Irving Personal Injury Attorney

Irving Texas Personal Injury Lawyer Michael Grossman Explains the Types of Cases we Handle

Over the last two decades, Grossman Law Offices has helped countless clients in a multitude of personal injury and wrongful death cases.

Unlike several firms that practice “general law” we have decided to focus on two specific areas of law and seek to give the best legal assistance in those two arenas. This approach has allowed our lawyers to sharpen their ability and attain a level of focus and experience that not many firms can match.

That’s why when you elect to work with Grossman Law Offices on your personal injury or wrongful death case you are teaming with a group of attorneys who don’t practice personal injury law occasionally, but a veteran firm that spends every possible moment prosecuting cases like the one you have.

If you have sustained a brain injury, spine injury, soft tissue damage, any form of catastrophic injury, broken bones, concussion, or any other form of bodily injury, or have been assault, we can assist you. Our attorneys have tons of experience in helping clients receive proper compensation for everything from dog bites to birth injuries, 18-wheeler accidents, head trauma, and construction accidents to car crash cases, compensation from being a battery victim, slip and fall cases due to ice/wet floors, wrongful death cases, and lots more. In our 20 years of law, we have prevailed in thousands of personal injury cases helping several clients get compensation for financial damage, pain and suffering, medical costs, or any other form of damages.

Personal injury law has numerous subsections and while we have lots of experience in countless personal injury scenarios there are lots of Texas personal injury cases that our Irving personal injury attorneys are highly experienced in.

You will discover that Texas personal injury cases will be classified into one of those groups, but there are other kinds of personal injury cases that we assist our clients with. If you have been a part of any kind of personal injury case please call us quickly to get the assistance you deserve.

What is a Personal Injury?

Anyone can be injured but that doesn’t mean they will have a legitimate legal case. When does an injury become a personal injury legally? When it comes to the law, a personal injury centers on the physical injury and the emotional ramifications that emerge from the actions of inactions of another individual. Contrary to what most think, you can’t sue any person that causes you to be injured for any reason. Injury victims, called the plaintiffs in the legal world, have the burden to show in court that the one who caused the injury (the defendant) owed the victim a duty to not harm them. For example, if someone assaults a police officer and the officer then then hurts the attacker while defending themself, the attacker can’t sue the cop because the officer didn’t owe him a legal duty to keep him free from harm. However, if your neighbor gets upset and hurts you, you will probably have the possibility to file a lawsuit against them because your neighbor owed you a legal duty not to harm you. In both situations, an assault happened which led to an injury but only the latter scenario could go to court because the defendant violated a legal duty that the plaintiff deserved, and in the other case, the police officer didn’t owe that kind of duty. A personal injury claim is there to show the defendant had some form of obligation not to hurt you, showing their actions did lead to your harm and proving those injuries led to you enduring legitimate injuries or emotional trauma and suffering. Since you were injured, it’s up to you to prove all this occurred. But you have to do it within the rules of the law and the court system, which has a very formal set of guidelines. A lot of citizens hurt their specific personal injury cases because they don’t understand how the courts work, how procedures happen, steps in filing motions and filings, how to get credible evidence admitted, etc. Every case has a fact pattern but the intricate details of your case, regardless of how positive they may look, are worthless if you don’t the right steps to get all those facts put in the official record. Understand, it’s not what you know, it’s what you can prove, and you can’t prove anything if you don’t understand the steps you need to take to get ALL of the proper facts admitted into court. This is a process may look easier, but is way more complicated and it’s why you need to hire an Irving personal injury attorney to assist you with your personal injury case.

What Purpose Does a Personal Injury Lawsuit Serve?

There are two goals with personal injury lawsuits. The first is that they help victims recover financially for the losses they’ve endured due to the defendant’s behavior. It probably sounds bad to infer that the money can help for the emotional and medical trauma you’ve dealt with, but the fact is that most personal injuries hit victims and families with severe financial burdens. Medical costs, repair bills and other similar expenses can add up, especially if the victim is the primary income earner and can’t go back to work due to his or her injuries. Recovering money from a defendant can help a family deal with these expenses after an injury. The second goal is for lawsuits to be used as a means for victims to hold the defendants liable for their actionsl When you punish the defendant for the injuries they caused, you lessen the chance for that person to commit the same actions in the future.

What is a Solvent Defendant?

Since one of the goals of a personal injury lawsuit is to obtain money from the party who cause your injuries, it usually makes no sense to file a lawsuit if the defendant has no way to pay. Let’s say a homeless man throws a huge rock from an overpass, and it hits your windshield and you are then involved in a wreck. Even if the homeless man is clearly at fault, there’s no reason to file a lawsuit because that man is financially unable to assist you for your injuries. When a defendant can’t pay you damages to compensate your injuries, the defendant is referred to as being insolvent. A defendant’s insolvency is a tough situation for an injured victim, but it’s something that happens on occasion.

