The following will provide you with a sample timeline for a typical personal injury case. The events are listed in the order they usually occur. Every case is unique, but we created this timeline to help our clients visualize their case and understand the steps involved, leading up to resolution of the case. “How long” it will take depends on many factors too difficult to predict.
1. Accident occurs. 2. Client receives treatment of some kind (ambulance, hospital, doctors, etc) 3. Client may have spoken with insurance companies regarding accident (we generally advise against talking with the opposing insurance company). 4. Client provides lawyer with items from the “Personal Injury Checklist”. 5. Client meets with and hires attorney. 6. Attorney communicates with insurance company and adjusters, advising them of representation of injured client. Attorney keeps adjusters informed. 7. Attorney evaluates all available resources for payment and recovery. 8. Attorney makes sure all important documents are gathered. 9. Attorney hires investigators if needed. 10. Client works with insurance company to fix property damage, rent car etc. Attorney assists client with this process if necessary. 11. Client documents any lost earnings (if any) and seeks verification from his/her employer regarding lost earnings. Attorney can assist if client gives attorney contact person who is willing to communicate with lawyer’s office. Lost earnings claims should only be made if it's a "slam dunk" - speculation regarding lost earnings often leads down an endless rabbit hole! 12. Client continues treating with medical providers until discharged by the doctor(s). During this time, further specialists may be required, physical therapy, MRI tests, etc. Client continues treating until client reaches pre-accident status or otherwise reaches a plateau where no further treatment will benefit client. In some cases, surgical intervention is necessary. 13. Once client completes health care regimen, attorney collects any and all outstanding bills, reports, etc. Attorney may discuss matter with client’s doctors. 14. Attorney ascertains if there are any liens by any insurance company (health insurance, auto insurance, Medi-Cal, MediCare, etc). Attorney opens claims with any lien-holders and work with assigned adjuster from each company. 15. Attorney prepares “Demand Package” to present to responsible party’s insurance company. This package typically contains a demand letter, photos, medical records, billing, lost earnings documentation, etc. 16. Insurance company usually takes about 30 to 45 days to respond to demand. 17. Attorney communicates offer from insurance company to client. 18. Client accepts or rejects offer. 19. If rejected, attorney continues negotiating settlement on behalf of client. 20. Attorney negotiates with all parties asserting a lien on the case (doctors, insurance companies, etc.) in an effort to increase client’s net recovery. 21. Client either accepts or rejects insurance company’s final offer. 22. If accepted, insurance company sends release for lawyer to review and client to sign. Insurance company then sends check for lawyer and client to sign. This check is deposited into attorney’s Client Trust Account. Checks written, (doctors, lien holders, client), from this account. 23. If unable to settle the claim, attorney will discuss options with client, including filing a lawsuit and all the ramifications of doing so. Hopefully this blog entry will give you some idea of the "usual" and "customary" steps of a personal injury matter. Some cases can differ for one reason or another, but hopefully this will give you a good understanding. Call my office at (661) 414-7100 if I can help you with your personal injury case. VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Hello everybody. This is Robert Mansour, and thank you for watching this brief video. I'm a lawyer in the Los Angeles area, and one of my areas of practice is personal injury. I wanted to make this brief video for you today to implore you not to yell at your insurance adjuster. Do not scream at the insurance adjuster. Do not fight with the insurance adjuster. Do not use profanity with the insurance adjuster. Don't hang up on the insurance adjuster. I know sometimes these things can be very frustrating, and sometimes insurance adjusters can be very frustrating over the phone. Maybe they're not trying to be frustrating, but you don't understand what they're talking about. You don't understand the rationale or they might be just downright rude. However, keep in mind, this is potentially the hand that feeds you. So if you get the insurance adjuster all angry with you, do you think that helps or reduces your chances for a fair settlement in your case? You don't want to burn a bridge that you're going to need to cross later on. Here's what invariably happens. The clients will yell and scream at the insurance adjuster and then call me and say, "You need to help me with this," like