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Rancho Mirage Personal Injury Lawyer

Sustaining harm in an accident you did nothing to cause can be a frustrating experience for anyone. Even if you are able to heal from your injuries over time, you may still have to deal with various financial expenses and personal inconveniences in the short term. A more severe injury could be expensive, debilitating, and life-altering.

In either scenario, help is available from our seasoned attorneys, who know how devastating an unexpected accident can be and what to do to secure compensation for your ensuing losses. With a skilled Rancho Mirage personal injury lawyer, you will have the best chance of ensuring the person to blame for your injuries is also the one who pays for them financially.

Do Not Put Off Getting Legal Advice

Rancho Mirage personal injury attorneys are sometimes contacted by people who suffered injuries and deserve compensation, but the time period for bringing a lawsuit has elapsed. They have lost their chance to have a court hear their case and also lost any negotiating leverage they may have had.

The law in California requires you to file a lawsuit within two years of the incident in most cases. If there was a delay before you discovered an injury, the two-year period begins when you make the discovery. If your family member died of injuries they sustained in an accident, you have two years from your loved one’s death to file a lawsuit.

Much shorter time limits apply if one of the responsible parties is the state, a local government, or a public agency. The best way to preserve your rights to claim compensation is to contact a legal professional as quickly as possible.

Understanding the Legal Process

When you work with an injury attorney in Rancho Mirage, they will review the information you provide about the accident to determine whether you have a valid legal claim. Depending on the circumstances, they may engage an outside professional to find evidence, present an expert opinion, or both.

Once there is evidence that your injuries were the direct result of another party’s conduct, an attorney will contact that party in writing, describing your claim and how much compensation you seek. Negotiations with the other party or their insurance begin and result in a fair settlement in most cases. If negotiations are unsuccessful, the attorney will file a lawsuit, and the case will proceed in court.

Proving Fault for a Personal Injury

A few ways to establish the legal grounds for filing a suit over an accident resulting in injury, not all of which are equally applicable to every situation. The most common means of holding someone accountable for a personal injury is proving they were legally negligent. This means showing they violated a duty of care that required them to act reasonably under specific circumstances. An injured person must also demonstrate that their breach of duty was the direct cause of an accident and the injuries they built the claim around.

As a personal injury attorney in Rancho Mirage could explain, it is possible to hold someone else strictly liable for an injury in certain situations. This means the injured person only has to prove a few conditions apply to their situation without needing to prove another directly caused their injury through a reckless or careless act. For example, dog owners are strictly liable for all damages their dog causes to another person by biting them.

Protecting The Residents of Rancho Mirage

Whether you are looking to recover losses due to medical bills from a traffic accident or you are seeking legal help after an incident at work, we are ready to speak with you.

Our team of personal injury lawyers in Rancho Mirage can help you with:

We also handle bicycle and pedestrian accidents, and injuries sustained due to negligent security or unsafe conditions at public events.

Whatever type of incident caused your injury, you must file a legal claim promptly. When you consult with a legal professional soon after the incident, you preserve your rights and give yourself the best chance of obtaining maximum compensation.

Recovering All Available Compensation

Regardless of the legal theory at the heart of their claim, someone who establishes that another person is legally liable for their injury can demand compensation for every past and future economic and non-economic loss they can trace directly back to that injury, including:

All medical expenses, including costs of assistive equipment and outpatient care like physical therapy
Lost work income or working ability
Personal property loss or damage
Physical pain and discomfort
Emotional anguish and psychological trauma
Lost enjoyment and quality of life

These damages are available in all personal injury cases, as long as you can document your losses.

Punitive damages may be a possibility in rare cases. When a court grants punitive damages, it orders a defendant to pay you extra money as punishment for its conduct and to deter similar conduct by others.

California Civil Code §3294 only allows punitive damages when you present clear and convincing evidence that a defendant acted with malice or intentionally caused harm. Punitive damages are unusual in personal cases but are sometimes awarded to victims of drunk drivers or corporations that skimped on safety measures to increase profits. An experienced Rancho Mirage injury attorney could explain whether the evidence in your specific case merits a request for punitive damages.

Does the Law Ever Limit Damages?

Some states put a cap on the amount of damages an injured person can receive in a lawsuit. California does not impose caps on damages in most cases, but there are some laws that can limit how much you can recover in some circumstances.

Medical Malpractice Cases

State law limits how much money a single injured person can demand for non-economic forms of harm in cases involving negligence by healthcare providers. An experienced personal injury lawyer in Rancho Mirage could discuss what damages a particular person might be eligible to recover during a confidential consultation.

Car Accident Cases and Proposition 213

The law bars people who drive without insurance from collecting pain and suffering damages if they get into an accident. Anyone who is convicted of drunk driving arising out of the crash or who crashed while committing or fleeing from the commission of a felony is also barred from collecting damages for their non-economic harm.

Cases of Shared Fault

Many accidents are the result of a combination of factors, and more than one party may be legally responsible for an incident. When you are partially to blame for the situation that led to your injuries, you cannot collect 100 percent of your damages.

Instead, fault will be allocated between the parties on a percentage basis. You can collect the portion of your damages attributable to others—for example, if you are 30 percent responsible for the incident, you can collect 70 percent of your damages from other responsible parties.

Contact a Rancho Mirage Personal Injury Attorney for Help

Personal injury law can be deceptively complicated, and you have slim odds of achieving a successful result from this kind of lawsuit on your own. Fortunately, you do not have to fight for fair restitution alone when you seek guidance from a capable and compassionate personal injury attorney.

A Rancho Mirage personal injury lawyer could be your ally from start to finish of your legal proceedings. Learn more about your options by calling today.