Property Damages: You are entitled to repair or replacement of any property damaged in the accident. For example, damage to your car, your clothes, your eyeglasses, or other personal property. For more information on Property Damages click here.

Medical Expenses: All costs you have incurred for health care should be repaid to you. For example, ambulance bills, hospital bills, charges for surgical, medical or chiropractic care. You may be entitled to payment of these bills regardless of who caused the accident depending on the type of insurance coverage you or the other party purchased. For more information on Medical Expenses to date click here.

Future Medical Expenses: You are entitled to a sum of money which will enable you to pay for medical care in the future caused by this accident. For example, future surgical care or future in home nursing care if you are disabled. For more information on Future Medical Expenses click here.

Lost Income: You are entitled to be paid for the income loss you have experienced from the injury, even if you are self employed or work on commission. For example, lost wages from your job while in the hospital, while recuperating, or when going to doctor or therapy visits after you have returned to work. For more information on Lost Income click here.

Lost Future Earning Capacity: You are entitled to a sum of money which will compensate you for the lost capacity to earn money in the future, if you are partially or completely disabled from employment. For more information on Lost Future Earning Capacity click here.

General Damages for Pain and Suffering: You are entitled to be compensated in dollars for the pain, suffering, disfigurement and disability you have experienced as a result of the injury. Although this category of damages is well established in the law, calculating the dollar amount of the loss and proving it to an insurance company may require the help of a lawyer. For more information on General Damages for Pain and Suffering click here.

Additional information on Property Damages.

You are entitled to have personal property damages paid by the insurance company of the person who caused the injury.

If the personal property was damaged beyond repair, you are entitled to the difference between the fair cash market value of the damaged property immediately before it was damaged and its salvage value. If the personal property is repairable, you are entitled to the lesser of the cost of the repairs plus any diminished value even after the repairs, or the difference between the fair cash market value before the damage and the salvage value. In either case you are entitled to a sum to compensate you for loss of use of the property during the time reasonably required for repair or replacement.

Often if your only losses are to personal property, and you were not injured in the accident, you can negotiate a settlement directly with the insurance adjuster without the help of a lawyer.

Additional information on Medical Expenses.

You are entitled to have the medical expenses incurred as a result of the injury paid by the insurance company of the person who caused the injury. To secure these sums we obtain all your medical records from health care providers, along with the billings for services. We then provide this documentation to the insurance company to establish both that the expense was incurred and also that the treatment was made necessary by the accident. Sometimes insurance companies will attempt to argue that an injured person had a preexisting condition which requires the treatment, or that another injury necessitated the treatment. In order to defend against this tactic, we may need to obtain a complete history of medical care predating the accident, and a written statement from the treating physician stating that in his or her professional opinion the treatment was more likely than not caused by the accident.

Recovering compensation for medical expenses from an insurance company is a lot like filing for an income tax refund from the government, you need to collect all your receipts and accurately fill out their paperwork. Our lawyers and paralegals are trained to take care of all the needed paper flow.

Additional information on Future Medical Care.

You are entitled to money to pay for future medical care made necessary by your injury. In concept, this is like obtaining money to pay for repairs to a damaged vehicle: the insurance company will require an accurate detailed estimate from a professional--in this case from the doctor or doctors who will be providing the future health care services.

The key to obtaining this recovery is in obtaining the written estimate of future medical care from the doctors. We start by obtaining your complete written medical records from all health care providers so that we and you can see exactly what the doctors are saying about the medical situation. We regularly meet with doctors to review the records and help the doctors address the specific requirements the insurance companies impose before they are willing to pay for future medical care.

It is important to remember that there is a one time lump sum payment for future medical care paid at settlement. We are careful to avoid settlement until we know all our client’s future medical needs. Once a claim is settled, it is not generally possible to reopen the claim.

Additional information on Lost Income.

You are entitled to recover the lost income caused by the injury. There are two things you have to prove to obtain compensation for lost income. First, you have to provide medical proof that you were unable to work. Second you must demonstrate the amount of pay you lost. Let me address each of these requirements in turn.

First you have to provide medical proof that you were unable to work. We start by obtaining for ourselves and our client the complete written medical records from all health care providers so that we and our client can see exactly what the doctors are saying about the medical situation. We regularly meet with doctors to review the records and help the doctors address the specific requirements the insurance companies impose before they are willing to concede that a client has been unable to work because of the injury.

