In a South Carolina personal injury claim, your settlement may consist of several different types of damages. Compensatory damages are meant to help you recover what you lost in an accident, such as compensation for medical bills or lost income from missed time at work.
After an accident that results in serious or permanent injuries, you will have to work with the insurance company in order to recover any compensation for your accident. Hiring a South Carolina personal injury lawyer to negotiate with the insurance company is strongly advised.
The Benefits of Working with a Personal Injury Attorney in South Carolina
An attorney is familiar with your rights as well as the negligence laws in South Carolina. If your attorney cannot negotiate a fair settlement with the insurance company, they may take your personal injury claim to trial in the form of a lawsuit.
To defend the validity of your claim, your Charleston personal injury attorney may also work with different specialists. For example, your attorney may work with a financial expert to calculate your potential future damages related to lost wages if you are permanently disabled.
A medical specialist may also be called on to estimate the future cost of your medical treatments and rehabilitation. Any compensation you recover through a South Carolina personal injury claim will be specific to your accident and how it affected your life.
Categories of Compensation for an Injury
General compensation categories include:
- Medical bills
- Lost wages
- Loss of future earning ability
- Loss of quality of life
If the liable party acted in an extremely malicious manner, the court may even award punitive damages that are larger than the compensatory settlement. This is intended to deter the party from acting in a similar way in the future. You can visit our article library to learn more about how to preserve your South Carolina personal injury claim.
How Your Attorney Can Help You Determine Your Settlement
Our goal at Shelly Leeke Law Firm is to provide you with all of the insight possible so that when the time comes to file a claim for the losses you have, you always have access to comprehensive insight and legal strategy. Our legal team will work with you to determine what your settlement is likely to be. To do that, we look at several things.
What Happened to Cause Your Accident
While assigning blame is something the police will do, there are some situations where there are more parties to blame than just the other driver. Our goal is to pursue all responsible parties to hold them accountable. That could be the other driver’s employer or the company that made repairs to the vehicle.
What Your Losses Might Be
Look beyond just the medical bills. Your personal injury settlement value should encompass all of the losses you have. That often goes much further than just medical bills. We help you to consider all of the losses you have right now but also those that you have in the future. Here are some examples:
- You suffer from ongoing pain and suffering. It limits you from engaging in activities that you have always enjoyed.
- The injuries you sustained make it impossible for you to do the same job. You need help learning something new or compensation for being unable to work.
- Your home needs significant upgrades to make it possible for you to navigate it, or you need in-home help because you can no longer manage the process.
- Emotional distress has impacted your well-being, and you’re not struggling with depression or anxiety, often feeling unable to go to work or engage in activities.
- There are numerous implications to the way you have to live, such as taking medications, being unable to drive a car, or no longer being able to play sports.
Your settlement should include all of the losses you have. That includes economic losses, like missed time at work and changes to your earning capacity, but also losses related to non-economic losses, like struggles with your relationships and the onset of depression.
We Negotiate Your Claim for You
When you are facing a wide range of losses, your goal may be to just settle for whatever you can get. We do not advise this. Rather, we aim to help you fight for maximum compensation based on all of the losses you have due to the other party’s negligence. By working hard like this, we can help ensure that you are given access to the compensation you need to restructure and rebuild your life.
Think about how this incident has impacted you. How much has your life changed as a result? What specifically can we do to help you to improve those outcomes? While we cannot take away the pain or the loss, we can work closely with you to get compensation for the costly losses that you have had since the incident occurred. Let our attorney help you.
Seeking the Help of a Charleston Personal Injury Attorney
If you have been injured in an accident, the South Carolina personal injury attorney team at the Shelly Leeke Law Firm is available to help you. Our firm focuses on personal injury cases, including injuries from auto accidents, pedestrian and bicycle injuries, work-related injuries, workers’ compensation claims, and injuries resulting from dangerous prescription drugs.
Before you file a South Carolina personal injury claim, request a free copy of our South Carolina injury book. When you’re ready to get started on settling your accident claim, contact a Charleston personal injury attorney for a free information packet and consultation.