A lot of times, a defendant will say they’re insolvent but actually have enough assets to compensate you for your injuries. When some people think they could become wrapped up in a lawsuit because they’ve hurt someone else, they do what they can to hide their assets so they can appear to be insolvent. Many companies due this quickly. If the defendant in your case has taken these steps, and you can’t discover the real amount of their resources, chances are you won’t be able to get a true indication as to your case’s real value. At Grossman Law Offices, our Irving personal injury lawyers undergo an asset check of the defendant in virtually every case we work. If the liable party is hiding assets, you can count on us probably locating them.

How is a Personal Injury Lawsuit Won?

It’s a common misunderstanding that the victim in a personal injury will instantly get money from the individual who caused the accident. The Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code states that personal injury victims have the ability to seek compensation for their injuries, but aren’t entitled to compensation. Since the defendant doesn’t owe you anything by default, your goal is to get a positive settlement or verdict.

Everyone is used to seeing jury trials happen on sitcoms and movies, but the truth is that the majority of cases never reach a courtroom. Most are actually settled out of court. Settling your case for a proper sum of money is one option for winning your lawsuit. When there’s a settlement, the defendant agrees to pay the plaintiff an agreed up on amount of money even though the judge didn’t order such an action. Along with that, the plaintiff also agrees not to pursue any other lawsuits in the future. If you agree to a fair settlement offer, you’ll save time, expenses and the unknown factors that come with a jury trial. On the flip side, if you’re manipulated into an unfair settlement, you’ll never be able to get the true compensation you deserve. That’s why it’s always so critical to have a lawyer review any settlement in a Texas personal injury case. Offers you get before you get legal assistance usually aren’t fair, but they’re usually binding if you take them. The situation shifts dramatically when you get help from an attorney who can use their reputation to force the defendant into giving you a fair amount.

Getting fair compensation is not a business transaction. It’s not the same as negotiating a car price or another major purchase. It’s a serious problem to believe that since you’ve been involved in major business negotiations that you can be just fine determining a fair settlement. The only thing a defendant fears is a having to possibly pay more money, especially when a defendant’s insurance company is a factor. If they come to you offering $10,000 that means they know there’s a chance they could wind up paying $50,000 if a jury is involved. When a regular citizen tries to threaten an insurance company or tries to negotiate with them, they have no weight at all. It’s common sense. It’s the same as you or me getting in the ring with the UFC Heavyweight Champion and you’ve never won a single fight in the Octagon. The champ won’t sweat you. However, if you’ve got experience, won plenty and developed a solid reputation, he will approach you much differently. Insurance companies and defense attorneys take the same approach. The personal injury lawyers at Grossman Law Offices have been successful against every bigtime US insurance company in the last two decades. Insurers know of our reputation, and usually prefer to settle cases with our clients than take on our attorneys in the courtroom.

Some cases, however, don’t lead to settlements and these cases usually go to trial. To emerge successful, you’ll need to give evident to show your burden of proof in the four major areas of a personal injury claim. Those areas are duty, breach, causation and damages. We’ll now explain those elements in detail.

Duty

To emerge successful, you’ll first need to show the duty of care the defendant was supposed to give you. In different cases, all of us owe various degrees of care to behave in a way that won’t harm others. The most common example of a duty of care is the duty for reasonable citizens not to harm each other. Though the “reasonable person standard” is the most common duty, the standard changes depending on the situation and the relationship between the individuals involved. Here are some instances of cases where the reasonable person standard doesn’t apply:

• You may have seen signs hanging in stores that are meant to keep you from being harmed. Let’s say a store warns you about a step that’s just ahead of you, or about a mopped floor, or that you shouldn’t leave valuables in your car. Most of us wouldn’t tell our friends who come to our homes about these issues, so what makes businesses do it? The reason is that store managers owe their customers a high duty of care - much higher than the amount we owe to house guests who spend time with us. But what if a store’s visitor is a robber who’s in there late at night, instead of being a normal customer? Is the owner still subject to the same rules? Most of the time the answer is no. The degree of duty of care hinges on the visitor’s intentions.
• Doctors and other healthcare experts are professionals who have spent years learning how to assist and diagnose patients. Due to their years of training and experience, we expect healthcare professionals to use their extensive knowledge when making their diagnoses. That’s why healthcare workers usually owe a greater degree of duty of care to their patients compared to others. That’s why when they’re working, doctors must use the care of a reasonable doctor, and not the care of a reasonable doctor.
• What does your employer have to do to make sure your worksite is safe? That depends on the kind of work you do. If you’re an employee, your employer has to owe a huge duty of care, and have to keep safe working conditions in place for your protection. However, temp workers, contractors and volunteers (sometimes volunteers are owed a legal duty) are all responsible for making sure their own work conditions are safe. Employers don’t owe them the duty of care to keep a safe work site.
• What degree of caution must be exercised when there are other passengers in our cars? Some states have laws where there a differences applying to paying passengers versus nonpaying ones who are guests. In those states, a driver must be extra-careful to ensure a paying passenger’s safety compared to a friend needing a quick ride.
• Children usually aren’t held to the same standards as most adults. Most of the time they’re held to a lower standard, depending on their experience and age. There are exceptions here, however. For instance, children involved in adult matters like driving a car will be held to the same standard of care as an adult.

