Car Accident Attorneys in Palatine, IL
Car accident attorneys in Palatine, IL. The physical, mental and economic toll you sustain because of being injured in a car accident can be staggering. You need an experienced Palatine, IL car accident lawyer to fight for you to secure you the fair financial recovery you owed. Call Burger Law‘s car accident attorneys immediately at (314) 500-HURT or contact us online for a complimentary case evaluation.
If you were injured in a car accident in Palatine or any other part of Illinois see what compensation you may be eligible for by completing our free personal injury calculator.
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You have been injured in a car accident and now you are wondering what to do. If you are not sure, you are not alone. You may not be certain how to get the right medical care, what the process for seeking compensation is and if there is anything else you can do to make sure that you get justice for your injuries. Call the police, then get medical attention. Then call Burger Law.
The last thing on your mind after an accident should be worrying about how to battle an insurance company or understanding the personal injury claims process. Our law firm has won over $200 million for our clients, and is ready to fight for you.
You deserve to have an outstanding team fight for your recovery during your car accident claim. Speak to an attorney at (314) 500-HURT or complete our online form now. Our auto accident law firm, does not take any fees until we successfully win your claim, and we insist on the best recovery possible. Never accept a settlement offer that is not what you truly are owed.
Palatine, IL Car Accident Attorneys With a Proven Track Record of Victories
With any type of legal case, results matter. You want to have full confidence in your lawyer’s abilities, and that they will not back down until you get the full compensation you deserve. Any car accident lawyer can say they will fight for you, but not all of them can prove it. Click the links below to read about some of our car accident results:
Steps to Take After a Car Accident in Palatine, IL
Car Accidents are traumatic events. Knowing what to do when one happens can absolutely make the difference in your case, however, it can be hard to make the right choices when you are still in shock from the accident. Below are the steps you should take both immediately after an accident, and in the days and weeks that follow:
- Get to the side of the road if possible — The rule of thumb is, if you and your car can both move, get out of the way of oncoming traffic. If not, do not move. If you are seriously injured and cannot move, wait for emergency personnel to arrive, as trying to move can make your injury worse. Assess whether anyone else in the vehicle is injured. Render aid if you are able and know how to.
- Call 911 or a police non-emergency line — If someone needs EMTs and/or an ambulance, always call 911. If not, call for police so they can interview you and the other driver and make their report. Police know how to ascertain fault in an accident and their report is invaluable when making a claim. If you do not know if you require emergency services or not, always call 911 and let the operator decide if your accident is an emergency.
- Exchange information with other driver — Once you can do so safely, exit your vehicle and get the other driver’s information. Take a picture of their license and insurance information. If the other driver apologizes, ask a few more questions to try to get them to admit what happened. You do not need to feel like you are going to have a heated discussion, you are just trying to find out what happened.
- DO NOT admit liability — In conversations with police, the other driver and an insurance company, you can offer a brief description of events as you saw them. But never admit fault. There may be details you are not immediately aware of, and admitting fault will bring complications when you are trying to get a recovery.
- Collect evidence from the scene — Take pictures of all the vehicles involved and the surrounding area, including any tire marks or any other property damage the accident caused. If any bystanders saw the crash, get their contact information so they can back up your story down the road.
- Get medical treatment — If you did not need an ambulance, get to urgent care quickly, or make an appointment with your general practitioner as soon as possible. Medical care is not only necessary so you can heal, but you need documentation in order to make an injury claim.
- Consult with Palatine, IL car accident attorneys — If you were injured because of another driver, it is more likely than not that you will need to an attorney to fight for you to get the full recovery you are owed. Have a list of questions ready to ask them, such as how they take their attorneys’ fees, if they have won your type of case before, how much they think your claim is worth and if they are willing to go to trial if they have to.
- Go to every medical appointment you need to — Make sure you go to every appointment, whether that means surgery, physical rehabilitation or spinal adjustments with a chiropractor. This is important not only so you can achieve maximum medical improvement, but can get the full extent of your damages once pain and suffering is taken into account. You read about how pain and suffering is calculated here.
Most people in Palatine, IL have never had to make a personal injury claim before, and we help guide them through the entire process. Reach out to our car accident attorneys today at (314) 500-HURT if you have any questions about what the next steps are after an accident.
What Kind of Issues Come Up In Palatine, IL Car Accident Claims?
Ideally, you would not have to fight to get the compensation you are owed. But far too often there are difficulties that arise and the other side does not want to do the right thing. A few of the problems our car accident attorneys see most frequently in Palatine, IL include:
- The other party was uninsured — Illinois requires drivers to have a minimum amount of liability insurance in case they cause an accident. But some drivers do not follow the rules, and that can cause doubt about how to proceed. Our car accident attorneys have filed hundreds of uninsured motorist claims in the event that a negligent driver does not have insurance . However, your own insurance company may be just as unfair to you as someone else’s – you still need a lawyer to secure a full recovery.