I'm going to be able to make a miracle at that point. I can't rebuild a bridge sometimes that has been burned. Sometimes the client has done irreparable harm. So before you lose your cool with the insurance adjuster, you know, pause, take a deep breath, talk to a lawyer, find out what your rights are. Bringing the lawyer in after you've yelled and screamed at the insurance adjuster is rarely going to help the situation. In fact, the insurance adjuster may dig in their heels even deeper than they did before simply to upset you even further. Do not make it personal if you can avoid it. I know sometimes it's difficult and sometimes it's frustrating, but you may want to bring in a lawyer from the very beginning so that you don't have to handle it at all and just have the attorney handle everything for you. In any case, be very careful when you're dealing with the insurance adjusters, and don't do anything that you might regret later on. Again, this is Robert Mansour. Thank you very much for watching this brief video. I hope you found it helpful. If you want to reach me, you can call me at the office. (661) 414-7100 or visit my website at valencialawyer.com. Thank you very much for watching. Video Transcript:
Dave: In a way you're almost, and I'm going to play devil's advocate here with you a little bit ... Robert: Yeah. Dave: ... you're almost painting a picture that the insurance companies are the devil. That they are evil and they are to be fought and stayed away from. That can't truly be the case. Robert: No. Because I used to work for an insurance company for 13 years, before I opened my own law firm. And I was on the other side. My job was to poke holes in these cases. My job, when I got the file, the first thing I would look at, was there a police report? Were they taken away by ambulance? What can we use against this person? And it was all about preserving the interest of the insurance company. There's nothing wrong with that. It's just that, realize that the insurance adjustor is not your advocate. They're the advocate for their employer. Dave: Right. Robert: And they're going to have supervisors to answer to and they're going to be like, "Well why did you pay this much? And why did you pay this claim?" There's always certain insurance adjustors who are much more flexible than others, and of course, for purposes of this segment, we're just being cautiously aware of some of the tricks and the strategies, I should say, that are being employed by insurance companies. Tami: I want to wrap up our segment with you being able to tell our audience all of the law that you practiced, because obviously you're personal injury. You're a brilliant brilliant estate planner. Robert: Please. Please. Keep it coming. Tami: So let our audience know what they can contact you for, what your specialties are. Robert: Sure. Sure. I appreciate that. I do two areas of law. Having worked for the insurance company as a defense attorney, I now represent victims of serious accidents. And I feel that I can bring a unique twist on that because of my background. But 50 percent of my practice, what we talked about before, wills, living trusts, powers of attorneys, probate, what we call estate planning. Tami: Right. Robert: Yeah. Tami: Very important stuff. Robert: Thank you. Tami: Very very important stuff. Robert: Yeah. Sure. Tami: And as you can see, he's a great guy to work with. Who wouldn't want to work with Robert Mansour. Robert: Thank you very much. Dave: Rob, thanks again. Robert: You're going to make me blush. Thank you, Dave. Thank you very much. Dave: It's always great to see you. This is great information. And thank you for being able to talk about it. Robert: Thank you so much for the opportunity. Dave: Yeah. When we come back the guys in the crew are going to be happy. Rob's going to be happy. We're all going to be happy. Food is on it's way. Marie Callenders is here. Of course, we always talk about Marie Callenders as the holidays come in so please stay tuned. Sometimes as the result of a serious accident, you may lose income from your job. This is true whether you work for someone or you work for yourself. However, bringing a claim for lost earnings is one of the trickiest parts of presenting a personal injury case. It's not always the wisest thing to do. My general rule is as follows: If your lost earnings claim is easy to prove, and it won't distract from the bigger issues of your case, then you should entertain bringing a claim. Otherwise, I would think two or three times about bringing a claim for lost earnings. Focus instead on your physical injuries. In the video above, you can learn more from Robert Mansour about the issue of lost earnings.