To fully comprehend the duty of care in your Texas personal injury case, it makes sense to talk to a lawyer. Texas civil law is linked to what is known as joint and several liability. That means numerous parties can be the reason behind a plaintiff’s injuries and the plaintiff has the option to sue them all. It’s critical to talk to a lawyer to make sure all the liable parties have been accounted for. If you’re in a wreck and your car was hit by a drunk driver, for example, Texas law states that you can sue the driver and the bar that served the driver and contributed to their drunkenness.

Breach

Once you’ve showed which kind of duty of care is relevant in your case, you’ll need to provide facts and other evidence to prove the defendant violated the duty of care you were owed. When the reasonable person standard is applicable, defendants breach their duty when their actions are opposite of what a normal person wouldn’t do, or they choose not to take action that normal people do to protect others.

There are three instances where defendants usually breach their duty of care. One is when a defendant breaches his duty by acting with negligence. Negligence usually refers to a mistake or accident. If a defendant is careless even for a second, that person can be found liable for the consequences of their action. A defendant is negligent if they’ve done something that will likely lead to others being injured. An example: A drunk driver is acting grossly negligent and breaches the duty of care that’s owed to other drivers. A third instance is when a defendant breaches their duty intentionally. No one should be shocked that if a defendant meant to hurt someone, they can be held accountable for their choices.

Causation

After you’ve shown that the defendant breached the duty of care you were owed, you’ll need to show their actions caused your injuries. This can be difficult at times, especially when lots of people have been involved in your injury. It’s a regular practice for defendants to try to switch the blame from themselves and over to third parties, or even you, in order to avoid responsibility. If you don’t have enough evidence to show it was the defendant who injured you, you’ll wind up losing.

Damages

Lastly, your attorneys will have to prove how much you deserve to get in damages from the defendant. This sum is usually contested in Texas personal injury cases, so it’s key to be able to total your damages and have the ability to prove your injuries so you can show your calculation is accurate.

It’s essential to provide evidence with every detail of your personal injury case. If you don’t have evidence with even one of these details, you’ll come up short on your lawsuit and get nothing with your injuries. An Irving attorney who specializes on personal injury cases, like those attorneys at Grossman Law Offices, can compile the evidence needed to be successful and present it in a persuasive manner to a jury.

What Damages Are Available to Personal Injury Victims?

There are two forms of damages involved in Texas personal injury cases. Special damages are damages available that help the plaintiff specifically with their economic burdens. Lost income, inability to earn money, and medical bills can be handled with special damages. These losses are tangible, but totaling them can be difficult. For example, damages for loss of earning capacity help a plaintiff for lost future income due to their inability to work because of their injuries. A logical way to total loss of earning capacity would be to take an injury victim’s salary, then multiply that by the years remaining until retirement. This approach, though, is way too simple. That total must also include the possibility of promotions and raises the victim could have been awarded if they kept working. The time value of money must also be factored in. The Irving personal injury lawyers at Grossman Law Offices know how to total special damages and how to include all of these critical details.

The second form of damages that a plaintiff can pursue is general damages. General damages help a plaintiff with non-monetary losses they incur with their injury, like pain and suffering and other trauma. Because of the manner of the loss, figuring out a price tag on these injuries isn’t easy to determine. In fact, the total of these damages can differ tremendously with each case, even if the injuries are almost the same. To figure out what your general damages are, call a veteran personal injury attorney in Irving.

How Grossman Law Offices Can Help

Because we emphasize Texas personal injury cases, the attorneys at Grossman Law Offices are very prepared to handle all types of Texas personal injury cases. We handle all factors in our clients’ claims from start to finish. We know how to determine if the defendants are liable for your injuries, and make sure they’re accountable.

If you would like to see how we can assist you and get a free consultation with your specific matter, contact us at 1-855-326-0000 (toll free). Because we aim to talk extensively with personal injury victims, we’re here 24 hours a day, seven days a week to talk with you and give you answers to any questions you have.