Personal Injury Frequently Asked Questions
Do you have questions about personal injury law and hiring a Montana accident attorney? You probably never expected to be forced to cope with a severe injury or death that is caused by another’s carelessness, negligence, or malice. It is natural to have questions about what to do after being injured or after someone you care about is killed or injured. You have taken the first step by seeking more information about hiring a lawyer. Below are some of the common questions that potential new clients regularly ask, as well as some that you may have.
Personal injury law is a type of civil law that involves claims and lawsuits by a claimant against those who have carelessly, negligently, or maliciously harmed another (and that person’s insurance company). It is a type of “tort law.” In a personal injury case, the at-fault person is referred to as the defendant or tortfeasor. In personal injury civil litigation, the person bringing the lawsuit is the plaintiff. The plaintiff is usually an injured person (or persons) or, in wrongful death and survivorship cases, the personal representative and wrongful death claimants.
While wrongful death and survivorship cases are sometimes referred to separately from personal injury cases, they are still handled by personal injury attorneys. Similarly, wrongful death and survivorship attorneys are a type of personal injury attorney – as are car accident lawyers, commercial truck accident lawyers, motorcycle accident lawyers, product liability lawyers for defective products, bicycle accident lawyers, and similar injury-focused attorneys. Ideally, an attorney handling each of these types of cases should have experience within that field and have previously dealt with similar cases.
Insurance companies are involved in almost every case. Knowing how to deal with them is a crucial aspect of handling a personal injury claim. These insurance companies insure the defendant and are responsible for paying a settlement or judgment against the defendant (sometimes up to a certain amount) and hiring the insurance defense attorneys who represent the defendant. The defendant is the person typically named in the lawsuit or claim. However, under the terms of most consumer insurance policies, it is the insurance company that contractually has the right to decide whether to settle the case and for what amount. Despite this, most juries are never informed that the insurance company exists, often makes the legal and strategic decisions in the case, or that the insurance company will be the one paying for any recovery against the defendant. But in personal injury claims and lawsuits, the insurance company is usually the one deciding whether the Defendant settles or the case goes to trial.
Generally, a personal injury lawyer represents the plaintiff (or plaintiffs) against the defendant (or defendants), the defendant’s insurance company, and the defendant’s and insurance company’s lawyers. A personal injury lawyer fights to obtain full and fair compensation for their client. This compensation helps pay for medical bills, lost wages, pain and suffering, and other losses caused by mental and physical injury suffered as a result of the crash or incident.
Another goal is to make the insurance company hear the client’s story and take accountability for the harm they and their insured have negligently or otherwise caused the client. If you are an accident victim, you are a victim. You have a right to your voice and to have your story heard. Too often, insurance companies simply try to turn a blind eye to the injuries they and their insured have caused. A Montana law firm, like AFJ Law Firm, can make them hear you and hold them accountable for what they have done.
A third goal of AFJ Law Firm and the kind of clients we work with is to protect the community from the negligence and recklessness of others. For many of our clients, community safety is their primary motivation for filing a personal injury lawsuit. Community safety is a critically important goal at AFJ Law Firm and choosing clients who share in this goal is one of the criteria we consider when deciding whether to represent a client in their personal injury case. The people of the Bozeman, MT community, and the Montana community at large, deserve more than to be subjected to the carelessness, negligence, and malice of others.
The are significant advantages to hiring a personal injury lawyer earlier in the process. These include:
- An experienced attorney or personal injury firm will handle the insurance company for you, so you do not have to keep contacting them or talking with them if they call you;
- An experienced attorney or personal injury firm can guide you through the complex claims and litigation process;
- Hiring a personal injury attorney means you will not have to do the investigation work to work up the case;
- Hiring a personal injury lawyer creates an attorney-client relationship where you can speak freely with the attorney about your case and ask questions without them being used against you later by the insurance company;
- The earlier you hire a personal injury attorney, the earlier you can focus on healing, not dealing with an adverse insurance company; and
- Hiring an experienced attorney or personal injury gives you peace of mind.
Initially, most personal injury matters start out as claims to the insurance company and are handled by the insurance company’s adjusters. These adjusters are too often from out of state and unfamiliar with Montana law, Montana courts, and Montana in general.