- The negligent party does not have enough insurance — Each insurance policy has policy limits, which determine the maximum amount of coverage available after an accident. If your damages exceed the at-fault driver’s coverage, we can make a underinsured motorist claim against your own insurance. Sometimes, we can discover further insurance the other driver has that your accident falls under.
- The negligent driver denies doing anything wrong — There are some reckless people out there who do not want to take responsibility for their actions. If the other driver is trying to pin your injuries on you or somebody else, we will conduct a full investigation into the circumstances surrounding your accident and take sworn depositions to demonstrate how the other driver caused your injuries.
- The insurance company is trying to lowball you — Insurance adjusters utilize numerous different tricks to avoid paying out claims, and you will need an attorney to fight back against them. If they still will not be fair after we send a settlement demand package, we will not hesitate bring a claim against them in court, proceed to discovery and start getting ready to present your case to a jury. Often, once they know our car accident attorneys are on the case, it is enough to get the insurance company to make an offer that is truly fair; they know they will not get a favorable outcome if they make us go in front of a judge and jury. We have gotten a lot of great settlements on the eve of trial.
Our car accident attorneys always try to get fair compensation quickly. However, if there are issues at play and the negligent driver and their insurance company do not want to pay you fairly, we we will fight for your rights at trial. We do not stop fighting for our Palatine, IL clients until they are compensated. We have dealt with all of these issues and more hundreds of times and have won countless Illinois car accident cases in jury trials.
Most Common Types of Car Accidents in Palatine, IL
Each car accident is unique, and they can happen for any reason, at any time or place. However, most causes and types of accidents can be broken down into a number of distinct categories. Those include:
- Backup Accidents — According to the National Safety Council, one out of four collisions can be blamed on improper backing techniques, and those accidents are responsible for over 500 fatalities and 15,000 injuries every year, many of them to children in parking lots.
If another vehicle backed into your vehicle, the insurance adjuster will likely assume that you are at fault, as most rear to front accidents are the fault of the rear driver. Skilled car accident attorneys will be able to prove how the front driver caused the accident.
- Carpool and Rideshare Accidents — Uber or Lyft accidents themselves are not too different from any other car accident. However, rideshare companies have more insurance coverage, when making a claim you will be going up against a large insurance company instead of just an adjuster. A car accident lawyer will stand up for you and defend your rights.
- Distracted Driving Accidents — Distracted driving is responsible for over 3,000 traffic-related fatalities every year. Looking at a phone for the average time it takes to read a text at 50 MPH takes a driver’s eyes of the road for 120 yards. Frequent examples of distracted driving include:
- Texting and driving
- Eating and/or drinking
- Looking for items in the car
- Adjusting system controls
- Combing, shaving or putting on makeup
- Participating in an avid conversation
- Daydreaming
- Drunk Driving Accidents — Drunk driving is responsible for about one fatality every 45 minutes. Every injury caused by drunk driving is preventable. Because of negligence per se, a drunk driver is liable for your injuries as a matter of law, but you will still need a lawyer to convince an insurance company to cover all of your damages.
- Fatal Car Crashes — There is nothing as tragic as having a loved one taken away too soon. While it is impossible to bring back your loved one, a wrongful death claim can deliver a feeling of recognition, and ease the financial burden their loss placed on you.
- Head-on Collisions — Head-on collisions are especially dangerous because both vehicles are going fast, and the driver and front passenger are exposed to flying glass and debris. They account for just two percent of all car accidents, but account for one out of 10 driving fatalities. Beyond fatalities, they can lead to catastrophic injuries.
- Intersection Accidents — According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administrations’s report on intersection-related crashes, over a third of all motor vehicle accidents occur at intersections. Intersection accidents are often caused by drivers not paying attention and drunk driving and illegal U-turns.
- Multi-Vehicle Accidents — Multi-vehicle accidents are often “chain reaction” accidents where multiple drivers are to blame. Everyone’s insurance company will try to blame someone else. Burger Law’s Palatine, IL car accident attorneys will ensure that every liable party is held accountable.
- Rear-End Accidents — These are the most common auto accidents, making up three out of 10 traffic accidents. People often sustain whiplash and brain injuries like concussions.
- Road Construction Accidents — Construction companies have a responsibility to take steps to ensure their construction zones are safe for drivers, meaning there are sufficient warnings and that dangerous locations are cordoned off. In addition to another driver, we can make a claim against a construction company if they failed in that duty and you ended up injured.
- Speeding Accidents — In Illinois in 2020, speeding contributed to over three out of 10 of all crashes, 44.9 percent of fatal crashes and 37.3 percent of personal injury crashes. Speeding is dangerous because it increases the likelihood of a driver losing control of their car and dramatically reduces stopping distance.