Second, you have to demonstrate the amount of money you lost. That can be simple or complicated depending on your type of employment. If you are a wage earner who lost a specific number of hours work, you receive your hourly wage for each hour lost. It is more complicated if you work on commission (like a realtor), or if you are self employed (like a fisherman). In that case we have to reconstruct the financial losses by looking at the earnings record from past years as shown by business, tax, and accounting records. It is more difficult, but we are quite experienced in this economic reconstruction and projection.

If you have been injured through the fault of another, you are entitled to recover all the lost income caused by the injury. Don’t settle for anything less.

Additional information on Future Earning Capacity.

You are entitled to recover future lost income or future loss of earning capacity. There are two things you have to prove to obtain compensation for future lost income or future loss of earning capacity. First, you have to provide medical proof that you will suffer the future lost income or future loss of earning capacity. Second, you must demonstrate the amount of earnings you will lose. Let me address each of these requirements in turn. First you have to provide medical proof that you are unable to work or unable to work at the same level of earnings you enjoyed before the injury. This starts with a written opinion from a doctor describing the medical disability. We then take that to a vocational rehabilitation specialist who can assess your ability to perform in the work force with the medical disability. This often requires extensive physical, mental and psychological testing. Once the vocational specialist establishes a level of employment ability, we hire an economist to estimate the difference between the future earnings you expected before the accident and the future earnings you can now expect as a result of the total or partial disability. The difference is the loss of future earnings or loss of future earning capacity. If you were injured through someone else’s fault, and you were partially or completely disabled as a result of that injury, the future lost income or future lost earning capacity can have a significant, even devastating effect on your ability to support yourself and your family. You should not attempt to negotiate a settlement with a trained, experienced insurance adjuster without professional help.

Additional information on Pain and Suffering.

The law is clear that if you are injured through someone else’s fault you are entitled to recover money damages for pain, suffering, disability and disfigurement. The problem is in estimating the amount of money needed to compensate you for these losses and then proving that estimate to an insurance company, or if necessary, in court. Unlike medical expenses or lost wages where the loss can be totaled up from bills or wage stubs, there is no marketplace for pain. We can’t ask volunteers “How much would we have to pay you to be seriously hurt in an automobile accident.” No one would volunteer at any reasonable price. Consequently, we have to estimate the money value of this type of claim by looking at the awards in similar cases which have been decided by a judge or jury. Fortunately, we have access to state, regional and national publications and computerized data banks in which we can find similar cases and provide good estimates of the range of awards for these losses. We can then attempt to secure appropriate settlements with the insurance company. If the insurance company will not pay a fair settlement, we have the experience to present the real human losses to a jury in a compelling way. Since we are always prepared to take a claim to trial, and the insurance companies know it, we are usually able to secure a favorable settlement including an appropriate amount for general damages, in an out of court settlement.

3. How much is my injury claim worth?

There are two ways to evaluate the monetary settlement value of a claim. You should use both.

First, you can add up the amounts you are entitled to for property damage, medical expenses to date, future medical expenses, lost earnings to date, future lost earnings, and general damages for pain and suffering to find a total claim value. Unfortunately, some types of damage, such as general damages for pain and suffering, are difficult to evaluate. Consequently, we also use a second method. We review state, regional and national publications and computerized databases to find similar claims, involving similar individuals with similar injuries and similar liability patterns to develop a statistical analysis of your claim’s value.

If you have been seriously injured through someone else’s fault, you should not attempt to estimate the value of your claim without professional assistance.

4. What should I do immediately to help preserve my claim?

The answer to the question “What should I do immediately to help preserve my claim?” is not: “Get a lawyer quickly.” The answer is: “be careful to get a good lawyer”, and preserve your claim while going through that process. What should you do immediately to preserve your claim while you are going through the process of finding a lawyer? Two things. Preserve the evidence and preserve your negotiating position.

First, preserve the evidence. This is like first aid on the way to the hospital. Do not perform surgery on yourself, just keep yourself alive until you can get to a doctor. Similarly, do not try to be your own lawyer, just keep your claim alive until you can get to an experienced lawyer. Do not attempt to interview witnesses to the accident. If there is a later dispute over what they said, as an interested party, your recollection does not carry much weight. Instead, get their names, addresses and phone numbers. Obtain the name, address and phone number and insurance coverage information from the person who caused the accident. Take photographs, lots of photographs -- photographs of the scene of the accident, photographs of the damaged automobiles, photographs of your injury, and photographs of you during your period of recovery. Bring all of this to your lawyer after you have selected one.

