This is a short video, and the acting is a bit cheesy, but the message is clear. Twenty-five percent of all car accidents in the U.S are related to cell phone use. The average text message takes 5 seconds to send. A car traveling 50 mph can travel the length of a football field in that time. Driving is the most dangerous activity that most of us do in a day. Probably best to save the text for later.
So is Hiring an Attorney a Greedy Thing to Do?
You are not the type of person who wants something for nothing. You work hard for your money; you believe other people should have to work hard for their money as well. We wholeheartedly agree. Hiring an attorney to represent you after an injury is not trying to get something for nothing. If you were not injured at all, do not hire an attorney. Do not lie to them to try to trick them into lying to an insurance company. That is not what attorneys do. We are in the business of making sure that victims are compensated fairly by the enormous insurance companies that are being paid to cover losses that may happen.
When people get hurt because someone else made a mistake, the law steps in and tries to make things right. We practice civil law, so we are not there to punish anybody. That is what criminal law does. If someone crashes into you, criminal law applies as well, by giving that person a ticket, that’s it.
Civil law is not about punishing anybody, it is only focused on helping the victim who was not at fault by making things right by them. The intent of civil law is to make it like it never even happened like a time machine would. Except, we don’t have the technology for a time machine, so civil law says that the insurance for the at-fault person has to cover everything so that it’s like it never happened at least financially speaking. That’s where injury attorneys step in. Our job is to be in your corner to make sure the insurance company values you like a human being with a life, rather than just treating you like a claim number on a page.
If you get hit in a car accident, or your kid gets bitten by your neighbor’s dog, hiring an attorney to handle your insurance claims is not greedy– it’s smart. Think about it this way, if one of those things happened to someone that you love, and you had some extra cash lying around, would you rather help that person by paying their medical bills, which were not even their fault, or would you rather donate your extra cash to an insurance agency so they can buy extra helicopters for their CEO’s yacht? It’s a very stupid question. Helping your loved one recover instead of paying extra bonuses to corporations is not greedy, it’s the opposite. It’s fair and it’s compassionate. Why then would you not do the same for yourself? If you won’t take the first step to help yourself, who will?
So is Hiring an Attorney a Contentious Thing to Do?
           You don’t like to be controversial or abrasive. Either do we. Life is better when we all get along. We feel the same way. We do not instigate any type of angry interactions with anyone. Our goal is to represent you and serve your interests the best that we can. No one responds well to antagonists. Treating people poorly will not get the result that we want for our clients. That is why an experienced injury attorney will treat all parties with the upmost respect throughout the process of handling a claim. In fact, 99/100 times, when we get involved and can properly handle your car accident claims from the get-go, no one even goes to court. No one gets sued. This is because the truth is, the nice little old lady that hit you with her car never pays a dime, who really has to cover everything is her insurance. We deal directly with the at-fault person’s insurance adjuster, to make sure they pay out the fair amount to truly make up for what happened to you in the crash, rather than just letting them pay you whatever they decide.
You may worry that an acquaintance of yours might be upset with you for involving an attorney after you were hurt by his or her negligent actions. Honest people can understand that it is not strange to seek compensation when you are wronged. What would be strange is if people never learned to be more careful because no one ever asked them to pay the consequences for their actions. For example, let’s say you were on a walk when your neighbor’s pit-bull ran up and bit you on the leg. Asking your neighbor’s Home Owner’s Insurance to pay for your medical bills is not contentious. It’s fair and clearly reasonable. On the other hand, your neighbor keeping a potentially dangerous dog and allowing that dog to roam free in front of the house is quite contentious. Not very neighborly. Even if that is the nicest dog of all-time, shouldn’t people be responsible to take care of their own dogs and cover any damage their own dogs might cause to others? Utah law says yes. Consulting an attorney after an injury does not mean that you do not believe your injury was caused by an accident. It does not mean that you believe that your neighbor acted intentionally. Those cases are rare. All it means is that through an unfortunate accident, you were harmed, and you would like the assistance of a professional to make sure the applicable insurance company helps you get better.
So I’m Not a Bad Person if I Sue?
           No. But there certainly are plenty of negative implications if you don’t at least consult an injury attorney. Civil law tries to protect accident victims from any unnecessary heartache and pain after their injuries. To not use that system will result in injustice for all parties involved. It is not fair to you because you would bear the cost of an accident that was not your fault. It is not fair to the other party because their insurance company will continue to get rich without ever providing the service that they are being paid to provide. It is not fair to society as a whole because businesses and individuals would not internalize the costs of their negligence. Covering the cost of harms we cause by accident is how the world slowly gets safer. It’s why cars now have seatbelts. If you are hurt in an accident, don’t be afraid to do the right thing- call for a free consultation with an injury attorney.
Why Can’t I Just Handle my Injury Claim Myself?