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Dave: And I am assuming too, because points two and three are very similar. They don't want you to go to call an ambulance. They don't want you to go see a doctor. Robert: An ambulance is a perfect example of injury. I mean, if you were taken away by ambulance, it's hard for them to argue that you weren't injured, because the ambulance guys are not going to take you to the hospital unless they feel that there's something to do. If you're just sitting there, and they take you to the hospital, that's further evidence that you were injured. And so they will say, they'll often tell me over the phone, "Well your client wasn't taken away by ambulance." So they will use the lack of an ambulance as evidence that you were not injured. And the same thing, what was the last one you talked about? Dave: Don't go to a doctor. Robert: Yeah. If you wait too long to go to a doctor after an accident, and too long, I would say anything beyond a week or two, they will poo-poo your injury. And a lot of clients, especially guys, try to man-up. They're like, "I'll be fine. This shoulder, it hurts, but I'll be fine." Two weeks go by, they're like, "It's not fine. I can't lift my shoulder." They go to the doctor. The insurance company will say, "You waited too long. You didn't go to the doctor soon enough, so it must be something else that caused your shoulder injury." Tami: That's right. And you'll hear people all the time saying, "I don't need an ambulance. My son can take me. My wife can take me. My husband can take me to the hospital." Robert: It is an expense. I mean, you have to be aware of that. So yeah, sometimes people forego an ambulance because it's expensive. Dave: Right. Tami: So I would think the suggestion there would be if you're not going to take an ambulance and you are injured, go straight to the hospital. Robert: Or Urgent Care. Do something that shows that you were injured ... Tami: Right. Robert: ... because if you don't, they will use it against you. If you need help with your accident case or simply want to run it by an attorney, feel free to call our office at (661) 414-7100. We will let you know if we can help. VIDEO TRANSCRIPT: Hello everybody, this is Robert Mansour, and I'm a lawyer in the Los Angeles area. One of my areas of practice is personal injury law. Now most of the time I help my clients with the injury portion of their case, but sometimes I help them with the property damage as well.
One of the issues that comes up relative to property damage is whether or not you should rent a car and how you should go about doing it. You have a few options. The first option that you can do is not rent a car at all. If you don't really need to rent a car and maybe you don't need to do that and what you can ask for is something called "loss of use" which means that you can ask the other party's insurance company for something called "loss of use" which means, let's say, you were out of a car for a week or two weeks because of the accident. You can ask for roughly $20 or$25 a day for that rental even though you didn't really actually rent a car. They are compensating you for the loss of use of your vehicle. Now let's say you really do need to rent a car. The preferred method of it is to go through your own insurance company if you have rental insurance, and the reason for that is because they're your insurance company. They owe you a duty. You have a contract with them, and you go basically rent a car at a place, they pay for it, and you're done. The other thing that you can do also, if you don't have rental car insurance and you really need to rent a car, you can go to the other party's insurance company and ask them to rent a car for you. But here's the trick. Sometimes they'll say, "Oh, you can go ahead and rent a car and we'll pay you back." And so you go rent a car thinking everything is fine and then you come and ask them to pay you, and they're like, "Oh, you rented a car for $30 a day. We only pay $20 a day." And then you find yourself in a deficit. So make sure you find out how much they're going to pay for it before you even bother, but better yet find out if their insurance company has a relationship with a rental car company. For example, say, "Hey, listen, do you guys have a contract with Enterprise or Alamo or Hertz?" Because if they do it might be better for you to go there, present a claim number, and have them rent a car for you and then bill the other party's insurance company. Then you're done because generally speaking they haven't negotiated a rate so don't get yourself in a financial hole that you can't get out of. If you want to talk about this or other issues related to personal injury cases, please feel free to contact my office at the phone number listed on the screen, or you can also visit www.valencialawyer.com which is my website. Thank you very much for watching, and I hope you found this video to be helpful. If you need help with your Santa Clarita car accident case, give my office a call at (661) 414-7100. VIDEO TRANSCRIPT: Hello everybody, this is Robert Mansour. I'm making a brief video today here from my office in Los Angeles, California, where I practice personal injury law as one of my areas of practice.