Insurance adjusters and agents are generally incentivized to pay as little as possible and they often treat plaintiffs as mere numbers, not people. These adjusters often do not take claims seriously until a plaintiff has retained an attorney to represent the plaintiff. If insurance companies and insurance adjusters paid full and fair compensation to unrepresented clients, as they should, there would be little need for plaintiffs attorneys to ever get involved in a case. Rarely, however, does this seem to happen. Much more often, a Plaintiff lawyer must be hired for the injured party or those who care about them to get the full and fair compensation they deserve.
If the claim cannot be resolved for full and just compensation through the adjuster, then a plaintiff’s attorney should file an action and start a lawsuit against the defendant. The case will be against the defendant even when the insurance company has the contractual right under the defendant’s insurance policy to decide whether to settle the case or not.
The plaintiff’s attorney will continue to represent the plaintiff in litigation. Once in litigation, the process becomes more formalized and complex. This is typically the first time a judge becomes involved in the case. The matter will be governed by criteria set forth in the Montana Rules of Civil Procedure or the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. The parties will undergo a discovery process, and, ultimately, mediation will be held as a prerequisite to trial.
Most personal injury cases do not go to trial. However, if the parties cannot resolve the case through mediation, it will go to trial. The plaintiff’s attorney will represent the plaintiff and the claim at trial. These trials are very formal, and the setting is similar to the courtrooms that are shown on television. This may be the only aspect of civil litigation that resembles what is shown on television.
Once at trial, it will be up to the jury to decide the facts of the case, determine whether they find the defendant liable, and determine the amount of damages necessary to fully and fairly compensate the plaintiff for what they went through. In Montana, if the jury finds the defendant acted with actual malice or actual fraud, they may also impose punitive damages against the defendant. These punitive damages are intended to punish the defendant and deter similar future conduct.
AFJ Law Firm takes personal injury cases on a contingency fee basis. In general, this means you do not pay us unless we secure a recovery for you. Contingency fee cases are not billed by the hour; instead, they are billed based on the outcome. We believe contingency fee structures are the best fee payment structures, largely because they ensure that our client’s interests and our interests are aligned. We do not create work so that we can bill.
In representing you, costs will be incurred in the case. These costs are almost always advanced by the firm and only recuperated from a recovery made on the client’s behalf. This is the risk we take in representing you and taking your case on a contingency fee basis.
This is a perfectly reasonable question for an accident victim to ask. After all, people need to know if their case can cover their medical bills and healthcare expenses, compensate them for lost wages, and otherwise compensate them for what they are being forced to endure despite no fault of their own.
There are some indications early of the value of a personal injury case. The amount of compensation needed to fully and fairly compensate someone for an injury or damage generally increases with the severity of the injuries. The type and extent of injuries and how the injuries and harms have impacted an accident victim and their loved ones are all considered in valuing a case.
That being said, it is impossible to know exactly what a case is worth from an initial consultation or at the infancy of a case. Red flags should go up from anyone who tells you otherwise. Additionally, you may sometimes see multiplier statements on the internet, such as the value of a case being worth three times the medical bills or something to that effect. Do not be fooled. If damages were this easy to calculate, there would be a lot less litigation. Moreover, while it may be possible to calculate a multiplier using past results, the fact of the matter is that each case is unique, and past results don’t predict future outcomes in a particular case. While analyzing 100,000 auto accident cases would give an average or mean, the median would likely be far different, the mode would likely be far different, and there would likely be large numbers of cases that are fractions of the mean and large numbers of cases that are many multiples of the mean or average.
Only through a detailed understanding of your case and the defendant’s defenses can an experienced trial attorney start to accurately calculate damages with any measure of certainty. Most experienced personal injury attorneys will tell you this. What can be said is that if an experienced trial attorney or personal injury firm, like AFJ Law Firm, takes your case, they see a case that is worth pursuing. This includes regarding the amount of damages.
The value of your case is a topic you can and should feel comfortable raising with your attorney. Understand though, that a precise determination will take some time to calculate and will be based on the facts, law, and unique aspects of your case. These will not all be known until the case has developed.
AFJ Law Firm is a personal injury and insurance coverage law firm only. We are experienced in representing victims of accidents and injuries, including those involving physical, mental, and financial harm. That is what we do. We do not dabble in personal injury, it is our focus.
AFJ Law Firm founder Anthony Jackson has recovered over twenty-five million dollars on behalf of his personal injury clients in the last decade alone. While there are other firms who may boast higher recovery amounts, those amounts are often attributable to attorneys who have retired, are virtually retired, are no longer at the firm, or most certainly will have no involvement in your case.
