Importance of Hiring an Attorney Early

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is it important to hire a lawyer early after an accident?

There are several reasons to hire an attorney promptly after you have been involved in a personal injury matter. Regardless of how you were injured, it is important to collect evidence. In our modern society, there is often video footage available of an accident scene. Video footage can be recorded by everything from security cameras and dashcams to cell phones and ring doorbell systems. Commercial surveillance systems like those at businesses may not keep video data indefinitely. The old video is often overwritten in order to limit storage needs. Security video footage can be lost as quickly as a few days after an accident. It is important to collect evidence like video data promptly before it is lost. It is also important to promptly contact witnesses and examine physical evidence that may remain following an accident. This will help your skilled personal injury attorney like the lawyers at Arthofer & Tonkin to not only tell you exactly what happened in your accident but be able to prove your case against the party or parties that caused your injuries.

In addition to discovering and obtaining evidence, you likely will be contacted by insurance companies within days or even a few hours of your incident. You should not speak to the adverse insurance company without having first consulted with an attorney.

The time after you have been injured should be spent focusing on your recovery. Leave the collection of evidence, investigation, and dealing with insurance companies to us. Call us today for a free consultation.

In what situation should you hire an attorney?

Arthofer & Tonkin is a personal injury law firm. This means we handle all sorts of cases where our clients have been injured by the negligence of others. We handle car accident cases and big rig semi tractor-trailer cases, as well as motorcycle accidents, bicycle accidents, pedestrian incidents, slip-and-falls, trip-and-falls, boating accidents, and a wide variety of other cases where people have been hurt or even killed through the fault of others. In any of these cases, it is appropriate to consult with a personal injury attorney like the attorneys at Arthofer & Tonkin. In our over 70 years of combined experience, we have worked almost exclusively in the area of personal injury law. Our consultations are free and we do not charge a fee unless we recover on your case.

What do I do if an insurance company offer is too low?

If you have been offered a settlement by an insurance company for the person or entity who caused your injuries or even by your own insurance company, you should absolutely not accept the same without consulting with an attorney. Insurance companies have a strong systematic advantage over an unrepresented party. They have resources totaling millions if not, billions of dollars with which to investigate, defend and deny claims. They also have a structural advantage in that they deal with tens or even hundreds of thousands of cases at a time, while your experience is likely limited to the one case you are dealing with at the moment. Moreover, unless you are a licensed attorney with decades of experience in a personal injury practice you are going to be working outside your area of expertise. If you were a doctor you would not perform your own surgery. If you are not a personal injury attorney it is a bad idea to try and handle your own personal injury claim. We strongly encourage you to contact an appropriate personal injury attorney if you have been made an offer by an insurance company. The consultations at the Arthofer & Tonkin Law Offices are free and we do not earn a fee unless we make a recovery on your behalf. It has been our repeated and regular experience over more than seven decades of combined practice experience that parties who are represented by attorneys receive compensation substantially greater than those who try and handle their own cases. It is our job to make sure that you receive fair compensation for what you have had to go through. Call us today for a no-cost no obligation consultation on your personal injury matter.

How do I respond to a low personal injury settlement offer?

DON’T! If you have been made an offer by an adverse insurance company or even your own insurance company for your personal injury claim, do not respond. Promptly contact an appropriate personal injury attorney. There are short time frames under the law, called the Statute of Limitations, which limit the amount of time you have to bring a claim. You may place your ability to make a claim in jeopardy by delaying. If you have received a settlement offer, consult with an expert in the field of personal injury law. Our initial consultations are free at the Arthofer & Tonkin Law Offices. Call us today.

What is a reasonable settlement offer?

There is no one size fits all answer to this question. A reasonable settlement offer is one that appropriately compensates you for all items of both economic and non-economic damages. This includes but is not limited to your past medical bills, allowances for future medical treatment, past wage loss, future wage loss, and loss of earning capacity, as well as your compensation for non-economic injuries like pain, mental suffering, inconvenience, anxiety, emotional distress, and other items of damages that are not readily subject to mathematical calculation.

It takes years of experience and handling of hundreds of cases to assess what is a reasonable settlement offer in any one particular case. An experienced attorney like those at Arthofer & Tonkin has seen cases with similar injuries and similar facts and circumstances to yours. We have resolved through settlement, mediation, arbitration, or trial cases like yours and we know what a jury in the community where your incident occurred is likely to value your case. We can use this information combined with our skill, experience, and vigorous advocacy for you to make sure you are fairly compensated. Call us today for a free consultation about your case.

