Can I Afford A Personal Injury Attorney?
We handle all car accident cases on a contingency fee basis, meaning you pay nothing unless we recover damages for you. If we succeed with your claim, our fees are simply a percentage of the compensation we secure. This arrangement removes the worry about legal costs, allowing you to focus fully on healing and restoring your life after the accident.
Personal injury attorneys are paid based on contingency fees. Than means,
NO FEES UNTIL WE WIN!
You attorney works for you & gets paid after you do!
Do I Need A Personal Injury Attorney?
While hiring a personal injury attorney is never required, managing an injury and the complexities of a claim alone can be overwhelming. Our attorneys take that burden off your shoulders, handling the insurance companies and legal processes so you can focus on healing.
With extensive experience in working with insurance adjusters and securing fair settlements, we offer comprehensive support, including:
- Handling Insurance Companies: Our team negotiates with insurance adjusters who may resist covering all medical bills or damages, advocating on your behalf.
- Investigation: We gather and analyze critical evidence—video footage, witness statements, medical records, and any interactions with the at-fault party—to build a strong case.
- Aggressive Representation: We protect your rights, pushing for a settlement that fully covers your medical expenses, economic losses, need for future care, loss of consortium as well pain and suffering.
If you or a loved one has been injured or lost due to someone else’s negligence, we’re here to hold them accountable and pursue the compensation you deserve.
When Should I Call A Car Accident Attorney?
If you’ve been involved in a car accident that led to a doctor’s visit or any symptoms of injury, contact a car accident lawyer immediately for guidance. There are insurance notice requirements, statute of limitations, and other very critical timelines that you need to be aware of early in the case.
Sometimes, police reports may inaccurately reflect fault or injuries, which could impact your claim. In such cases, it’s essential to have us review the report and advise on your legal options. Our attorneys will ensure there are no mistakes or oversights to give the insurance company grounds to dispute or deny your compensation.
With No legal fees upfront,
take the time for a case evaluation.
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(360) 792-1000
We do not handle nor offer case Evaluations for worker’s comp/ medical Malpractice, or most slip & fall claims.
What Type of Auto Accidents Does Witt Law Group Handle?
- Rear-End Collisions. Even low-impact rear-end collisions can cause lasting neck and back injuries, and often bring stress, property damage, and disputes over fault with the insurer.
- Head-On Crashes. Head-on collisions are especially severe, often involving factors like speeding or drunk driving, which lead to serious injuries such as broken bones, spinal damage, or permanent disabilities.
- Hit-and-Run Incidents. When a driver flees the scene, it becomes much harder to obtain justice, but an attorney can help you explore options to pursue compensation even without knowing the at-fault driver’s identity.
- T-Bone Accidents. T-bone collisions, common at intersections and often due to red-light running or reckless driving, can lead to catastrophic injuries given the high-speed side impact.
- Cab and Taxi Accidents. Taxi accidents add complexity since liability can extend beyond the driver to the taxi company, allowing additional avenues for recovering damages.
- Uber and Lyft Crashes. Rideshare accidents may involve complex insurance issues. Liability can fall on the company, the driver, or both, depending on the circumstances.
Any of these accidents can lead to serious, life-changing injuries. If you or a loved one was hurt due to someone else’s negligence, contact our legal team to discuss your options.
Learn more about our personalized service and our no fee until we win guarantee
What Damages Can I Recover?
We work with experts to understand the full impact of your losses and protect your claim. Common types of damages in car accident cases include:
- Property Damage: Repair costs, vehicle loss, and diminished value are often immediate concerns after an accident.
- Medical Bills: Compensation covers expenses like hospital stays, surgeries, doctor visits, medication, and ongoing care or therapy.
- Pain and Suffering: For serious injuries, you can seek damages for ongoing physical pain and emotional distress caused by the accident.
- Lost Income: If you missed work due to injuries, you can recover lost wages. If you’re unable to work long-term, future income loss may also be compensated.
How Do Additional Insurance Coverages Such As PIP & UM/UIM Work?
Personal Injury Protection (PIP) insurance covers specific personal damages up to a certain percentage, depending on the policy chosen. PIP typically includes:
- Medical Bills: Coverage for medical exams, treatments, surgeries, and necessary supplies, including vision and dental care.
- Lost Wages: Compensation for income lost if the injured person is unable to work during recovery. In-home Services: Payment for household help if injuries prevent the insured from handling daily tasks.
- Funeral Expenses: Partial coverage of funeral costs in the event of a fatality. PIP does not cover pain and suffering or emotional distress—these are addressed separately through a personal injury claim.
