Newton County, AR Personal Injury Lawyer

Suffering injuries because of someone else’s negligent conduct could leave you with overwhelming medical damages for which you may seek compensation in a lawsuit.

Our attorneys can help victims navigate personal injury claims for many accidents, including those caused by negligent car drivers, property owners, and product manufacturers. To prove liability for a victim’s injuries, we must show that those injuries exist, which requires carefully gathering and organizing medical records. While we prepare claims, we can anticipate a defendant’s possible comparative fault defense and plan to address it, potentially through eyewitness statements, expert testimony, or video evidence. Furthermore, we can accurately track all expenses from personal injuries, such as all hospital and medical costs, and use the appropriate calculations to quantify victims’ intangible damages from negligence.

To get a free case assessment from our personal injury lawyers, call (479) 316-0438 today.

Handling Personal Injury Claims for Car Accidents in Newtown County, AR

Auto accidents cause many of the personal injuries to victims in Newtown County and elsewhere, as cars have the capacity to cause serious damage, even during low-speed collisions.

When handling personal injury claims for car accidents, our lawyers may begin by reviewing physical evidence from the scene. We can obtain crash reports from law enforcement, analyze photos from police, victims, and eyewitnesses, and involve accident reconstruction experts. After reviewing evidence, these experts can make various determinations, including each driver’s speed at the time of impact.

Determining how the negligent driver breached their duty of care will be vital for your financial recovery. When investigating the accident, our personal injury lawyers will aim to confirm how the other driver was negligent, such as speeding, running a stoplight, or making an illegal turn. Part of proving liability for personal injuries is showing how the defendant breached their owed duty of care. During our investigation into an accident, our lawyers will look for evidence that achieves this, such as eyewitness testimony and surveillance footage. Despite being inadmissible in court, our lawyers will obtain crash reports from law enforcement to rule out potential contributing factors, identify witnesses, and help determine an accident’s sequence of events.

Suing for Product and Premises Liability Injuries in Newtown County, AR

Negligence can take many forms, such as property owners failing to ensure safe environments for visitors or manufacturers distributing defective products, such as common household appliances, that might injure consumers.

Premises liability claims arise when victims are hurt by negligent property maintenance. This is a major cause of workplace accidents and injuries in Newtown County, and victims hurt on the job might have to file Workers’ Compensation claims instead of personal injury lawsuits, which our lawyers can also assist with to ensure victims’ maximum recoveries.

Injuries from malfunctioning products and equipment also happen frequently in workplaces such as construction sites. In these situations, injured workers may file third-party lawsuits against at-fault manufacturers to recover non-economic damages in addition to hospital expenses and lost wages. If you are hurt by a defective product at home, like a household appliance, you could also file a claim against the negligent manufacturer. After defective product accidents, victims should keep any packaging, instructions, and other materials that came with the product, as well as the product itself.

Filing a Complaint for Personal Injuries in Newtown County, AR

Your injury lawsuit begins with a complaint filed in court containing the basic facts about the accident, your damages, and the defendant’s negligence. We can ensure this complaint gets filed on time and within three years of an accident in Newtown County.

The three-year statute of limitations applies to all personal injury cases unless our lawyers determine that a rare tolling exception applies. While you have the full amount of time provided under the law to file your complaint, our lawyers will aim to do so much sooner than three years, as waiting to file could cause unintended consequences.

When writing the complaint, we will name the defendant, explain the duty of care they owed you, state how they breached it, and request your desired compensation. Once this complaint is filed in court, the defendant will be notified of the lawsuit and might want to negotiate a settlement to keep the case out of court, and our lawyers can help you navigate this process as well.

Medical Evidence of Personal Injuries in Newtown County, AR Lawsuits

In injury claims, our lawyers must present evidence of victims’ exact injuries and all medical treatments they have received thus far. Because of this, we will seek to obtain all relevant medical records, including those from immediately after the accident and from a victim’s continuous treatment in the following weeks and months.

Immediate Medical Records

When victims suffer injuries from negligence, they may call 911 and request assistance from emergency medical services. When paramedics arrive to give you emergency attention and take you to the hospital, they will record all care given at the scene and in the ambulance. These records can outline your immediate injuries and help prove causation by confirming you were injured at the scene and during the accident caused by the defendant. Causation is one of the crucial elements of personal injury claims that our lawyers must prove when lawsuits go to trial instead of settling out of court.

Continuous Medical Records

While emergency room records can show the immediate treatment you received and how your injuries presented upon your arrival at the hospital after an accident, our attorneys will need additional records to solidify your injuries and their cost. Because of this, victims must continue following all aspects of their treatment plans, accept referrals to specialists, and focus on their physical recoveries. Stopping your care for any reason could lead to gaps in your medical records that make it harder to prove your injuries continue affecting you financially or emotionally. Throughout your case, we can continue requesting medical records from hospitals and doctors to have clear evidence of your injuries and their exact treatment costs.