When you attempt to speak with an insurance company about paying for your car and your medical bills after an accident, it’s YOU vs. A HUGE CORPORATION AND THEIR WHOLE TEAM OF ATTORNEYS. Does that sound like a fair fight? We don’t think so. At least when you hire a personal injury attorney to represent you, you have access to the applicable law on the subject and you have a partner who deals with these types of negotiations all the time. Your attorney likely could not come to your job and do it better than you can. It is unlikely that you can do the attorney’s job better than he or she can, especially considering that attorneys have spent seven years of their lives in formal education after high school to prepare them for this situation. They have spent years of their lives cramming laws into their brains so that your state would certify them as ready to represent others and to help others resolve their disputes. Injured victims with counsel are compensated at a rate of 54% more than unrepresented victims.
But How Can I Afford an Attorney?
           Professional services like lawyers and doctors can be very expensive. If people were required to pay thousands of dollars up front to get an attorney to work for them, most people would be precluded from ever being able to take advantage of our great legal system. Even if you had the money, because you don’t fully understand the law, it would be unfair to put the risk on you anyway. Think about it, after you have been hit in a car accident by Bob on his way to get a burger, your bills are stacking up, and you’re not working because you’re hurt. If you had to take the risk of paying thousands of dollars to your attorney, plus pay thousands more in legal fees to take your case through trial, a loss at trial would crush you. If you lose, you get nothing. There is no way that injury victims could calculate that risk and decide whether they wanted to go into debt thousands of dollars more when they don’t know whether or not they will win.
That is why good personal injury attorney’s work on a contingency fee basis. Contingency fee is just a fancy term lawyer’s use that means that the attorney only gets paid IF he or she wins the case and the client gets paid. This system allows us all to have access to our great legal system because we can now take our case to an experienced attorney, and pass all the risk to the party who has the specialized knowledge to decide if the case is worth something. The attorney assumes all the risk for the loss. He or she will have to invest loads of time and money into fighting for you. In the end, if the attorney loses, he gets absolutely nothing, and he is in the negative because he cannot recover any of his costs. You, as the injured party, would get nothing as well, but it didn’t cost you a red cent. This system gives you and your attorney mutually aligned interests. You can rest easy knowing with 100% certainty that your attorney is doing his or her absolute best to get you every cent you deserve to compensate you for your injury because they get paid on a percentage. The more you get, the more they get. It’s a win-win situation.
The Age-Old Question:
What should happen when one person is hurt by another?
The Answer:
The common law in the United States has evolved as an answer to that question over the last few hundred years. We certainly don’t want to criminally punish people for making a mistake, but we also know it’s not fair to let victim’s suffer more than they should. Those who cause harm should bear the cost of repairing that harm. The goal of a personal injury attorney is to put the victim back in the place that they were in prior to the accident. We only get one body, so there is no way to fully repair someone after suffering a catastrophic injury. Instead, the law offers money as the best available substitute it can come up with in an effort to make the injured party as close to whole as it can. That still leaves us with a problem; physical and emotional injuries can be extremely expensive, the at-fault party likely cannot afford to pay for your injuries. We don’t want your life to be ruined by your injury, but we also don’t want another person’s financial state to be devastated after making one mistake. That is where insurance comes in. We pay for insurance coverage so that we can afford to right the wrongs that we cause. Insurance is a system where we all pay in a little, so that the money is there when one of us needs that system to pay out a lot.
Our legal system enables us to enforce personal accountability by shifting the cost of an accident to the person who caused it. Then, our insurance system enables us to pay to heal the injured party without ruining the life of the person at fault. It’s a true win-win.
But are we Taking Advantage of Insurance Companies when we file claims?
Many people ask this question. The question I have is: do you feel that you are taking advantage of your television provider when you decide to turn on your TV? We pay insurance premiums monthly so that we will be protected from a catastrophic loss. We pay for TV monthly so that we can watch a television program should we choose to. We pay both of these bills whether we ever use it or not. Sometimes, we decide that we would like to watch a show. We pick up the remote without remorse because we have been paying for that exact service. Why would we then feel remorse when we are forced to call to make an insurance claim? Would it be better if we all just paid a company monthly for our entire lives for no reason whatsoever? The insurance industry is the only service industry that we pay and yet we hope that they do nothing for us. Sounds like a pretty profitable business to get into.
Insurance companies know that they will occasionally have to pay out. They plan on that. That is why they charge the prices that they do. They want to accept this obligation. They are extremely aggressive in their advertising because they are not afraid of having to protect new people. They know that even after all of their claims, they are operating at an enormous profit. After all, by the time an insurance company is forced to pay for your injuries, odds are that both you, and the person who injured you, have been paying insurance premiums for many years. What’s more, insurance companies know that some people are told that it’s a bad thing to get an attorney involved. They love it when unrepresented parties attempt to negotiate a fair settlement with them. They use their entire team of attorneys to keep your recovery at the low end of what they think is fair. At the end of the day, they are a business, and a very profitable one. You should not hesitate to seek the help of an experienced personal injury attorney in St. George, Utah when you have been injured in an accident.
As many of you know, Utah has been taking great steps in an effort to minimize cell phone and other distractions behind the wheel. Â In fact, our recent post titled Explaining the New Cell Phone and Driving Law outlines Utah’s new statute.
The following video is an effective way to convey this very important message. Â It is only 90 seconds long, but well worth a watch. Â Please share this message with those around you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHixeIr_6BM