How UM Coverage Works
Uninsured Motorist (UM) coverage kicks in when you’re injured in an accident caused by a driver who doesn’t have liability insurance. In this case, your UM policy covers medical expenses, lost wages, and other damages up to the limits of your policy, as if the uninsured driver had coverage.
For example, if you’re injured by an uninsured driver, your UM insurance steps in to cover costs that would normally be paid by the at-fault driver’s insurance. Some policies also extend UM coverage to hit-and-run accidents where the driver cannot be identified.
How UIM Coverage Works
Underinsured Motorist (UIM) coverage applies when the at-fault driver has insurance, but their policy limits aren’t high enough to cover the full cost of your damages. UIM acts as a supplement to the at-fault driver’s insurance, helping to bridge the gap between their coverage and the actual expenses. For instance, if the at-fault driver’s policy covers $25,000 but your medical bills are $50,000, your UIM policy can help cover the additional $25,000, up to your policy’s limits.
How an Attorney Helps Maximize Uninsured/Underinsured Motorist Claims
Uninsured motorist coverage offers financial protection, but the claims process can be challenging. Although you’re dealing with your own insurance company, your goals don’t fully align—they aim to minimize payouts, while you seek full compensation.
Insurance adjusters are skilled professionals, experienced in reducing claims to benefit company profits over injury victims. An attorney can advocate on your behalf, helping you navigate the process and pursue the maximum compensation available.
Call today for a free case evaluation
(360) 792-1000
Frequently Asked Questions
Always contact a lawyer. Even if you decide you don’t want to hire a personal injury lawyer, you should be informed of the process that is about to take over your life. It is important to know the tricks that significantly reduce your chances of a positive outcome and could even leave you owing money for the negligence of another.
Yes, an accident report is very important for establishing liability. It does not rule out challenges that the at-fault driver’s insurance may assert regarding liability or allocation of fault but it serves as strong evidence for liability disputes. If you were in an accident and law enforcement did not come to the scene, you can still file a report at Washington State Patrol’s website.
In most cases, law enforcement will come to the scene of an accident and conduct an investigation, make observations, collect witness information, and generate an accident report. Depending on the injuries sustained, the officer will ask the parties to make statements about the accident. This can be a bit tricky. If you are in shock or sustained a concussion, you might not be in the best situation to make accurate statements. Even stating, “I’m sorry” conveyed in compassion that you and the other party are in a terrible situation, can later be used to assert that you meant the statement as an apology for fault. It is always best to avoid any discussion of fault or making any statements that could be used to insinuate acceptance of fault.
If you are coherent and able to speak with witnesses, you can ask them to take video and pictures of the scene. They should also try to gather as many names and phone numbers of people who witnessed the accident. If you were unable to get photos of the scene, it might still be possible for you or your attorney to get video from nearby homes or businesses. While an investigating officer should be collecting witness names and numbers as well as pictures, sometimes the scene is chaotic (such as rush hour) and details might be missed or witnesses drive away. It is always best to have more evidence to establish who is the at-fault party. In the absence of clear evidence, insurance companies often try to shift the blame to you.
Be very careful about this decision. Whether you are informed or not, you are held to the same standard as a lawyer when it comes to knowing the law on subrogation. This means that you are likely required to pay back all money that was paid on your behalf for care. If you were taken away in an ambulance to the hospital, you may not receive the 4 or 5 bills that will result from that one visit for several months. If you accept a settlement offer of $5,000 but your medical bills subrogation is $10,000, you are on the hook for the additional $5,000 out of your own pocket. Once you agree to settle, you can not go back and ask the insurance company for more money because you did not realize there were thousands of dollars of unpaid medical bills.
Chaos with medical bills and collection is one of the most common reasons new clients contact us. The problem is that the “order of operations” on paying medical providers is very tricky. Believe it or not, the at-fault driver’s insurance is NOT paying your medical bills while you are treating.
At the end of your case, following a settlement or jury award, your attorney will “pay back” the medical providers’ liens as well as L&I, Medicare, or any other medical insurance liens, or PIP (this process is often referred to as subrogation). Until the case settles, there are several options for avoiding being sent to collections that you can discuss with your lawyer.
One of the first steps to avoid being sent to collections is to provide the correct insurance policies to your medical team. For example, if you have PIP, you want to provide that policy information immediately to your medical provider because PIP must be exhausted before your medical insurance or Medicare/Medicaid can begin paying your bills during the duration of the case. If you make this mistake, all billing will have to be reimbursed and re-billed in the proper order. Do not try to handle this process alone. Most often, injury victims will injure their credit in the process.