Burger Law’s Palatine, IL car accident attorneys have seen any type of auto claim you can think of — and won them. We know how to gather the facts to substantiate your claim and prove liability on the part of the negligent driver.
How Is Compensation Calculated in Palatine, IL Car Accident Claims?
Financial recoveries in car accident claims generally compensate you for two things: economic damages, such as your cost of treatment and lost wages, and non-economic damages, such as pain and suffering and mental anguish An important aspect of any car accident attorney’s job is properly calculating the full extent of someone’s damages. We will make sure the other side understands just how much their negligence has affected you, and demand they compensate you for all of it.
To determine the full extent of your damages, we will first add together the entirety of your economic damages. This includes:
- Money lost from time spent off work recovering and lost earning potential
- Any medical appointments, surgeries, proscriptions and/or evaluations
- Assistive devices such as wheelchairs
- Future medical expenses, such as additional surgeries, replacement assistive devices, or eventual replacement of artificial joints
- Out-of-pocket expenses like transportation costs to and from medical appointments
If you are likely to have future economic damages, we work with economic experts to value how much those will cost in the future, and adjust our settlement demand to incorporate expected inflation.
After knowing the full extent of your economic damages, we will calculate how much you should be compensated for for your non-economic damages. Usually, your attorney will use the “multiplier method,” multiplying your economic damages by a number between 1.5 and five.
For example, if you have $30,000 in economic damages, and your injuries caused you extreme discomfort for two weeks, your car accident attorney might decide your economic damages should be multiplied by three. Therefore:
$30,000 X 3 = $90,000
Your final compensation would then be $120,000.
Three is used most frequently, and higher multipliers are usually reserved for more serious injuries that greatly affect someone’s physical comfort, state of mind and their independence.
What Factors Go Into How Much My Claim Is Worth?
The more your injuries affect your life financially, emotionally and physically, the more your financial recovery will be. Factors that help determine what your claim is worth include:
- The extent of your injuries
- How much medical treatment you needed, and if you will need more treatment down the road
- If your injuries resulted in disfigurement or disability
- Your wage loss damages
- If you can no longer work as you used to and have lost earning capacity damages
- If your injuries affected your quality of life and independence
- If you bear partial responsibility for your accident
Often, insurance adjusters try to devalue claims by saying they only have to six weeks of treatment, you waited too long to get treatment, they do not need to pay wage loss damages if you had sick leave available or by blaming your injuries on you. We fight back against bullies so they know that will not work. In our more than 30 years of experience standing up to insurance adjusters, and to date have recovered over $200 million for our clients.
How Much Time Do I Have to File a Car Accident Claim in Palatine, IL?
Each state has its own statute of limitations for injury claims. According to 735 ILCS 5/13-202, Illinois’ is shorter than most other states at just two years. There are three noteworthy exceptions:
- If you are making a wrongful death claim for the loss of a loved one, you have two years from when your loved one passed – not not from, when the crash occurred.
- If you or your loved one was a minor when the accident occurred, you have until their 20th birthday.
- If you or your loved one was under a “legal disability” at the time of the accident, you have two years from the date the disability was removed. If you came under a legal disability after you were injured but before the statute of limitations elapsed, that time is not counted against you. In Illinois, “legal disability” means:
- Someone who, either by mental or physical disability, is not able to manage their person or estate
- A person with a mental illness or developmental disability that keeps them from managing their person or estate
- Someone who, because of “gambling, idleness, debauchery or excessive use of alcohol or drugs,” cannot manage their estate to the extent that it causes them or their family to “want or suffer”
Two years is not as long as it sounds. Do not wait to call a car accident attorney immediately. If you are wondering if any of the exceptions apply to you, speak to an attorney at Burger Law today at (314) 500-HURT to go over the specifics of your case.
Other claims we handle in Palatine, IL include:
Speak to Our Palatine, IL Car Accident Attorneys Today
Burger Law’s car accident attorneys are committed devoted to getting justice for our Palatine, IL clients. You did not ask to be put in this situation, and you should not have to pay simply because someone else broke the rules. We will stand by your side throughout the duration of your claim. To start on your true road to recovery, call Burger Law‘s car accident attorneys today at (314) 500-HURT or contact us online for a free case review.
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What our clients are saying about us
This law firm is absolutely amazing. They took on my case, when nobody else would! They fought hard for me when it seemed there was no hope. They kept me informed and always asked for my input before making decisions on my case. Gary puts himself into every case unlike most law firm owners. Gary and his team really care about every one of their clients, and fights hard to get you a fair settlement. They actually won my case out of court, and then reduced my fees to make sure I could get my car fixed and be able to get back to some normality. I would recommend Burger Law over and above any other firm! If you go somewhere else you aren’t getting the best!