Did you know that if you get injured at work, then you do not have to use your vacation time or sick leave to take time off work while you heal? If your case is approved, you can get paid time off work.
That’s why you need to learn about the personal injury claim process, so you don’t make any mistakes during it resulting in you not receiving the compensation you deserve. Keep reading to find out more.
Inform Your Workplace
The first thing you will have to do is inform your workplace of your accident. It’s important to get them into the loop right away, even if your injuries aren’t serious.
This way they can start the worker’s compensation claims or any other related claims for you and they can also ensure that such an injury doesn’t happen to some other employee down the road.
Get Medical Treatment and Keep All Records
If your injury is serious enough, you will want to go to a doctor and get treated right away. Even if your injuries aren’t serious, make sure you take picture evidence of it all, so you have a record of everything that happened, in case your case does go to court.
These records will also be useful for you when you hire a personal injury lawyer because they will use them to investigate your claim and to ask for compensation from the other party.
Consult a Mount Pleasant Lawyer
Wherever you are located, there will be personal injury lawyers you can seek out. Do a Google search or speak to folks in your circle, to find a personal injury lawyer that will work well for your case.
Speak to a couple of different ones, so you can see what they say about your case and how enthusiastic they seem about the whole claim process. This way you can make sure you hire someone who’s going to fight hard for you and your rights.
Personal Injury Lawyer Would Investigate Claim
After you have hired a personal injury lawyer that you trust, then you can rely upon them to take over the entire process. They would start investigating the claim to figure out how strong your case is.
In most cases, the lawyer would be happy to take on your claim and fight for you. But sometimes, the case might not be strong enough, or the injury you incurred might be due to your own negligence.
At that point, the lawyer might recommend not putting in a claim, as it could cause further damage to you and/or your reputation.
The Lawyer Makes a Demand to the Other Side
Before the case even goes to trial, the lawyer can make a demand to the other side, to see if they could like to settle out of court. A lot of personal injury cases are settled out of court because the hassle of going through a trial isn’t worth it for the parties involved.
If you are dealing with a large corporation or a multinational organization, in most cases, they would rather deal with your claim outside of the courts, as they don’t want negative publicity. If the demand your lawyer made is accepted by the other party, you will get the compensation you desire, and that’s the end of the claim process.
You File a Personal Injury Lawsuit With Your Lawyer
But if the other party doesn’t agree to your demands, maybe because they don’t believe it’s their fault or because the demand is too exorbitant (according to them), then you would take the next step in the claims process which is to file a personal injury lawsuit.
That is, your lawyer will do this for you. They have probably filed dozens of these cases already, and that’s why relying upon them to take care of this would be the best solution for you.
Mediation and Negotiation
This is when a chunk of your injury claim process will take place. There’s going to be a bunch of back and forth where your lawyer and the lawyers from the other side will negotiate to figure out the compensation that would work best for both sides.
This would be a compromise, where the push/pull would result in a number that both sides can agree to. If the negotiation doesn’t work, the lawyers might call in a neutral third-party mediator to try and resolve the compensation issue.
Trial Begins
Sometimes, the negotiation and/or mediation will come to a satisfactory close, and the trial wouldn’t go further than that. But if both parties are still not able to find a happy medium, then the trial will commence and both parties will present evidence for their side.
The judge and/or jury would use this evidence to figure out which side is in the right and which one is in the wrong. The trial can go on for several weeks or months, depending on how complicated the case is and how much evidence is available to share.
Keep in mind that trials get scheduled for a certain date, but usually, they get pushed back because of the judge’s busy schedule. So don’t assume that it’s unfavorable for you if this happens. Stay calm and steady and soon enough the end of your personal injury claim will arrive.
Hire a Mount Pleasant Attorney to Get Appropriate Compensation
Now that you are aware of the personal injury claim process, you can contact a Mount Pleasant lawyer and work on getting the right compensation for your injuries, both physical and emotional.
If you are still searching for a personal injury attorney, contact us today. We would love to fight for your case, so you can move on from this incident in your life and start living your life again.