Kearns Personal Injury Lawyer

Accidents often lead to injury, which often leads to multiple problems for victims. Medical bills, repair services, and lost wages are extremely taxing at the best of times and dangerously crippling at the worst.

Getting compensation for any of these damages is difficult on its own; insurance companies you trust to protect your interests rarely want to cut into their earnings and hand out a multiple-figure sum. Oftentimes, we find insurers will look for any reason to diminish the value of a claim.

This might not be a problem for minor injuries and property damage. For example, an insurance claim of a thousand dollars with a claimant having to add $200 out of pocket is a dent, but usually nothing that will upend a person’s life.

But the more serious the accident and the more serious the injury, the greater of an effect a diminished claim has. A claim falling four or five figures short of your total expenses can easily spiral downward into a financial hellscape from which few can escape.

That’s where we, the personal injury attorneys from Valley Law Accident and Injury Lawyers, play our part. Our Utah-based firm is a leader in personal injury law, helping our clients get back on their feet through fair compensation via claims and lawsuits.

Contact Valley Law today by calling us at (801) 810-9999.

What Cases Does a Kearns Personal Injury Attorney Handle?

Technically speaking, personal injury lawyers can handle any case where a client sustains harm. That said, clients benefit the most from having legal representation the greater their damages are.

Generally speaking, the more a client stands to gain from their claim, the more the insurer stands to lose. This means that the insurance company is going to fight harder to prove that they don’t have to pay – or at least that they don’t have to pay as much.

Here is a list of common cases we handle at Valley Law. Keep in mind that this list is not exhaustive and is just a summary of the most common ones that come through our door.

Car Accidents

Road accidents are the most common cases personal injury lawyers handle. 69.6% of Americans own at least one car, which means there are about 300,000,000 vehicles on the roads (excluding unregistered vehicles) and a lot of potential for accidents.

In 2021, the state of Utah saw around 326 traffic fatalities spread across 293 fatal accidents. This might seem small, but if it follows that less than 1% of traffic accidents result in a fatality (around 0.6%), then there were an estimated 49,333 accidents in total that same year.

Granted, not all accidents resulted in injury, as many would have been unreported fenderbenders. But this alarming frequency puts all Utahns at risk; from afar, it would seem like it is only a matter of time before anyone is involved in a car accident.

Truck Accidents

When it comes to the world of accident and injury law, truck accidents can be thought of as car accidents with risks dialed all the way up to eleven. While the average car weighs around 1.5 tons, trucks, depending on class, go from twice that to 26 times that, and even more.

The biggest of trucks, tractor-trailers, have an average weight of 40 tons, with the heaviest among them in the country weighing 85 tons, with engines powerful enough so their mass barely comes at the cost of any speed.

This means any truck accident risks more disastrous results for minor mistakes. And while, for the most part, truckers try to mitigate these risks with rigorous safety measures and practices, the odds of an accident occurring are never zero.

The worst truck accidents can involve multiple vehicles, often leading to entire roads being closed just to contain the damage.

Motorcycle Accidents

Motorcycles suffer from the opposite problem that trucks do: they are lightweight compared to other vehicles, and their smaller frame makes them more difficult to spot. This means they are at a disadvantage in accidents, with their riders at risk of serious injury.

This problem is exacerbated by the fact that motorcycles do not share the same safety features that larger vehicles enjoy. True, motorcyclists have protective gear such as helmets and pads, but they don’t have the protection of seatbelts, airbags, or roll cages.

Motorcycle accidents also happen more frequently, making them up to nearly ten times more common than truck accidents. This can be attributed to the double-edged sword of a motorcycle’s agility, which can lead to riders being overconfident in their ability to avoid disaster.

Wrongful Death

Wrongful death happens when a person’s or party’s actions lead to the death of another. This usually stems from the at-fault party’s negligence but can also result from an intentional act.

These kinds of claims often follow other personal injury cases, such as car accidents or slip-and-falls. Victims can spend long amounts of time in the hospital getting treatment before succumbing to their injuries in the end.

Wrongful death compensates the family and/or dependents of the deceased for damages they suffer from the victim’s death. Any financial difficulty experienced, as well as personal emotional loss, is considered when making a wrongful death claim.

Other Practice Areas

While the majority of our cases are vehicle-related, we offer our services to anyone in need of reimbursement for their injuries after an accident. We serve the Kearns community in the following cases:

• Pedestrian Accidents – Vehicles are not the only dangers to pedestrians. Falling debris, pathway obstacles, and poor road and walkway conditions can all contribute to injury on Kearns streets.

• Bicycle Accidents – Cyclists deserve as much safety as pedestrians but also share as much responsibility as other road users. They also face many of the same risks that motorcyclists do, which means more serious damages in the event of an accident.

• Boating Accidents – The lakes and rivers of Utah offer plenty of opportunities for boating and water sports. This also means a high risk of serious injury when things go wrong on the water.

• Premises Liability – Property owners are expected to provide reasonable safety measures for those on their premises. When they fail to do so, they can be held liable for harm that accident victims suffer.

• Construction Site Accidents – Construction sites are inherently dangerous places, both for workers and for people nearby. Employees and pedestrians can seek compensation when they are injured due to poor safety practices.

