Best Car Accident Lawyers in Alafaya, FL

Most personal injury attorneys work on a contingency fee basis. This means you do not pay anything to your lawyer unless they are successful in resolving your case. You will not get a monthly bill for the time they spend on your case. Rather, your attorney will be paid at the conclusion of the case using a percentage of the settlement amount awarded. You pay no attorney fees or expenses unless your case is successfully resolved by settlement or trial.

The settlement value of your case is based on your economic and non-economic losses. Economic losses account for things like medical bills and lost income. Non-economic losses are for pain and suffering, which is a fancy way of describing how your injuries impacted your activities of daily life, your hobbies, your home life, and your work. Pain and suffering also include the physical pain that you endured due to your injuries and the emotional suffering that you experienced due to the accident and the injuries you incurred because of the accident. Compensation for pain and suffering (non-economic damages) is usually the biggest part of the settlement. The medical records from your doctors and physical therapists are powerful evidence of the pain and suffering that you experienced. To that end, it is important that you tell your doctors and therapists about your level of pain and how your activities of daily life are impacted by your injuries.

Your insurance premiums should not go up if you are not at fault for the accident. It will be part of your insurance record, but if you are not at fault, your premiums should not increase. In most situations, your own insurance company will go after the insurance company that insures the at-fault party to recover the costs it may have paid to you for things such as car repairs or additional medical expenses.

Out-of-pocket expenses are always made part of your claim and are part of your economic damages that we seek to recover from the at-fault party. When your claim is presented to the at-fault party, we include your out-of-pocket expenses as part of the demand package. If your case does not settle in what we call the "pre-suit phase," then your case will proceed to court where we will ask a jury for your out-of-pocket expenses as part of your economic damages on the verdict form.

Wage loss is paid out under your Personal Injury Protection benefit, which happens to be mandatory coverage for auto insurance in the State of Florida. There are exceptions, such as when you elected to have your wage loss reimbursement excluded on your Personal Injury Protection (PIP) benefit when you obtained your policy. Normally, people who have their wage loss benefits excluded are those who are not employed for some reason or another. You can also elect to have a standard PIP (which covers wage loss at 60%) or extended PIP (which covers wage loss at 80%). You will need to provide proof of income in the form of a paycheck stub, income tax return, or some other verifiable means. The remaining percentage of your wage loss not covered by your PIP insurance will become part of your claim against the defendant driver. When cases do not involve PIP coverage, the wage loss becomes part of the demand to the at-fault party. In most cases, proof of lost income is rather simple if the injured person receives a paycheck. For our clients who are self-employed, we work very closely with them to help them assemble the necessary documentation to prove the wage loss claim. Tax returns can be helpful in instances where clients are self-employed.