Surprise Car Accident Lawyer

A car accident — even a minor one — has the potential to disrupt your life. These incidents can threaten your physical and mental health, and orthopedic injuries can leave you with chronic pain and disabilities in your hip, spine, or other joints that prevent you from working or participating in the hobbies you enjoy. The mental stress of your injuries and the resulting health problems can cause anxiety, depression, and sleep disorders, to name a few.

These health problems can, in turn, trigger financial problems. Surgery, physical therapy, and counseling cost money. If your injuries disabled you from working, your income losses might make it difficult to pay your medical bills or even your living expenses.

Fortunately, Arizona law gives accident victims rights. When your injuries result from someone else’s negligent or wrongful actions, you are entitled to seek compensation from the at-fault party and their insurer. An accident attorney in Surprise, Arizona, guides you through this process to ensure you seek a full and just amount for your losses.

Gerber Injury Law has been helping car crash victims in Surprise since 2009. When you hire us, you have a trustworthy and professional personal injury law firm on your side, advocating for your interests.

Why Choose Gerber Injury Law for a Car Accident Case?

Our founding attorney is committed to the highest standards of client service. Gerber Injury Law takes the responsibility of dealing with insurers and insurance defense lawyers off your shoulders so you can focus on your health. We will make the claim process as stress-free as possible.

When you choose a car accident lawyer, you need someone with legal knowledge and practical experience. We have both. Our founding lawyer, Ken Gerber, has over 25 years of legal experience, including over 19 years representing personal injury clients.

Since 2001, he has successfully represented thousands of injured people and recovered over $100 million in financial compensation for them. These outcomes significantly improved the lives of our clients and their families, who, in turn, praise the firm and the services we provide.

Ken Gerber has been a litigator over his entire career. He has developed a detailed knowledge of both injury law and court procedures. We can use that knowledge to tailor a legal strategy that is perfect for your unique circumstances, needs, and goals.

How Will an Attorney Help With Your Car Accident Claim in Surprise?

An attorney can assist you at every stage of the car accident claim process. They will act as your legal advisor, representative, and advocate.

In many cases, the quicker you contact a lawyer, the more you can do to protect your rights. Additionally, talking to a lawyer soon after your crash can help you avoid any mistakes. Insurance companies look for any reason to deny your injury claims. Talking to an injury lawyer from Gerber Injury Law before you talk to any insurers could deprive them of these reasons.

Some ways we help with your car accident case include the following:

Educating You About Your Rights

Our work starts early in your case. Before you file any paperwork, you must understand your legal rights and options.

Insurance companies do not work for third-party claimants. Their goal is to make money for shareholders. They cannot do this by paying claims generously. As a result, they will often delay and deny claims to try to frustrate you into giving up or accepting a low settlement. Knowing your rights will help you withstand these tactics and pursue everything you deserve under the law.

One of the most important jobs of a lawyer is to provide legal advice and counsel. We know injury law and can explain how it applies to your case. You have the final call in all decisions involving your case. We make sure you have the information you need to make informed decisions. We keep you in the loop at every stage of the case and counsel you as each decision arises.

Our staff will track your deadlines imposed by Arizona laws and court rules so you can stay on top of your case. We will explain how Arizona’s statute of limitations applies to your case and what we must do to meet this important deadline.

We will also educate you about what you can do at each stage to improve your legal position. Some steps we often recommend to our clients include:

• Visit your doctor to diagnose all injuries
• Follow your doctor’s treatment plan
• Keep track of all your expenses
• Document the reasons you missed work

In many cases, you should also refrain from posting about your case or your injuries on social media. Insurance companies and defense attorneys can use public information, including social media photos and videos, to argue that you exaggerated or faked your injuries.

Assessing the Strength of Your Case

Before taking any action, we need to assess the strength of your case. By understanding your likelihood of success, you can decide how to approach your case.

To win your claim, we must show the other driver is liable for your injuries. In rare cases, we can assert a claim for intentional harm. This could happen, for example, when a driver deliberately bumps your vehicle during a road rage incident.

However, liability in most motor vehicle cases depends on negligence. Negligence happens when someone owes you a duty of care but fails to live up to it. In the case of traffic crashes, every driver has a legal duty to avoid any act that exposes other road users to an unreasonable risk of injury or death.

The advantage of using negligence law to prove liability is that we do not need to prove the other driver knew or intended to act negligently. Instead, we only need to show that a reasonably prudent driver in the same situation would have known to act differently.

Negligence requires proof of four elements:

• Duty of care
• Breach of duty
• Damages
• Causation

The duty of care comes from the need for all drivers to drive carefully, having due consideration for the risk their actions pose to pedestrians, cyclists, and motorists.

They breach this duty by violating traffic laws or doing something legal but dangerous. Thus, a driver could breach this duty by taking their eyes off the road while reaching for a dropped object.