Past Medical Records

In some injury claims, like for slip and falls due to negligent property maintenance, defendants might contend that victims’ injuries were worsened due to a pre-existing condition, making them liable for fewer damages. In anticipation of this, our attorneys can obtain past medical records that either confirm you did not have a pre-existing condition or injury or that any pre-existing injury is unrelated to your current ones caused by the defendant. In these situations, having medical experts testify in addition to presenting victims’ past medical records may be prudent.

Anticipating Comparative Fault’s Impact on Newtown County, AR Personal Injury Claims

Arkansas is a modified comparative fault state. In all personal injury claims, every involved party’s actions during the accident are considered. Victims found to have shared fault for their injuries could recover fewer damages or be barred from receiving any compensation at all.

When we start building your case, we can consider whether or not comparative fault might be an issue. Anticipating such arguments from the defense could be necessary to ensure your full financial recovery after an accident. Ark. Code. § 16-64-122 dictates that victims’ recoveries should lower proportionally to their degree of liability unless they are 50% or more at fault, in which case they would be fully blocked from recovering any compensatory damages from another party.

Defendants might point to statements victims made at the scene of an accident, like apologizing for a car crash, as examples of comparative fault. This is one reason why keeping conversations with a negligent party minimal immediately after an accident is important.

One of the most effective approaches to comparative fault arguments is eyewitness testimony. Soon after you are hurt, our personal injury lawyers can identify and contact witnesses to schedule interviews. Preserving their statements as quickly as possible is vital, as witnesses might forget small yet crucial details over time. We can also investigate potential video sources, like security cameras nearby or on the premises, and quickly preserve relevant footage showing the defendant’s negligence as the sole cause of the accident.

Common Expenses for Personal Injury Victims in Newtown County, AR

The first major expense for injury victims is typically emergency room care. Those hurt in car accidents might also incur property damage costs immediately, though hospital expenses are often the most impactful right away.

Emergency room treatment might include trauma care for broken bones, immediate surgery for a brain or spinal cord injury, or diagnostic tests like X-rays, MRIs, and CT scans. Medical costs can add up quickly, and having our lawyers there to monitor these charges can help victims stay organized in advance of their compensation claims.

Medical expenses could continue for years after a personal injury lawsuit ends. Victims with permanent or hard-to-heal injuries could need months or years of physical therapy, additional surgeries, and prescription medication refills. When calculating your medical damages from an injury, our lawyers will factor in future expenses and may call on physicians to testify in court to confirm you will need this additional care.

After suffering serious injuries, victims might be unable to drive themselves to and from doctor visits. They might need special transportation accommodations, such as vehicles with room for wheelchairs, and our attorneys can track these types of expenses and request compensation for them as well. Victims who need to make modifications to their homes to accommodate injuries, such as installing wheelchair ramps, can also seek compensation for those costs in lawsuits against liable parties.

Quantifying Non-Economic Damages in Newtown, AR Personal Injury Lawsuits

One of the most challenging aspects of injury claims for victims is appreciating their non-economic damages, which inherently do not have attached monetary value. After fully understanding the extent of your injuries and how they affect your quality of life, our attorneys can estimate your deserved non-economic recovery.

Generally speaking, there are two methods for quantifying non-economic damages, one being the multiplier method. To start, our lawyers will choose an appropriate multiplier based on the severity of your injuries, likely between 1.5 and 5. Then, we will multiply that by your total economic damages, which include medical expenses and lost wages, among other expenses. We may use the multiplier method if your economic damages are exceptionally high and your injuries are severe.

The second method is the per diem method. The first step is assigning a daily rate to your emotional distress, typically based on your daily earnings and the severity of the injury, among other factors. Our lawyers would then multiply that daily rate by the number of days we anticipate you experiencing pain and suffering. We may base this timeline on mental health experts’ assessments after they evaluate you.

To help solidify requests for non-economic damages, we may suggest that you keep a journal to document your daily pain and suffering. You can use this journal to record changes to your life since the accident, like being unable to work or engage in favorite hobbies, and note how these changes have affected your overall well-being.

While defendants might cover victims’ non-economic damages in settlements, this typically only happens after staunch negotiations. We will carefully evaluate all settlement proposals against our calculations of your financial and intangible damages, so we only advise you to accept a fair offer that appropriately compensates you.

Call Our Lawyers in Newtown County, AR About Your Injury Lawsuit

Call our personal injury lawyers at (479) 316-0438 for a free and confidential case analysis.