There are at least a handful of reputable Montana personal injury lawyers and law firms. The question is, are they the right fit for you? At AFJ Law Firm, we strive to be the best attorneys for our clients and the cases we choose to take on. We seek to represent real people with real injuries and problems and to get real results. We only take a small portion of the clients who contact us. That is why we have become “Montana’s Go To Personal Injury Law Firm.”
In choosing a personal injury law firm, it is important that the firm and the client are a good fit. One of the things you should look for in your initial call is whether the firm listens to you, tries to provide value to you, and answers your questions even before you have hired them. Will a lawyer review your intake memo and case, or a call center or staff person who can only tell you, “I’m not a lawyer. I can’t give legal advice.” At AFJ Law Firm, we try to provide value to every potential new client, even before they have hired us and even if we are not taking their case. When someone has been made a personal injury victim by no fault of their own, helping them out is something we want to do. We pride ourselves on being repeatedly told that we were chosen because, even before the client had hired us, we tried to help them and not just treat them like someone wasting everyone’s time.
Another important factor to consider when determining whether a firm is a good fit for you is how they communicate. Do they communicate in a way that is informative and helpful for you? Any person with a year or more of law school experience can use complex legal terminology that leaves a non-lawyer feeling confused, overwhelmed, and uninformed. At AFJ Law Firm, we strive to simplify the complexities of the law and make it understandable to our clients. After all, we pride ourselves in working with real people – not large corporations and companies.
At AFJ Law Firm, we try to be straightforward, direct, and fully honest with our clients and potential clients when talking with them about their cases. This is not for everyone. There are people who prefer a less direct approach and who do not want to hear the truth about the potential value of a case or hurdles to recovery in a case. That is fine, but if you prefer a less direct approach, AFJ Law Firm will not be the right fit for you in terms of communication style.
You should also consider the firm’s connections to Montana. We believe the importance of this cannot be overstated. Firms need to be able and willing to litigate cases in order to get full and fair compensation for their clients. Even if the case settles before litigation, the insurance company needs to know that the firm is fully capable of litigating the matter and taking it to trial if necessary. Litigation will occur in a Montana courtroom, presided over by a Montana judge, and, if tried, with a Montana jury. We strongly believe that a Montana law firm, like AFJ Law Firm, will be in the best position to get you full and fair compensation for your Montana personal injury case.
We have over a decade of experience actively representing clients in Montana litigation. We know Montana judges and Montana courts. We are deeply rooted in the Montana community. We are not a firm luring in clients with the name of a retired attorney or essentially retired “of counsel” attorney who will never see your case. And we are not a firm that is so large, unaware, and overburdened with cases that we refer to clients as “inventory.” We are a small Bozeman, Montana-based law firm that is selective in our case selection. We are small enough to provide you with the personal representation you deserve and experienced and driven enough to secure the full and fair compensation you are entitled to.
An attorney must be licensed to practice in Montana to bring a case here. If they are not licensed in Montana and still want to bring a case, they must associate with a Montana-licensed lawyer. This process is known as a pro hac vice appearance. While we strive to be “Montanan’s law firm,” we are regularly retained by out-of-state attorneys to represent people injured in Montana who the attorney has a close relationship with and wants us to help them co-represent through a pro hac vice appearance.
AFJ Law Firm attorney Anthony Jackson is licensed to practice in the Montana state and federal Courts, as well as the Ninth Circuit Federal Court of Appeals. AFJ Law Firm has clients throughout Montana and can represent you in your Montana case regardless of whether you were injured in Bozeman, Billings, Great Falls, Missoula, Belgrade, Kalispell, or anywhere else in Montana’s 56 counties.
While you can represent yourself, provided you are only representing an individual and not another kind of entity, we would not recommend it if a law firm like AFJ Law Firm is willing to take your case. They will have trained lawyers against you if the case is filed. You need an attorney who knows what they are doing and the strategies and tactics these insurance defense attorneys and insurance companies will employ.
Ultimately, the cost of the attorney is likely to more than pay for itself. After over a decade of handling personal injury cases, we cannot recall a single instance where we were unable to recover more for a client than the insurance company had initially offered before our involvement, even after accounting for attorney fees. While past results cannot guarantee future performance, we will fight tirelessly to ensure that hiring us pays off for you by obtaining full and fair compensation for your case.