In today's video, I thought we would spend of time talking about the issue of when will my personal injury case finish? When do I get paid? When does the insurance company give me a check? This is an issue for a lot of my clients. They're like, "When is my personal injury case going to be over?" Sometimes they call me every week. "Hey, have they made an offer yet? Have they given us any money yet? How much are we going to get?" Here's the thing. People have to understand that insurance companies take a long time to evaluate your case. They are not going to pay you any money prematurely. At the very beginning of the case, they're not going to say, "Here's how much we're going to pay you." Unless, of course, they are trying to settle with you quickly and they just offer you a couple of bucks. But if you've hired a lawyer and you are treating for your injuries, they are not going to just prematurely settle your case. One of the issues is you have to be finished with your treatment, so you can't call during the middle of your treatment and say, "Hey, listen, I have a few more weeks to go, but have we settled our case yet?" They're not going to settle the case until they know the full extent of your injuries. And frankly, it's in your best case not to settle your case until you have a full appreciation of what your injuries are. What if you have a residual injury? What if you have a problem that's going to bother you for many years to come? Do you really want to settle prematurely? Also, we need to present the insurance company with bills and reports. If you're still treating and you're not finished, we're not going to have all the bills and the reports that we need to give to the insurance company. So that's one of the issues that you need to know. If you're still treating, that's one issue. Number two, how much are you asking for? If you ask for $10 from the insurance company, the case will settle like this. It's settle in a few seconds. If you ask for $500 the case will probably settle. The more money you ask for, the more difficult it becomes to settle the case. If you're asking for $50,000, you're going to get some resistance from the insurance company. If you ask for $500,000, you can bet this case is going to take a long, long time. Generally speaking, the more money you ask for, the more documentation and proof and convincing an insurance company is going to require. Also, the more they will fight you. If you are asking them for $500,000, do you think they are going to roll over and write you a check? No, they're going to find out why, and they are also going to try to fight it. If you can't win, you're going to have to file a lawsuit against the party that hit you and who caused the accident. You're going to have to go after them and convince a jury that your case is worth $500,000. Sometimes clients say, "Why is it taking so long?" I tell them, "You're asking for a lot of money. They are going to take a long time." And so, there is a relationship there. The other issue is whether or not the adjuster is overworked. There are certain insurance companies that overwork their adjusters. The adjuster has about 200 and 300 files sitting on their desk. Don't expect the insurance adjuster to take home your file home and put it under their pillow and go to sleep. The insurance adjuster is not going to do that. The insurance adjuster has so many cases going on. They may not be able to give you the attention that you think your case deserves. They're just overworked. Also, some insurance adjusters are not very responsive. Just like in any area of life, there are certain people who do their job really well and certain people who do their job, okay? And some people who don't do their job at all. They're sitting at the office having coffee, drinking with their friends, going out to parties, coming in late. They don't get their work done on time. Every insurance company has certain adjusters who are like that. If you get assigned an adjuster who doesn't return your calls and is not responsive, that's sometimes just luck of the draw. Sometimes you have to go over their head and go to their supervisor. So that might affect how long it takes for a case to resolve. Also, certain adjusters are notorious for asking for further information. They want to know more, and they want to get this and they want to get this document and that document. Some of them are very what I call "tree people." You see, there are tree people and then there are forest people. In my opinion, some of the adjusters only look at trees and so they can only see this much. Then there are certain adjusters that see the forest, and they are the kind of people who see the forest from the trees. They don't need proof for every single minutia of detail. Unfortunately, some adjusters will actually ask you for more and more information simply as a stall mechanism because they really don't want to do the work. They just say, "Well, I need this document." "You don't really need that document, do you? You're just stalling, now. You don't really want to do your job." Unfortunately, sometimes the adjuster that you get assigned will affect how long your case takes. Another issue that sometimes affects how long a case takes is how responsive you are with your lawyer. If your lawyer asks you for this or for that, do you get them that information right away or do you take a week or two or three weeks before you get back to them? Sometimes the client themselves can delay the process of settling a case. Briefly, the length of how long it takes your personal injury case will depend upon a variety of factors. Usually, most injury cases take about five or six months to resolve, but yours might take more. It might take less. The point is that you should always keep in mind that there are a variety of factors that affect that. My name is Robert Mansour, and I want to thank you for watching this brief video. I hope you found it helpful. If you need help with your personal injury case, call our office at (661) 414-7100. One of the more rare yet serious injuries you can get from a car accident is an ear injury. It could be due to whiplash, deployment of an airbag, or other trauma incurred during a car accident. Here is some information about ear injuries that may occur in conjunction with auto accidents.
