. A huge part of our job is to collect evidence. We do that by taking pictures, talking to witnesses, and recreating the scene. The sooner you come to us, the better the results are going to be. Here’s why: imagine seeing a car crash on the highway one day. You offer your contact information to the injured driver as a witness. You think they’re going to call you soon so you keep your ringer on your phone looking for a phone call. What if they were to call you eight months later? Do you think you could give them an accurate memory from that event? Most likely not. When we take on a case, we always hope that we’ve been contacted as soon as possible so that we can get the clearest memories from people about the crash. Your witnesses might remember something very fuzzy even a few weeks after the collision, so there is no time to waste.
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Advice for Personal Injury Claims | Collecting Evidence
Secondly, let’s say you were involved in a construction injury. If we are not contacted in a timely manner, by the time we get to the scene of the incident, your coworkers have most likely continued to do their job and keep building or repairing. If we can’t get to the scene right away, the hazard that caused your injuries could have disappeared or been cleaned up. That goes for injuries such as slip and falls as well. The hotel might have repaired the broken sidewalk that you tripped on, or the jutting tile in the lobby that made you fall.
You can help us with these cases by collecting as much evidence as possible. If you’re physically able to, take photos and videos of the scene. Get a picture of your injuries, if you were hit by a car on a bike for instance, a photo the damage to your bike would be worth a thousand words to the insurance company when you ask for property damage compensation.
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If you were seriously injured, please call the California personal injury lawyers at Bish & Cutting, APC today for a free consultation. We will be there to support you and guide you through this difficult time. You don’t need the insurance company pestering you and trying to trick you out of getting compensation. We can take them on so you can focus on getting better. Call us today!