There are many nuances to personal injury cases. For instance, each type of motor vehicle accident has unique issues and potential pitfalls. Motorcycle injury cases often present unique issues compared to car accident cases or trucking cases. However, the concept of negligence underlies the majority of personal injury lawsuits and claims in Montana.
Negligence is defined under the Montana Pattern Jury Instructions (2d). The instruction explains: “Every person is responsible for injury to the person [or property] of another, caused by his/her negligence. Negligence is the failure to use reasonable care. Negligence may consist of action or inaction. A person is negligent if he/she fails to act as an ordinarily prudent person would act under the circumstances.”
There are four elements to establish negligence:
(1) Duty;
(2) Breach;
(3) Cause; and
(4) Damages.
Duty is a question of law and is addressed by the Court, not the jury. In Montana, a person has a duty to act as an ordinarily prudent person would act under the circumstances.
Breach is the failure or choice not to act as an ordinarily prudent person would act under the circumstances. Breach is generally a question of fact for the jury to decide.
Cause is somewhat dependent on factors that exceed the scope of this writing. However, in most personal injury cases the Montana Pattern Jury Instructions (2d) explains that “The defendant’s conduct is a cause of the plaintiff’s (injury/death/damage) if it is a substantial factor in bringing it about.” Cause is generally a question of fact for the jury.
Damages are dependent on the type and facts of the lawsuit. Damages may include recovery of medical bills and other health care and medical expenses, past lost earning capacity, future lost earning capacity, mental and physical pain and suffering, mental and emotional distress, the reasonable value of services lost, loss of established course of life, burial expenses, wrongful death damages, and survivorship damages.
A plaintiff must establish all four negligence elements to recover in a negligence-based personal injury trial and to evidence entitlement to compensation in a personal injury claim or litigation.
In addition to negligence, personal injury cases can involve strict liability, negligence per se (which speaks to the first and second elements above and involves a defendant’s violation of a statute or law), and intentional torts.
Each case presents its own unique issues and challenges. Contact AFJ Law Firm today to discuss your personal injury or insurance dispute case.
- Car accidents or other auto accidents;
- Bicycle accidents;
- Others’ acts resulting in catastrophic injury;
- Commercial trucking, semi-truck, and other commercial motor vehicle accidents;
- Dog bites and attacks;
- Motorcycle accidents;
- Other motor vehicle accidents;
- Pedestrian accidents and injuries;
- Products liability and defective products;
- Wrongful death claims; and
- Survivorship lawsuits.
- Wrongful death;
- Brain injury;
- Broken bones;
- Skull fracture;
- Amputation;
- Burn injury;
- Drownings;
- Neurological damage;
- Movement disorders;
- Blunt force trauma;
- Spine fractures and injury;
- Disfigurement;
- Paralysis;
- Pulmonary embolism;
- Skin tearing and puncture;
- Hypoxia and anoxia; and
- Dog bite wounds.
An insurance policy by itself is little more than a piece of paper and a promise. The promise is that the insurance company will do what it collected premiums to do in the event of a covered occurrence. Too often, insurance companies fail to keep their end of the promises, acting more like premium collectors than insurance companies.
Various events may lead to insurance claims and ligation. These include:
- Insurance bad faith;
- Insurance coverage disputes;
- Insurer breach of the duty to settle; and
- Insurer breach of the duty to defend.
AFJ Law firm provides legal services to insureds and beneficiaries who have been harmed when an insurance company refuses to follow the law and fulfill its legal obligations. AFJ Law Firm provides legal services to those who have been injured in the above type of cases and in other insurance claims and litigation as well.
If you’re here, you’re on the right track. Contact us today for your free consultation. After discussing the case, we may ask you to visit AFJ Law Firm’s office located at West Lamme in Bozeman, MT, or schedule a Zoom call to further discuss your matter. Even if we do not take on your case, we will try to provide some value and offer you ideas about the next steps you can take. Either way, it’s a win-win situation for you, and the consultation costs you nothing.
We want to help you – whether you need a car accident lawyer, motorcycle accident lawyer, commercial motor vehicle or semi-truck lawyer, bad faith insurance lawyer, or have another type of personal injury claim or insurance dispute.
Contact AFJ Law Firm today. We are your Montana injury law firm.