Pain and suffering is the most obvious claim for damages but that category covers a lot of things. It can include all the ways in which your pain impacted your previously normal life. Perhaps you can no longer be intimate with your partner due to neck or back pain and you can’t lift your young children. Perhaps you missed out on a family vacation to Disneyland because you are no longer able to join in on rides. There are many short and long term consequences to living with pain that may fall under this category.
Medical expenses is the category that scares people the most. If you were in a car accident and went right to the emergency department to be checked out, you are likely looking at $3,000-$7,000 in bills depending on how many X-rays or other imaging was ordered. If you went via ambulance, you can add another thousand to that total. Medical bills quickly add up. If you include follow-up care like chiropractic or physical therapy, you could be looking at $10,000 more in bills. Contrary to popular belief, the insurance company does not just pay 3x medical and the more you rack up in bills does not equate to a higher settlement.
Medical care must be within reason and, if you go over the reasonable medical care for your type of injury, it is likely you will be paying out of your own pocket. There are a lot of moving parts after an accident and it is critical that you understand what the reasonable limits are on certain injuries and how subrogation (pay back) works for your unique case. We will need to know whether you have medical insurance, PIP, UM/UIM, and determine all sources of insurance so that we can give you advice on how your case might resolve financially. If you would like to know more about PIP benefits, check out our PIP link.
Lost wages and loss of opportunity for advancement, bonuses, and other compensation are all common losses that occur after an accident. Most people handling their own case fail to maximize this aspect of their claim. If you had to leave work to attend physical therapy or spend long hours on the road to get to your medical provider, you can also claim medical travel and treatment time. Don’t miss out on being compensated for your time.
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This can happen at other firms. At Witt Law Group, we have never accepted more compensation than our clients receive. We will literally move our money to your column if it looks like a settlement will be unfair. Good luck trying to get another firm to put that in writing.
If you want to know how personal injury attorneys get paid, check out our Fees link. It is your injury and your settlement so it makes sense that you want to know if you will come out ahead. On some small accidents, the settlement may not be large and it’s important to know that you will be the priority in terms of physical and financial recovery.
Lawyers who help accident victims understand Tort law. This area of law is extremely broad but it essentially covers wrongs or injuries done to an innocent person. There are unique elements of each claim but the lawyer has to address each case with consideration for the duty, the breach of duty, causation, and injury.
The most common sticking point in most personal injury cases is causation. From the start, the at-fault party’s insurance will claim that it was not their insured’s fault, there was contributory fault, or the injuries claimed are not related at all to the accident. Even when an officer provides an accident report, the third party adjuster will argue facts and theories that have nothing to do with the reality of the accident. If the adjuster will not accept the reality of the situation, the injured person’s attorney may have no choice but to file a lawsuit.
Depending on the severity of the injuries, the report should be available via the Washington State Patrol website shortly after the accident. It may take several days or weeks before the officer files the report. If you hire Witt Law Group, we can pull the collision report and any additional information from local law enforcement who may have arrived on scene. Additionally, we will contact the witnesses on your behalf.
Every client has a story to tell. We want to tell yours.
No accident is the same and, therefore, the impact to your life is unique. The details of that impact might unfold immediately or it may take some time to discover just how much you have lost. We will work patiently with you so that we capture your authentic story. Whether you lose your ability to make a living or need long-term care, one thing is for sure, your life will change after an accident. It is important that you have passionate advocates fighting for you.
The insurance companies report billions in profits every year because their job is to report to shareholders. To be successful in this endeavor, they must pay the least amount of money to accident victims. Profit is the bottom line. You can help their shareholders or you can let us look out for your future.
Personal injury accidents are personal for the attorneys at Witt Law Group. We will take on the stress of dealing with the insurance adjusters, the investigation, and managing the tedious task of medical bills and ledgers. Your job is to heal and our job is to make sure you receive the best settlement or jury award possible for the pain, injuries, and inconvenience you had to endure.
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Personalized Legal Support
The attorneys at Witt Law Group believe in providing dedicated, personalized legal support. Unlike firms that assign cases to paralegals or assistants after an initial meeting, our attorneys oversee every aspect of your case.
From your first meeting, your accident attorney will listen to your story, craft a tailored plan, and ensure you have everything you need in the wake of an accident. We guarantee that your attorney will remain by your side throughout, guiding you every step of the way.