If you suffered an injury, you likely had damages in the form of medical expenses and lost income. We prove a causal connection between your losses and the breach of duty by showing that an accident was foreseeable in light of the negligent action.

Determining the Value of Your Case

We will assess the losses you suffered. These losses will help us estimate the compensation you can recover. Once you understand the value of your claim, you will know when you have received a fair settlement offer.

You can pursue compensation for two types of losses. Economic losses cover the hard costs associated with your injuries. They include any amounts you spent or must spend in the future. They also cover the amounts you cannot earn.

The law entitles you to seek compensation for any financial losses that you only incurred due to the at-fault driver’s negligence. The most common examples of economic losses from a Surprise car accident include the following:

• Past and future costs of surgery, treatment, therapy, and medication
• Lost wages from missing work for treatment and recovery
• Diminished future earnings due to long-term or permanent disabilities
• Reasonable and necessary out-of-pocket expenses

We work with you to document these losses. Evidence of these losses often comes from financial records, such as:

• Bills from doctors and hospitals
• Receipts
• Checks
• Bank and credit card statements
• Pay records

You can also recover non-economic losses. These losses come from the diminishment in your quality of life due to your injuries. More severe injuries will usually justify greater non-economic losses. Similarly, permanent injuries cause more disruption to your remaining life than temporary injuries.

Examples of non-economic losses include the following:

• Physical pain
• Mental suffering
• Dismemberment, if you lost a body part
• Disfigurement for injuries that affected your appearance
• Disability for injuries that prevent you from performing your normal activities

We prove these losses by showing the extent of your injuries. We will also use your testimony to explain how your injuries affected your life.

Handling Your Insurance Claim

Arizona requires all vehicle owners to carry liability insurance. An auto liability policy is an agreement between the insurer and the policyholder. Under this contract, the insurer pays any liabilities incurred by a covered driver up to a pre-set policy limit. After a crash, anyone injured by the covered driver’s negligence can file a claim with the liability insurer.

A Surprise car accident lawyer from Gerber Injury Law will work with you to prepare your insurance claim. The claim describes what happened and why the covered driver was at fault. We may use crash reports, witness statements, and photos of the accident scene to establish the liability for the crash.

It also includes proof of your losses, such as medical records and bills. We will work with you to include as many losses as possible. One of the goals of your injury claim is to put the costs of your car crash on the driver who caused it.

The insurer will assign your claim to an adjuster. The adjuster protects the insurance company from paying claims it has no legal obligation to pay. As a result, many adjusters strictly enforce the policy’s terms and the company’s claim rules. These procedures are meant to trip you up or frustrate you into giving up.

We understand insurance company processes. In many cases, insurers will refrain from using their typical tactics once you hire a car accident lawyer. Surprise auto insurers deal with us often enough that we can frequently anticipate their moves. Our role is to lead you through this process as smoothly as possible.

We can respond with legal arguments or additional evidence to any claim denials. Once the adjuster accepts your claim, we will negotiate for a fair and just settlement.

Litigating Against Insurers and At-Fault Parties

Although we settle many car accident cases without a lawsuit, we prepare every case as if it will go to trial. This hard work pays off when we file claims and negotiate with adjusters.

If an adjuster refuses to negotiate a fair settlement or refuses to withdraw an unfounded claim denial, we may file a lawsuit. This move can often motivate insurers to resolve cases. Insurers do not want to pay their litigators to fight a losing case. They also want to avoid the risk of a huge jury verdict in your favor. As a result, they may become more open to settlement after we file.

We initiate a lawsuit by preparing and filing a complaint. This pleading explains what happened and what you are seeking. The insurance company will defend the covered driver and respond to the complaint.

The next phase of the case is discovery. We exchange evidence with the other side. This process often gives us insights into the defenses the other driver will raise. We use the evidence to prepare arguments to try to overcome those defenses. In many cases, we can also use discovery to show the other side the strength of your case and try to push them into a settlement.

The next step will often involve pre-trial motions. These motions will sometimes determine the witnesses and evidence we can use at trial. They may also determine which legal arguments we will present.

Since you are the plaintiff, you decide whether to have a jury trial or a bench trial. Juries are often sympathetic to accident victims, but we will work together to decide whether to request a jury. If your case reaches trial, we will present your evidence and argue for a fair and just verdict.

Contact a Surprise Car Accident Lawyer Today

Car accidents can produce a range of outcomes, from minor injuries to fatalities. Regardless of how an accident affected you, fairness dictates that you should not bear the costs for crashes caused by someone else.

Injury law gives you a path to seek justice for your losses. Whether your case settles after filing an insurance claim or goes all the way to trial, we will stand by you through every step.

Gerber Injury Law has extensive experience handling car accident claims. Our Surprise car accident attorney has over two decades of courtroom experience. We will advise you of your legal rights, represent you with insurance companies, and advocate for you in court. Contact us today for a free consultation to discuss your car accident injuries and the compensation we can seek under Arizona law.