• Golf Cart/ATV Accidents – Golf carts and ATVs may not typically be seen on the roads, but they are still vehicles and can still lead to injury. There are also times when they are taken on roads and can be involved in the same kinds of accidents as other vehicles.

• Dangerous Drugs/Defective Medical Devices – We trust medical services to help us. Unfortunately, that trust is sometimes betrayed when defective devices and medicines lead to worse medical conditions than what was supposed to be treated in the first place.

• Daycare Accidents – We expect daycares to supervise children with the same degree of care that parents do, or at least as reasonably close to the same degree as possible. Daycares may be liable for injuries that children under their watch sustain.

• Dog Bites – As beloved as dogs can be, the unfortunate truth is that not every dog owner is responsible. Dogs may also be rabid or stray with no owner to take care of them or bear the responsibility for their aggressive behavior when they cause harm.

Benefits of Working With a Personal Injury Lawyer

Your personal injury lawyer has two main goals when they handle your case: to increase the odds that you make a successful claim and to increase the amount of money you can net via your claim. Mostly, they (at least the good ones) succeed in this.

Research shows that only around 70% of claimants receive some form of payout when they make a personal injury claim. Settlements and court awards in these cases typically reach around $53,000 on average.

However, claimants who work with lawyers have been shown to secure a payout from an insurer or at-fault party 91% of the time. This is in stark contrast to unrepresented claimants, who only manage to secure their claim 51% of the time.

Furthermore, personal injury lawyers have been shown to net their clients an average of $77,600 in their claims – a 47% increase compared to the mean. Compared to this, unrepresented claimants only get $17,600 on average (77.86% lower than normal).

How Does a Lawyer Help Me Through the Personal Injury Claims Process?

For the most part, personal injury claims follow the same general process, give or take a few steps, depending on the context of the case. Plenty of the value lawyers provide their clients comes down to them having this process down to a T.

• First, claimants contact their insurance company; they submit a form providing all the information the insurance company needs in order to assess the claim. This requires accurate documentation of evidence, including photos, receipts, medical bills, and police reports. 
• The claimant then has to meet with an insurance adjuster. This agent will conduct an investigation, review the evidence, and, on occasion, interview the claimant in order to verify details and recommend a value for an initial offer.
• At this point, it becomes the claimant’s responsibility to review the offer and then, based on their judgment, accept it or negotiate for a better offer. Unfortunately, very few claimants choose the latter option on their own.

The process seems like a total of three simple parts. The issue, however, is that it is extremely easy for the average claimant to get lost or stuck navigating the nuances of each of these three general steps.

What information should I provide in my documentation? Why does the insurance adjuster need to know about conversations I had with the other driver?

They’re telling me I could have avoided the accident entirely… is this true? Why do I suddenly feel like I was in the wrong?

The difficulties claimants encounter throughout the process can be traced back to one fact: insurance companies and their agents are experts in navigating the process, while the average accident victim is not.

Victims are often at a disadvantage and, unrepresented, have to trust that the insurance company is looking out for their best interests. Add to this the fact that a claimant’s injuries might not leave them in any condition or with any time to handle the process in the first place.

Personal injury lawyers just so happen to be experts in the same field and then some. The difference is that they are interested in securing a fair claim settlement for their clients and are not concerned with how much money the insurance company spends or saves.

Your attorney will apply their skills for your benefit in each of the steps, balancing the scales and often tipping them in your favor.

• Your lawyer can help you review the evidence, accounting for anything you may have missed and building a comprehensive and airtight case. Their goal is to take the weight off your hands so you can spend more time recovering while they work on your claim on your behalf.
• Your lawyer will begin an investigation of their own, the results of which can be compared and contrasted with the insurance adjuster’s findings. They will answer any questions the adjuster has, providing important context that they may not consider in an effort to look out for the company and potentially increase the starting point of the adjuster’s initial offer.
• Your lawyer can review the offer in your stead and, more importantly, argue for a better offer. Through aggressive negotiations, your attorney can assert your right to a larger claim, eventually getting you the offer you need, or at the very least, a compromise you can be satisfied with.
• Sometimes, however, negotiations don’t turn out the way you want, and neither you nor the insurer can come to terms with one another. Your lawyer can help you pursue additional options, such as filing a lawsuit against the insurer or, perhaps, against the at-fault party directly.

By providing clients with their services, personal injury lawyers can save them time and energy and even reveal additional options should one path to compensation fail. Through it all, the goal remains the same: secure a large enough amount to get the client back on their feet.

Call Valley Law Accident and Injury Lawyers – Your Kearns Personal Injury Law Firm

We at Valley Law Accident and Injury Lawyers provide professional personal injury legal services to the Kearns community and beyond, and we are expanding our reach throughout Utah and Nevada.

Lead attorney Brigham Richards provides over a decade of legal experience to our team at Valley Law. His personal, client-centric approach has won over $100 million for clients over the years.

We at Valley Law Accident and Injury Lawyers serve our community in both English and Spanish. Call us today at (801) 810-9999 and start working toward your maximum personal injury claim.