Is A Personal Injury Claim Typically An Easy Process In Texas?
In an auto crash case, the attorney can set up a claim and be in contact with the insurance company or the corporation within days. It’s a very easy process and the attorneys at Wells, Purcell & Kraatz have been doing it so long, they are very familiar with how to get where they need to be with all of the insurance companies they deal with.
If there is an issue about who is at fault, the process drags out and many times results in the need for a case to be filed. In other cases, specifically product liability and premise cases, it can be a very difficult process to determine who the proper at fault party is. For example, if there is a case involving a product that is sold over the internet, an attorney will need to spend a lot of time doing research to try and find out who would be responsible for the product’s failure. That can be a very daunting and sometimes takes a lot of time, if not litigation, to get to the position where your lawyer can confront the defendant and ask who created the product.
Many times we get inconsistent answers from product suppliers and manufacturers to the simple question of who made the product because of the way Texas modified some of the laws regarding who is responsible for a bad product. You have to make sure that you have the manufacturer. If you buy something at Amazon or Wal-Mart, that doesn’t mean that Amazon or Wal-Mart is responsible for what happens to you when the products fails. This has become a challenging part of product cases. You need to have resources to be able to identify the companies that were legally responsible under Texas law for a product defect.
Do Most Personal Injury Claims Settle Prior To Trial In Texas?
The vast majority of personal injury cases settle before trial due to the risk of the unknown. Many times, cases settle during the litigation process. Other times they settle the week before trial. Cases can even sometimes be settled the day before or during a trial. Our lawyers have spent enough time looking at the parts of the case that a jury is going to be asked to look at and have the experience to say “This is the likely answer to a particular question.”
Insurance defense lawyers like to avoid risk if they can. From an attorney’s perspective, it’s a matter of knowing if the amount of money being offered is in the range of what a reasonable jury would do with the case in the venue where it’s filed.
A wise lawyer once said that if you know the law and if you know the facts, then it’s not difficult to pick a reasonable outcome or reasonable settlement figure that places both the plaintiff and the defendant in a settlement range that they can live with. In a settlement, sometimes neither side is happy and have a feeling that maybe they could have done better with a trial. That said, both sides are motivated by the desire to avoid trial risk.
Do You Recommend That Clients Keep A Journal Of Events Following An Injury?
Rarely do our attorneys ask for what is referred to as a “pain journal.” In our experience most clients won’t do it. Our view is that when the firm wants to establish how many times the client went to the doctor or had therapy or studies done, the firm will create images that reflect the treatment history.
Rarely do we insist on clients keeping a journal because that can sometimes be a distraction to what our client’s are trying to accomplish—recovery from the injury.
There are some exceptions, such as in scarring cases, cases that involve a lot of therapy, or cases where a family member was catastrophically injured and the parents or the spouse are taking care of that person. In these cases a timeline is needed but we frequently create the timeline in our office.
For more information on Personal Injury Claims Process, a free initial consultation is your next best step. Get the information and legal answers you are seeking by calling (817) 335-5525 today.

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