When we typically think of ear injuries or hearing loss, we usually associate it with listening to loud music or something similar for extended periods of time. We also might think of someone like a construction worker or someone else who works around loud noises all day. However, hearing loss can occur due to a sudden and traumatic event like a car accident. It can occur with a powerful blow to the side of the head or a severe whiplash injury. The injury can involve tinnitus (ringing sensation in the ear) or some other ear injury. The trauma can cause a dislocation or fracture in the bones located in the middle ear. In some cases, there can be a fracture to the cochlea which is also located in the inner ear and is the main sensory organ of hearing. A hole in the inner ear may lead to inner ear fluid leakage. In some cases, other bone fractures can lead to hearing loss and in some cases, bleeding in the inner ear. A TMJ injury can also cause damage to the jaw which, in turn, affects the nerves in the ear. The anatomy of the ear includes three main parts, the outer ear, the inner ear, and the middle ear. The outer ear captures sounds and sends them through the ear canal to the middle ear which contains the eardrum and three tiny bones known as the hammer, anvil, and stirrup. These three bones are collectively known as the ossicles. Damage to these tiny bones or surrounding structures of the ear can sometimes cause serious hearing loss. Also, you can suffer an ear injury simply by being exposed to a very loud noise. Some car accidents can involve noises at very high decibels. Loud sounds at certain decibels can cause damage to the inner ear structures and in some cases, cause permanent hearing loss. How can you prove an ear injury case? How do you prove hearing loss? Just like any injury that may involve a car accident, you need to have a medical professional document the injury very well from the very first day. If the injury doesn't "surface" until several weeks after the accident, the insurance adjuster may doubt the causal connection between the accident and the injury. Therefore, even if you suspect any minor problem, you should bring it up your doctor in order to document the injury. Remember, most insurance adjusters are inclined to doubt your injury. Some adjusters think everyone is out there trying to "game the system." Failure to properly document injuries is one of the biggest reason that personal injuries cases fail or fall short. In addition to properly documenting the injury, you're going to want an "ear nose and throat" doctor and/or a professional audiologist to prepare a report that clearly links the hearing loss you have to the automobile accident. There needs to be a connection. You must demonstrate the injury was "most likely" from the car accident. You don't have to be 100% sure. This is what is known as "preponderance of the evidence." Then, you have to show you did everything you could to try to improve your situation. This is known as your duty to "mitigate your damages." You just can't sit around and let your hearing loss (or other ear injury) get worse and do nothing about it. However, after you've done all you can, and you've gone through whatever therapy and treatment you can, you're going to reach a plateau of one kind or another. First, you may find that you totally regained your hearing which would be wonderful. Second, you may have some kind of permanent deficit, or at least one that's going to last for the foreseeable future. You can't really know this until you've tried all the medical avenues available to you. Also, an adjuster is more likely going to believe you if you've done all you can to better your situation. Any permanent deficit needs to be documented by a medical professional. If you suspect you suffered an ear injury from an auto accident, you must act very quickly. Any delay in diagnosis and/or treatment can backfire. Go see an experienced personal injury attorney and discuss your case with him or her. If you live in the Santa Clarita area (and surrounding communities), please feel free to contact my office for a free consultation. Our number is (661) 414-7100. VIDEO TRANSCRIPT: Hello everybody, this is Robert Mansour, and I'm broadcasting from my home office here in Los Angeles, California, where one of my areas of practice is Personal Injury Law. I want to talk in this video segment about a question that often comes up which is I'm sitting there talking to a client, we're having a consultation and a question that often comes up is they say, “Well, can't I do this on my own?” The answer is, “Yes, you can. You can also do your own dental work if you want.