Second preserve your negotiating position. Do not sign anything presented by the insurance adjuster. Do not give a written or oral statement to an insurance adjuster. Do not attempt to negotiate a settlement with the insurance adjuster. Once you have preserved the evidence and preserved your negotiating position, you can take time to get a good, experienced personal injury lawyer.

5. How should I select a lawyer to represent me?

When you select a lawyer to represent you on a personal injury claim, you should consider three factors:

1. Select a lawyer who has a reputation for excellent legal ability and high ethical standards.
2. Select a lawyer who has experience handling your particular kind of case. If you are injured through someone else’s fault, don’t hire a lawyer who spends all day doing divorces or writing wills. Hire an experienced personal injury lawyer.
3. Hire a lawyer in whom you feel comfortable placing your trust and confidence.

Excellent Ability and High Standards. Select a lawyer with a reputation for excellent legal ability and high ethical standards. The Bellingham Public Library has a copy of the Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory, a twenty-four volume set listing almost all of the lawyers in the United States and rating their legal ability as A (very high to preeminent), B (high to very high), C (fair to high) or no rating. A rating of V is given for high ethical standards. At Brett & Daugert we are proud of our Martindale Hubbell AV rating, the highest available. The Martindale-Hubbell directory is also available online at www.Marindale-Hubble.com.

But you don’t have to rely solely on a publication. You can ask people in Bellingham who have had experience in the legal system, who work in the courthouse, or who have had experience with personal injury claims. Ask a number of people and see which names keep coming up.

Experience. Select a lawyer who has experience handling your particular kind of case. Relatively few lawyers devote most of their practice to representing individuals with claims for personal injury or wrongful death. Before you hire a lawyer, you should know how many times, if ever, that lawyer has actually gone to court on a personal injury claim.

You should know whether that lawyer has ever obtained a verdict or settlement in a personal injury case of over a million dollars, or over a $100,000, or even over $50,000. Don’t allow the lawyer to avoid your questions with generalizations. Ask for specific cases with specific results. Remember, when you talk to a lawyer, you are interviewing him for a job, working for you. Look at the resume.

Trust and Confidence. You should hire a lawyer in whom you feel comfortable placing your trust and confidence. Remember, the lawyer is going to be working for you. The lawyer is going to be representing you. You want someone who you can talk to, who you can understand, and who you feel cares about understanding you. The best way to make that decision is to meet the lawyer face to face. If you want to take things a step at a time, talk to the lawyer on the phone and see whether you feel comfortable enough that you want to make an appointment.

At Brett & Daugert PLLC we offer clients a choice when it comes how to pay for legal services. You can pay an hourly charge or a contingency fee.

If you chose to hire us on an hourly basis, we keep track of the time the lawyers and paralegals spend on your case and bill you monthly. Our hourly rates range from $185 for lead trial lawyers, to $160 for associate trial lawyers, and $80 for paralegals. On hourly billings, there are two basic rules: all fees and costs must be paid monthly, and we are paid regardless of whether we win or lose.

With a contingency fee, we are paid one-third of any recovery by settlement or judgment. If there is no recovery, you owe us nothing for our legal services. You must pay your own costs, such as the charges doctors make for providing records and reports, out of the money you receive when the case is settled.

When we accept a case, clients may choose whether to pay us on an hourly basis or on a contingency fee. The choice is entirely up to the client.

Insurance companies are in business to make a profit. There is nothing wrong with making a profit, just don’t forget that is what they are doing. Generally, the insurance company’s profit is the difference between what they bring in premiums and what they pay out in claims. Therefore, the insurance adjuster’s job is to settle your claim for as little as possible. Your lawyer’s job is to settle your claim for its maximum value.

The insurance companies have put together a huge bureaucracy to scrutinize, criticize, evaluate and ultimately pay insurance claims. The insurance adjuster’s job is to weed out false or fraudulent claims and to refuse to pay undocumented claims, knowing all the while that he must pay genuine, well-documented claims. The insurance adjuster is trying to build a file, to critically evaluate your claim, and to pay as little as possible to settle your claim as soon as possible.

