Hillsborough County Car Accident Lawyers

There are so many options out there when it comes to attorneys in the Wesley Chapel area. Clients will often ask how they can know they are hiring the best attorney. One of the things you want to look for is trust. You get trust by communication. If the lawyer is not communicating with you, then that is a signal that maybe you don’t have the best attorney for your case.

Ask questions and get answers. Most attorneys for these personal injury accident cases are going to offer you a free consultation. Just like anytime you’re hiring someone, you want to meet them and see what they say about your case. It’s very difficult to fully evaluate a case at the initial consultation. Certainly, you can get a feel for the type of communication you can expect from your law firm moving forward after that initial consultation. We offer free initial consultations here at Serrano Law. We’d love to look at your case and evaluate it for you. Give us a call.

Many clients ask about the value of their personal injury case. They were in a car accident, and they want to know how much it’s worth. We had a client in Tampa recently that asked that question at the initial consultation. It’s very difficult to evaluate your claim at the beginning stage in the consultation. The reason is it’s because a lot of times when you come in, your medical treatment isn’t complete. You haven’t reached what’s called maximum medical improvement.

With insurance companies, their job on the other side is to adjust the claims and try to pay out as little as possible and get the case resolved. The real essence of determining the value of the claim involves multiple factors. It’s not just your medical bills. You don’t need to hire an attorney if it’s just a case where you have a few medical bills that you can add up and give out to the insurance carrier. What the insurance carriers will typically not tell you is that there are elements to the claim.

There’s the cost of future medical care that you’re reasonably certain to incur. There’s pain and suffering. There are lost wages, too, to consider. These are matters that go into the valuation of a case.

Just like anything, if you’re evaluating a business or a commercial building, it’s the same concept. You want to be able to evaluate it. A lot of times patience is a virtue, and you need to finish out with your medical treatment. We’d love to evaluate your case and try to determine what the value is. Give us a call.

Recently, one of our Tampa clients asked what she can do about the wages that she lost as a result of missing work because of her car accident. You do have personal injury protection coverage, which will cover up to a certain amount of your lost wages. You are also allowed to recover for your lost wages as part of filing a claim. If you have questions about recovering your lost wages or recovering from your medical bills, please give us a call and we can help you.

Recently, during a consultation, our client asked how long it was going to take to resolve her car accident case. It depends on every single case. The most important consideration is that you treat consistently until you feel better or you feel you’re in a spot that you can’t get any better. The reason that you have to wait for that is so that we need to know the full amount of your injuries so that we can appropriately evaluate your case and make sure that you’re adequately compensated. If you’re concerned about how long your injury case is taking or you have questions regarding that, please give us a call and we can help point you in the right direction.

We had a potential client call recently and ask if it was okay for her to talk to her insurance company after her car accident. The answer to that is yes, it’s perfectly fine for you to talk to your insurance company after an accident and, in fact, you should as soon as possible. You should, however, be very cautious about talking to the other insurance company for the party that hit you. Under no circumstances should you take a recorded statement. If you have any questions or you want to hire a lawyer to handle the insurance company for you, please give us a call.

One of the most common problems we have with auto insurance policies in the state of Florida is a lot of drivers are driving without bodily injury liability coverage. We had a client in Wesley Chapel recently who, unfortunately, was involved in a very severe accident. The driver that was at fault in the case – a rear-end collision – did not carry bodily injury liability coverage. You might think, “Wait a minute, the guy had insurance at the scene. He presented us with his insurance card.”

Yes, he had the minimum insurance. The minimum insurance is personal injury protection and property damage liability and liability for damage to the car. My client in that particular instance, only had their own personal injury protection available, which is maxed out at the threshold of $10,000, and they did not carry uninsured motorist coverage. Unfortunately, in a case like that, it’s not that we didn’t want the case, but there was no insurance available from the at-fault driver, which makes uninsured motorist coverage of utmost importance in the state of Florida. We’ll be glad to review your insurance policy with you for no charge. Just give us a call, and we will talk about the pros and cons of buying uninsured motorist coverage in the state of Florida.

I was recently asked by a client what personal injury protection insurance is. Personal injury protection insurance insures you for damages that you incur as a result of a car accident. That’s why Florida is called a no-fault state, because you are insuring yourself up to $10,000. If you have any questions about personal injury protection coverage, please give us a call and we can explain it to you.

There are so many questions from clients about what actions they should take at the scene of an accident once they’re injured. We had a client in Tampa, and she asked me this very question on the phone when she called us. It depends, and that’s a lawyer answer. It depends because, if you’re incapacitated in the accident and you lose your consciousness, you should go to the hospital.

The main thing to realize is you need to seek out treatment. If you’re injured, think about how you’re going to prove your case. You’re going to prove it with medical records. You’re going to prove it with medical bills. Get treated. A lot of times you go to the hospital and maybe you’re just feeling a little ache or pain. As we know, two or three days down the road, that pain will manifest. It will become worse.

Sometimes, it doesn’t. Sometimes, you’re feeling tremendous pain at the scene of the accident, and it goes away within six months. Every case is different. The theme here is what you should do after an auto accident is, if you’re injured, go get treated.

Go to the hospital. Get that first treatment. Find out what’s wrong with you, and then have a trial lawyer evaluate your case. We offer free consultation, and we’d love to evaluate your case for you.

The insurance laws in the state of Florida are a little bit complicated. It’s easier for us because we do it every day. We had a client recently in Wesley Chapel ask us how they could pay for their bills. They had what was called personal injury protection insurance, which is the no-fault insurance you hear about in the state of Florida. As simple as it gets, there’s $10,000 available. The insurance carriers will typically pay 80% of all submitted bills that are related to the accident up to the $10,000 threshold.

As you know, in today’s world, it is not hard to get to $10,000 pretty quickly when bills pile up. A lot of times, hospitals alone will charge you more than $10,000 at your initial visit. How do you get your bills paid? As soon as you get into an accident, you call your insurance company. It doesn’t matter if you weren’t at fault. You have to call them.

It’s a no-fault state. You’re going to get $10,000 from the personal injury protection coverage. That’s what you pay the premiums for. Make a call to your own insurance company and get that claim, even if you weren’t at fault.

Can you go after the person that was at fault? Absolutely; that is what the importance is of hiring a trial attorney who can evaluate your case and see how much coverage is on the other side, the at-fault party, and see if they can recover some of those moneys back for you. Give us a call. We’d love to evaluate your case. We offer free consultations in Tampa Bay.