LaGrange, GA Personal Injury Law Firms & Lawyers

It really depends on a lot of factors, perhaps especially so for soft tissue injuries. If you question whether you are being treated fairly by the insurance company, you should have a consultation with an attorney. A consultation will enable the attorney to obtain the information he or she needs to properly evaluate your claim, and provides an appropriate forum for the attorney to explain his thoughts about your case.

No, you are not screwed. Take the summons to your automobile insurance company ASAP. Call first to be sure they know about the claim. Your insurer has to cover this since it insures your car and has to hire an attorney to defend you. The driver was given permission to drive by your daughter so the driver was a permissive user, which is not a bad thing for you. Any liability insurance he may have or his family may have is excess above yours. That is just the way it works in GA. You are not a proper defendant as you did not do anything wrong and the lawyer that is hired by your insurance company can file a motion to have you removed from the case.

To start with, let me express how sorry I am to hear about this. When a family member, particularly a child, gets hurt badly in a car wreck that really happens to the whole family, including the parents. Get a copy of the police report from the government agency that did the investigation of the wreck ASAP. That could be the Douglas County Sheriff's Office, the City of Douglasville PD or the Georgia State Patrol. That report will identify the liability insurer for the driver of the other vehicle. One has to determine the amount of available liability insurance that the other driver has. This usually is done by an attorney making a formal written request to the opposite party's car insurance company and, by law, the insurance company has to respond. If there is applicable Uninsured Motorist (UM) coverage under the policy insuring the Explorer and all other vehicles in your family, that needs to be determined by the attorney looking at all the policies, too. There are 2 types of UM coverage in Georgia, "standard" and "added on." The type of UM coverage is important as that affects the calculations of the amounts of coverages and how they are "stacked" (pyramided up to achieve the maximum amount of coverage). If there is "Med-Pay" (medical payments) coverage under the policy insuring the Explorer that coverage is primary for paying medical bills for your son's injuries up to the limit of that coverage. After that, you are left to your own health insurance coverage until the end of the case. As you can see this is somewhat complicated and the insurers often lie about the amounts and types of coverage they have, even to their own insureds. So the lawyer has to look at the insurance documents themselves and require the insurance company for the opposite party to sign and affidavit stating the amount of coverage. Regarding making a liability claim, do not try to do it yourself. The insurers are experts at tricking people into making admissions that damage their cases. Don't talk to the opposite party's insurer at all and particularly do not let your son give a "recorded statement" which is really a fishing expedition for the insurer to dig up something to use to deny the claim. It also can dredge up some evidence that the insurer can use at trial to help them get off the hook. You absolutely need an attorney who is an expert in this type of case. Do NOT get one of those lawyers who advertises on TV. Those guys try to settle with the insurers quickly without doing the necessary work and usually only get 20% to 30% of what the case is really worth. They make their money on volume and the client gets less compensation than he/she should have gotten. Get the best injury lawyer you can find and do what he says.