But remember, the insurance adjuster reports to a supervisor. If the adjuster has a thin, small file on a claim he has settled for $5,000, the supervisor is likely to say “You paid too much. This file is not worth $5,000.”

On the other hand, if the adjuster has a thick, full, well-documented file with complete witness statements, complete medical opinion letters, and complete records of all medical care, wage losses, and other expenses, and then settles the case for $50,000, the supervisor is likely to say, “That’s fine, the claim was worth $50,000” The job of your lawyer is to make the insurance adjuster look good to his supervisor when he makes a full and fair claims settlement.

Your lawyer’s goal is to maximize your financial recovery from your injury. Your lawyer must develop a reputation for honest dealing, for a fair but firm settlement posture, for refusing to settle for a penny less than the claim is worth, and for being prepared to take each claim to trial, if necessary, to get a full and fair recovery.

There are basically five steps the insurance adjuster must take in handling a personal injury claim:

1. Collecting Information
2. Setting Reserves
3. Evaluating Damages
4. Negotiating Settlement
5. Defending in Trial if Necessary

Collecting Information. The adjuster must collect the information needed to understand your claim. Your lawyer should provide all the relevant information to the adjuster so that his or her file is well-documented and the company is assured that yours is a valid claim. Sometimes insurance adjusters are so busy looking for damaging information about you or your claim that they miss favorable information. Your attorney must collect that favorable information -- witness statements, photographs of the collision and your injury, opinion letters from experts in medicine, accident reconstruction or economic loss --and present that to the adjuster so he or she sees the significance of your claim.

Setting Reserves. The adjuster must set reserves. When a claim comes in, the company must set reserves, an accounting entry, to assure government regulators that the company has adequate money to pay the claim. If initial reserves are set too low, when the time comes to settle the claim, the adjuster will sometimes be too limited in the amount of money he can offer in settlement. Your attorney must get the appropriate information to the adjuster as soon as possible, to assist the company in setting high enough reserves that the ultimate settlement can be for the full claim value.

Evaluating Damages. The adjuster must evaluate the claim value. We provide the adjuster with all of the relevant information, comparable cases from state, regional and national publications and computerized databases, and our own evaluation of the claim’s value to assist the adjuster in coming to a full and fair evaluation.

Negotiating Settlement. The adjuster must negotiate a settlement. Insurance adjusters are professionals. They adjust claims, that is, negotiate settlements, daily. There is an old saying, “A lawyer who represents himself, has a fool for a client.” Likewise, an injured party who attempts to negotiate a personal injury settlement with a professional insurance adjuster is likely to recover far less than the claim’s true value. Do not attempt to negotiate a settlement of your personal injury claim without professional advice.

Defending in Trial if Necessary. The insurance company must defend the claim in court, if they cannot reach a settlement. Although this website is not designed to answer questions about claims in litigation, your lawyer must maintain the same reputation for honest dealing, for a fair but firm settlement posture, for refusing to settle for less than full claim value, and for thorough trial preparation, throughout the litigation.

If you do not know whether the person who caused the accident was insured, you should contact a lawyer immediately to help you in determining that critical information.

We have represented many individuals who have been injured by someone who is uninsured or whose insurance is insufficient to pay the fair and full value of the claim. These cases can be difficult. But you should not give up until you explore all potential sources of compensation for your injuries, including underinsured motorists coverage, the Crime Victim’s Compensation Act, “joint and several” liability of insured individuals whose negligence combined with that of the uninsured party to cause your injuries, and other such options. If you have been injured through the negligence of someone who is uninsured, the only certainty is that if you do not explore your other options, you will recover nothing. Although a lawyer cannot guarantee that he can find coverage and obtain a recovery for you, he or she has an obligation to explore all of the alternatives and advise you whether any of them are available to help you.

It is important to get your medical bills paid immediately, both to protect your credit and to allow you to continue to receive the highest quality medical care. As a part of handling your personal injury claim we coordinate payment of your medical bills. Your job is to find the best medical care, follow your doctor’s advice, strive to reach the best possible medical recovery , and send all your bills to our office. We then coordinate the paperwork needed to obtain payment of those medical bills through your own medical coverage, the insurance coverage of any other persons involved in the accident, state and federal medical payment programs, or by arranging with your health care providers to hold collection until you receive your settlement.