Truth be told there are certain cases where if the damage is very low or if it's only about property damage or it's just a little bump, generally speaking there's no problem. You can take care of it yourself. There's really no problem with that. The other issue is if you have some serious injuries or injuries that are more than just a little bump, then you might want to get a lawyer involved because their guidance can be very important in a case like that. There are a lot of things that people do to themselves that harm their personal injury case, and sometimes they don't even realize they're doing it. They think it's perfectly fine, but what they don't do is that the insurance company is going to be using that against them later on. So it's nice to have a guide with you. The analogy that I often use is that of river rafting. If you go river rafting, generally speaking, you are going to want to have a guide with you in that boat. You don't want to go down the river by yourself. You want a guide who's been down that river who knows where all the drops are, who knows where the rocks are, who knows where the twists and turns are. Somebody who's been down the river many times can be of great value to you. The final thing that sometimes I tell my clients is, I say, “Look. Sometimes if you're kind of on the fence about whether or not to get a lawyer involved, some people just don't want to deal with it.” They're very busy. They don't have the time to talk to insurance adjusters and get medical records together and write reports and try to negotiate a settlement and deal with all the different lien holders in the case and different health insurance companies, et cetera. They're busy. They don't have the time, so they figure, you know what? I don't care if the lawyer gets a fee because they're being helpful to me. They're helping me handle this, and I don't have to worry about it. All I have to do is to go to the doctor and get better. So sometimes having a lawyer helps you especially in a serious case. Then in a moderate case not terribly serious, but moderate case sometimes it's helpful to have that lawyer because they're like that river guide that person who is sitting next to you, helping you out like your co-pilot. Then, of course, the final issue is the lawyer is helping you. The lawyer is doing the things that you don't want to take the time to do. That is a very valuable service in many cases. Again, my name is Robert Mansour. If you want a free consultation regarding your personal injury case, please feel free to contact my office. Thank you very much. VIDEO TRANSCRIPT: Hi, my name is Robert Mansour, and today I'm broadcasting to you from my home office in Los Angeles. One of my areas of practice is personal injury, and I want to share a brief story with you regarding how important it is to mention all of your injuries to every single doctor that you go to after a personal injury case. You see, one of the reasons that clients have trouble with their personal injury cases is that they go to one doctor and they mention a couple of injuries. They go to another doctor, they mention different injuries. It makes sense because if you go to an orthopedic doctor you don't want to tell them about necessarily things that are not related to his field.
Let's say, you're having some vision trouble after the accident. You may not mention that to the orthopedic doctor because you figure what does the orthopedist have to do with my vision? Or you might be having trouble with your vision after an accident. Do you go to an eye doctor and you forget to mention the fact that you're having severe shoulder pain or severe hip pain after the accident or you're having your chest wall is hurting you ever time you breathe in? You may not mention that to the eye doctor. Basically, the illustrations can go on and on, but here's the deal. The insurance company evaluating your case, that personal injury adjuster who is watching your case, they are going to be looking at those records with great detail. They're going to see what did this person complain of, what was this person complaining of at this doctor, what did they complain about at this doctor and here's the short nugget here to the take-away if you will. If something is not in the medical records it's like it never happened. That's right. If something is not in the medical records,s ou the insurance adjuster simply won't consider it. As a matter of fact, sometimes they will use the discrepancies against you. They will say, “Well, you didn't mention that injury to this doctor, but you mentioned it to this doctor.” You don't understand the difference. Why? Did you just introduce that injury? Your argument will be, “No. I didn't think it was necessary to tell that doctor about that injury.” Again, this will be used against you. Basically, what you want to do is every time you go to any doctor for any personal injury case, especially if there's an intake form that you need to fill out, take that opportunity to tell the doctor every single thing that bothers you. Start with your hair and move your way all the way down your body. If your hands hurt, your shoulder, your back. By the way, the back is upper, middle and lower. So you also want to be very specific in your complaints and very illustrative and demonstrative with your complaints. Don't just say, my back hurts. That doesn't really help explain anything. If you say, “I have shooting pain that goes down my back into my leg like sciatica, and it bothers me every 15 minutes and it's like somebody poking me with a pen very, very sharply.” That's a little bit better than just simply saying, my back hurts. So once again make sure you mention every single injury to every single doctor that you go see after a personal injury case. Also, make sure that you're very specific about your complaints, not just that simply this hurts or this hurts. That doesn't really help anybody appreciate what you're going through. Thank you very much for watching this brief video. My name is Robert Mansour, and I appreciate you visiting. If you need help with your personal injury case, please contact my office to schedule a free initial consultation. I will let you know if I can help you or not. |
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April 2024
by Robert MansourRobert Mansour is a personal injury lawyer serving Santa Clarita, Valencia, |