Dixon Car Accident and Personal Injury Lawyers

Doesn’t matter if you were in a car accident or slip and fall. Here are some steps to take to protect yourself.

1. Get to a safe space
2. Take photos of the scene of your injury if you’re able to safely do so. If it’s a car accident, take photos, if you have slipped or fallen, take photos of what caused your fall, etc.
3. Obtain transport to be checked out by an ER or Doctor (Oftentimes with the way our bodies deal with shock, it’s not uncommon to not “feel” badly in the immediate aftermath of a car crash, just remember to seek treatment if you start feeling pain in the hours after being involved with a crash).
4. If you’re injured at a business, restaurant, bar, or workplace, report it right away. This puts them on notice and they have to keep any evidence of what happened. You might need to file a lawsuit to get video evidence, but you can always take pictures yourself. If something caused your injury, like broken glass in your drink or the wrong medication, keep it for your lawyer to test. Don’t give it to the business, as they might destroy or alter it.
5. Before speaking with any insurance companies, it’s important to contact a lawyer. If the person who caused your accident had minimal or no insurance, you may need to seek uninsured or underinsured motorist coverage from your own insurance company. Even in this situation, your own insurance company could use your recorded statement against you to minimize your recovery. If you have a premises liability case, insurance companies will want to know a lot about what happened and what you were doing at the time of the accident, which could devalue your claim. Always speak with a lawyer before speaking with an insurance company.
6. Ensure that you follow up with all treatment professionals’ instructions, and do everything they say to ensure a quick physical recovery, and to preserve your rights to a meaningful financial recovery. Gaps in treatment are the insurance companies favorite way to minimize a claim by stating that, “if someone were really hurt they wouldn’t miss any of their treatment”.

Common injuries we handle in personal injury cases are broken bones, fractures, ligament strains, and concussions. If you have any injuries stemming from an auto accident the most important thing you can do is to seek treatment for all injuries. While we can never tell a client when they come in how much a case is worth, one way that we’re able to appraise the value of a case is how much medical treatment someone had to endure, and then discuss with the client how the injury impacted their day-to-day life. Were they able to play with their children, attend work, take a shower, pick up items to perform household chores, drive to medical appointments, etc. Once we discuss with you what a reasonable number might be, we submit that demand to the responsible insurance company that was covering the Defendant/Tortfeasor (person who caused your injury).

If they agree to pay the specified amount this is called a “Settlement”. If they refuse to pay what’s fair, or offer an amount lower than you wish to take this is when we would prepare a lawsuit, file it with our county circuit clerk’s office, have the defendant/tortfeasor served, and set the case ultimately for a trial so that a Lee County jury can determine what a fair recovery is for your personal injury case. There are key areas after a lawsuit is filed that may allow a settlement to occur even after a lawsuit is filed but the biggest threat an injured person has, is that their lawyer will drag the insurance company through the mud in front of a jury. Also, there are no hard and fast rules on what a fair amount might be for any case generally. Fair is ultimately what the client thinks is fair, and then adjusted to what previous cases may have been assigned at trial in their respective area. You may have heard that the value of a case is 3 times the total of medical bills. While that sometimes can be a standard metric on some cases, often times it falls critically short. For example if the injured party had a large income that was curtailed or reduced based on the permanence of the injury sustained, or if it’s a lifetime debilitating injury, a simple calculation of medical bills being multiplied doesn’t compare to the amount of financial loss a victim would suffer if that was the bench mark that was applied to appraising their claim.

As an example if your case involved a fractured sternum with a typical recovery, and a normal amount of medical appointments, we can typically find a similar case within the surrounding area and see how much a jury awarded in that real case. We can then provide that case information to the insurance company and say this is what we’re likely to get at trial, and we’re going to ask for even more because our case is distinguishable in these other ways, etc. Simply being prepared, and being willing to take cases to trial is one sure fire way to get a better recovery for all clients than what will happen if someone brings on a lawyer that does not file lawsuits or tries to handle their case on their own.

Illinois sets a time limit of two years to file a personal injury lawsuit in the state’s civil court system. In most cases, this two-year time limit, known as a “statute of limitations,” begins to run on the date of the accident. Sometimes, however, a statute of limitations might run from the date that you discovered you were injured, rather than the date of the event that injured you. This later date is known as a “discovery date.”

For injury claims against a city or county, you have one year to file a lawsuit. The time limit to sue the state is generally two years, but you must file a formal claim within one year in order to sue.

For an honest, free, and compassionate consultation about your Dixon or Lee County, Illinois personal injury case, feel free to call or text message us confidentially at (815) 964-8303. Remember, our service comes at absolutely no cost to you unless we earn a recovery on your behalf. Let our law firm help you or your loved one navigate the legal side of your case and fight for your financial recovery, while you focus on your physical recovery.