What to bring to your personal injury consultation

5/31/2017

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

Hello everyone, this is Robert Mansour, and I want to spend a couple of minutes now talking about what to bring to your initial personal injury consultation with the attorney. Let's begin. The first thing you want to bring with you is the police report if you have one. If you don't have a police report, find out when it's going to be available. Usually the officers will give you a little card at the scene with a report number on it, and a phone number. You should call and find out when that police report is going to be available. Your own insurance company might have already obtained a copy of the police report. You might want to call them, and see if they have it, or if they have access to it. At the very least, find out when it's going to be available.

The next thing you should bring to your personal injury consultation is any and all photos you have of the damage to your car, any injuries to your body. Any photos of damage to the car that hit you. Pictures speak a thousand words, and it's very compelling when you have very good pictures. Take pictures from different angles, don't just take a real close up picture that doesn't really tell the story. Take a picture from different angles, different distances. Remember, the insurance adjuster's job is to belittle your case from the very beginning. Your job is to make sure that they don't belittle your case by taking decent photos to tell the story of just how bad your accident was.

The next thing you want to bring is insurance information. If you have insurance information of the responsible party, claim number, phone numbers of the claims adjuster you've been speaking to, the claims adjusters. They have a policy number that you might have. Maybe you have a claim number. All of the information that you have about the other party. You want to bring your insurance information. You want to specifically bring something called your declarations page. People say, "What's the declarations page?" The declarations page is a summary of all the insurance that you have on your policy. Usually when you get that little card in the mail that you put in your glove compartment, and it's proof of insurance. Your declarations page is usually with that. It shows all the different kinds of insurance that you have. Here's why you need that. Number one, if you're going to bring a claim, you have to establish that you have insurance. Number two, we may need to approach your insurance company if the other party doesn't have adequate insurance, or perhaps they have no insurance at all. That would be important to bring.

You want to make sure that you bring any of your personal information, an address, phone number, all of that stuff the attorney's really going to need that to be able to help you in evaluating your case. If you have any information about witnesses, people who saw the accident, who could testify about the accident. That would be very helpful as well.

If you've been to a hospital or any other medical care, see if you can get your medical records that you already have. Let's say you have an accident and then you went to the hospital and then you went to urgent care. Maybe you went to your own doctor. You might want to try to get your medical records and billing from all of those places. That might be helpful as well. At the very least, a list of all the medical care that you have received up to that point. If you don't have any medical care after that point, that's okay, but if you do you want to make a list of it and bring it to your attorney, because they're not going to just know about that. You need to communicate that to them.

Armed with this preliminary information about how the accident happened, the attorney might be able to give you some advice about what your options are going to be. At your first initial consultation, present the attorney with the information, listen to all of the options. You're under no pressure, usually. Just go ahead and think about it, and then make the best decision that is best for you and for your family. By the way, that decision might be not to bring a claim at all. You might decide, "You know what, it's too much trouble, it's too much risk, I don't really want to go through all this." That's a perfectly legitimate decision.

You might decide that you do want to pursue a claim. In which case, you might be able to pursue on your own, or you might be able to pursue it with the help of an attorney. A good lawyer will tell you whether or not you are better served having a lawyer, or better served, perhaps, not involving an attorney, and just doing it on your own. I hope you found this video very helpful. Thank you very much. Please call my office if I can be of assistance.

Call us at (661) 414-7100 to see if we can help with your personal injury case.

Understanding general damages

5/17/2017

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

Hello, everyone. This is Robert Mansour. I wanted to make a brief video today about general damages. You see, if you've been involved in a serious automobile accident, a serious car accident, and you are injured and you want to bring a claim, there are two components to your case. The first component is what's called special damages or the economic damages. Those are damages that can be easily measured such as medial bills, lost wages from your work, the damage to your car, things that are quantifiable generally, that there's some kind of estimate or a receipt or some kind of a bill.

Then, there's something called your general damages. Your general damages are generally your pain and suffering. It's a much more subjective analysis. You might think your pain and suffering is way up here, but the insurance company thinks your pain and suffering is way down here.

How do you convey general damages? Well, the best way to do it is to keep a journal of how the accident is affecting you. Anytime you have a particularly rough day, write it down. Write down what happened, what challenges you've had, who might be able to corroborate that. For example, let's say you had a really bad day at work. There was so much pain, and you have to keep getting up and taking breaks, walking around the office so that your back doesn't hurt you so much. Maybe you had a colleague take you home early several times because you were in so much pain.

Those are the kinds of things that you need to write down and journal. It doesn't have to be everyday. It could be every few days, or if you have a particularly rough day. Say for example you had to cancel a family vacation, or you had stay off of work for a long period of time. Let's say for example you couldn't go out with friends because you were in so much pain, or you canceled a big family birthday. A whole bunch of things you can write down and keep track of, because here's the thing: The insurance adjuster who is evaluating the case is not going to know about those things unless you tell him or her, unless you convey it to them. The other thing I like to do is near the end of the case when I'm about to present your case to the insurance company is I like to prepare declarations for you to sign, for your family to sign, for friends to sign, people who observed how the accident affected your life.

If you've been involved in a serious Santa Clarita car accident and need an attorney's advice, give our office a call to see if we can assist you.

10 Things to do Following a Car Accident

5/14/2017

1) Stop as soon as you can and move your vehicle only if it is safe to do so. There's no need to unnecessarily hold up all the other traffic. If the positions of the vehicles involved in the accident are important to preserve, take photos of the scene then move if it's safe to do so.

2) If anyone is injured, call 911 and inform the police. If there are no injuries, or relatively minor complaints, the police probably won't come to the scene.

3) If the accident involves a "hit and run" situation, most car insurance policies require that you inform the police within a specified period of time and to also inform your insurance company. Call your company or broker to check on those details. Otherwise, you may not be covered for the hit and run.

4) Try to get the names and addresses of all the people who were involved in the accident. Also try to obtain their driver's licence numbers and vehicle license plate numbers. These days, having a cell phone will make things much easier as you can simply take photos of plates and licenses. If you can, also take photos of any registration information. Oftentimes, the person driving a car is not necessarily the registered owner of the car.

5) Obtain names, addresses, and phone numbers of any passengers involved and any witnesses to the accident.

6) Make sure to take plenty of photos of the accident scene. Also, take several pictures showing the damage to your car. Make sure the photos you take are from several different angles and distances. Also, try to take photos of all the other vehicles involved in the accident. Sometimes, your car may not look so bad, but that's only part of the story. That's why it's important to take photos of all vehicle involved. Also, take photos of any injuries you might have.

7) Notify your insurance company and/or insurance broker of the accident. Keeping the accident a secret from your company may not be wise as many auto insurance companies require you to report accidents to them. If you don't, you might be in violation of your policy in which case you might be denied coverage should you later decide to make a claim or if a claim is brought against you.

8) If anyone involved in the accident was hurt, or if the damage to your vehicle exceeds $750, you need to notify the DMV within 10 days of the accident. This is done by filing an SR1 form. This form can be downloaded from the DMV website. The more information you have, the easier it will be to fill out the form. Ask your insurance company and/or broker for help if you need assistance.

9) If you are injured, you should get medical attention as soon as possible. Your health and well being are very important. This is not the time to be brave and stoic.

10) Consult with an experienced personal injury attorney if you want to review your legal options.