Transcription

In today’s video I wanna talk to you about the importance of early retention of an attorney. That means you get in to talk with an attorney like those here at our law firm Athofer & Tonkin, about your personal injury matter right away. It’s important that your attorney can become involved in your case right away so that we can preserve evidence. I think one of the best ways that I can share the importance of early hiring of an attorney is by sharing a story from one of our cases. Traffic case, where our client was hit while crossing the street, and then, unfortunately, he was run over by a vehicle after having laid in the road for some period of time. Because of the severity of the accident and because his identity was not immediately known to law enforcement, we could not get our hands on the police report very quickly, but because we were retained early by his family, we were able to encourage law enforcement to get that report done, and that led us to one witness. But because we had tenacity, we called that witness, which led us to four more witnesses, so we were better able to understand how this accident happened.

Our client, because of the severity of his injuries, had no recollection of the accident or the facts and circumstances surrounding it. But because he hired us early, pushed law enforcement, and was tenacious about following up with witnesses, we were able to determine exactly what happened on the roadway on that night. In addition to being able to find witnesses, we were able to locate the vehicles involved in this accident before they were sold, in the case of one vehicle, or transferred, in the case of another vehicle. We were able to get our experts on board, inspect the vehicles, and determine where his body came in contact with different vehicles to determine the precise sequence of events for this accident. In addition to being able to get involved in finding witnesses early and vehicles early, we were able to get out on the roadway and actually conduct visibility studies, we were able to determine that the nighttime lighting conditions, for example, moonlight, starlight, cloud cover and weather, were going to be the very same or very, very similar on a night as they were on the accident, and we are able to get an exemplar vehicle.

That means one that was just like one that was involved in this accident and actually drove through the scene and video what the drivers would have been able to see, including street lights, business lights, and adjacent parking lot lighting. We were able to determine that it is actually a very, very well-lit area and that this accident occurred on a night with a full moon. Our visibility study and all of our other efforts to get evidence and retainment early made an incredible difference in this case. The insurance company for one of the drivers went from evaluating this as a case of liability against our client to offering its entire policy limits. So that is why it is important to get an attorney who is tenacious, on your side, in a hurry. We want to be that attorney for you, so give our law firm Arthofer & Tonkin a call today.In this video, I want to talk to you about low-ball offers from insurance companies. Immediately after an accident, you are going to be contacted by your own insurance company and by the insurance company for the adverse driver or the at-fault party if we are not talking about a car accident. You may even be presented with an early settlement offer. I want to illustrate how low and unfair these early offers can be from an insurance company by sharing with you some of the circumstances of one of the recently handled cases at Arthofer & Tonkin. In this case, our client was hit in a crosswalk. He was hit in a crosswalk in an area where there were lots of pedestrians and lots of tourists. It was a very popular area. There was no doubt that he was visible to the driver. Despite the fact that he was lawfully in the crosswalk, he was struck by this driver, and the insurance company for the driver dared to say that this case was a case of 50% liability, meaning it was half the fault of our client who was in the crosswalk. And although he had suffered broken bones and a significant shoulder injury, the insurance company offered $1,500 to settle. He had done his best to represent himself and present the information to the insurance company, which it asked for, but all of his efforts resulted in a $1,500 offer at the end of the day.

This was unacceptable to our client. Fortunately, he was referred by another client to our office, and we could help him. We were able to help him and help his daughter, who observed the accident and suffered from significant concerns surrounding riding bikes, and motorcycles and has not been back on a bike or a motorcycle in several years since this incident. And we were able to represent both of these clients, and we were able to get a settlement that was acceptable to them and many, many times greater than what the adverse insurance company originally offered. So if you have been involved in a personal injury matter due to someone else’s fault, give our office a call today. Ensure you are not taken advantage of by an insurance company that wants to make a low-ball offer. Here at Arthofer & Tonkin, we give free consultations on our personal injury cases, so there is no risk to you when you call.

Contact us. We'll be glad to help you.

At Arthofer & Tonkin Law Offices, we are dedicated to providing our clients with compassionate and experienced representation.

Making sure you receive proper compensation can be challenging and overwhelming after an accident, and we are here to help. Our law firm can provide you with the best personal injury attorney in Redding, California. Contact us now.

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Serving Redding, California, and Beyond.

We at Arthofer & Tonkin Law Offices offer our services to those in Redding, Northern California, and all of California.

We are dedicated to providing quality legal services to our clients and helping them through difficult times. If you aren’t sure if your case falls within our service area, don’t hesitate to reach out. We will be happy to answer any questions you may have and see how we can help.

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