You should not forego good medical treatment because you think you cannot afford it. Your good health is too important. Take care of that first. Your lawyer will coordinate payment of your medical care as part of handling your personal injury claim.

If your injury occurred more than one year ago, you may have a statute of limitations problem. The statute of limitations requires that you bring a claim within a certain period of time or be forever barred from doing so. Depending on the manner in which you were injured, the statute of limitations could be three years, two years or less from the date of injury.

If you are injured by the fault of another, you are entitled to be compensated for the injuries caused by the accident, but not for preexisting injuries or unrelated injuries. Although this seems reasonable and logical, the insurance company may refuse to pay your claim if they suspect that your injury preexisted the accident or was caused by an unrelated event. Consequently, we obtain your entire medical history so that we and you can see exactly what the records report and we can then reassure the insurance company that no preexisting or unrelated injury exists.

Even if you had a preexisting condition or injury to the same area of the body injured in the accident, special rules govern compensation for aggravation of preexisting injuries.

The proof of a causal link between the accident and the injury often seems simple, but your lawyer must work hard to make sure the insurance company’s natural skepticism does not create a defense to payment where none exists.

You have asked about pre-existing conditions. If you have been injured due to the fault of another but the injury is to an area of your body where you have had a pre-existing condition, either one that was causing you pain or disability, or one which was not causing pain or disability, you are in the complicated situation which will require that you hire your own lawyer. All we can do in this general answer is tell you some general rules and advise you to seek help from a lawyer. If before the accident you had a pre-existing bodily condition which was causing pain or disability and if the accident aggravated the pain or disability, then you are entitled to be compensated for the aggravation of the condition, but you are not entitled to be compensated for the condition which may have existed prior to the accident.

If before the accident you had a pre-existing bodily condition which was not causing pain or disability and which was lighted up, or made active by the accident, or if the pre-existing condition made you more subject to injury than a person in normal health, then you are entitled to be compensated for all injuries and damages which were caused by the accident, even though those injuries due to your condition may have been greater than those which would have been suffered by a normal person under the very same circumstances. You cannot recover, however, for any results which would have normally followed from the pre-existing condition had there been no accident.

The proof of a causal link between the accident and the injury often seem simple, but we work hard to make sure the insurance company’s natural skepticism does not create a defense to payment where none exists.

When a person dies as a result of someone else’s fault, four interrelated statutes govern calculation of recoverable damages, depending on whether they were married, had children, or were children themselves. None of the statutes can ever replace the person who was lost. Lawyers and lawsuits cannot bring them back. But lawyers can help the survivors in many ways, from coordinating with criminal prosecution of the at fault party, to arranging appropriate grief counseling for the survivors. One of the things lawyers can do is secure monetary compensation for the loss. The general rule is that you are entitled to be put back into the position you would have been in had the injury not occurred -- to the extent that can be accomplished with money damages. Of course we realize that money cannot bring someone back, but awarding money damages is all our legal system can do.

If the person who died was a minor (under 18) or a child on whom one or both parents were dependent for support, or a viable fetus, damages are defined to include “loss of love and companionship of the child and for injury to or destruction of the parent-child relationship in such amount as, under all the circumstances of the case, may be just.” This broad language has been interpreted to include parental grief, mental anguish and suffering. Significantly, computation of damages is not limited to the lost child’s minority. In addition, medical, hospital, medication and related expenses and loss of services and support are recoverable.

A second statute also allows damages to be recovered on behalf of ...”The wife, husband, child or children” of the deceased. Adult decedents who are single and without children do not qualify here. But for decedents with a surviving spouse or child, “the jury may give such damages as, under all circumstances of the case, may to them be just.” Whether an adult who dies has dependents dramatically affects verdicts and settlements in death claims.

A third statute allows recovery for decedents even if the were unmarried without dependents, the recovery is to their estate and includes the present value of their future net earnings had they lived a normal life expectancy. Usually proof of loss must be made through the calculations of an economist.

A fourth statute is useful to help survivors who may not qualify for help under other statutes. Care must be taken to avoid duplication of claims made under other statutes. The claim may be brought on behalf of the husband or wife, children, and under special circumstances, certain other family members.

Since the types and amounts of recoveries depend on four interrelated statutes, a claim for wrongful death should be presented only with the help of an experienced lawyer.