Personal injury Lawyer Greensboro, NC
More people were in more car and truck crashes in Greensboro from 2017 and 2019 than in any other city in North Carolina, except one, Charlotte. In only three years, 99 people were killed in traffic accidents just in this city. Thousands suffered serious personal injuries.
If you were injured in a Greensboro auto accident, the Clauson Law Firm wants to be your Greensboro personal injury law firm. We understand how profoundly the accident affected your life and how challenging it is for you just to get through the day in your compromised condition. That’s why we are committed to making your case a priority and to pushing the responsible party’s insurance company to pay you the maximum possible compensation for all the damages you and your family suffered
Accidents Change Lives
Not every car accident results in severe injuries to the driver or passenger. Some crashes are little more than fender-rubs in which no one is hurt. But serious automobile accidents happen every day in Greensboro and everywhere in the Triad. In the three years between 2017 and 2019, Greensboro alone had 32,852 motor vehicle accidents, thousands of which caused someone to suffer life-changing injuries.
The victim whose personal injury requires extended hospitalization, or surgical repair of broken or shattered bones is usually at the beginning of a long, hard, and painful road to recover as much of their prior life as possible. Months or years of rehabilitation therapy can follow these horrific crashes, every day of which is filled with physical pain and mental distress.
Injury victims almost always lose a substantial amount of income because they can’t go back to work; some victims will never work again. Even when their outward wounds appear to heal, surgically repaired joints can continue to hurt, limbs remain weakened, and the future they once dreamed of seems lost.
Families of personal injury victims share in the suffering. Family members see their loved ones in pain, depressed, and struggling to recover. The financial pressures are felt throughout the household as the bills are harder to pay, savings dwindle, and plans for their children’s future are threatened.
How can a Greensboro personal injury lawyer help you get a larger settlement?
An experienced personal injury attorney can press your personal injury case aggressively, following up on each step of the process without delay, and fighting to recover the highest compensation their professional skills can get for you.
Personal injury lawyers are not all the same. A few have built a reputation for excellence by achieving their clients’ financial goals and surpassing them. Not every licensed lawyer has the talent to successfully represent seriously injured accidents victims. The best personal injury lawyers feel empathy for their clients and then direct that empathy into aggressive, insistent demands for compensation from insurance company lawyers who try to keep as much money for their corporation as possible.
Larger settlements are not won by luck. They are the result of extensive case preparation, legal expertise, up-to-date knowledge of legislative changes and recent court decisions, and negotiation skills sharpened by years of experience. Clauson Law proudly applies these and other skills to each client’s case to maximize every possible opportunity to improve the final settlement. In those few cases that require going to trial to obtain the outcome our client deserves. Our trial attorneys are well-practiced in trial techniques that win jury verdicts.
Looking for “personal injury lawyer near me” in Greensboro?
Unless you have worked with Clauson Law before, your search on the internet for the best Greensboro personal injury lawyer probably began with a Google search for a “personal injury lawyer near me.” What makes the Clauson Law Firm the right injury lawyer for you is our ability to handle your case with the individual attention necessary to use every piece of supportive evidence in your case as a point of persuasion when we deal with the adjusters and attorneys on the other side.
Some television commercial lawyers invite you to call an office hundreds of miles from where you live. They receive dozens of new calls a day from injury victims looking for a lawyer to fight for them. Instead, these callers speak with a “customer representative” trained to screen out any case that will need work or which doesn’t promise that firm a huge fee. Clauson Law is not one of those firms.
The Clauson Law office in Greensboro is part of the community. Our convenient location means that you can speak with or meet with your lawyer without traveling for hours and that any witness whose sworn deposition must be taken can be accommodated without much inconvenience. Making it easy for witnesses to cooperate is a major plus when building a case against the person whose negligence is responsible for your injuries.
Local counsel also enables your treating physicians, therapists, and hospitals to provide us the copies of medical records and laboratory tests we need to document the nature and extent of the injuries we are fighting to win compensation for. Being nearby and familiar with local healthcare providers is far more productive than those firms that practice long-distance lawyering.
What Compensation can you get for a Greensboro auto accident?
One of the first questions accident victims want to ask their personal injury lawyer is what the case is worth, or what amount of settlement can they expect. Though they may want to ask that question, many don’t ask because they feel uncomfortable translating their pain into money.
In the United States, our civil justice system has developed a system in which individuals who suffer injuries because of another party’s negligence are encouraged to seek restitution for their damages through a civil lawsuit or a claim for damages. There’s no other way for a person who caused injury to another to right their wrong; they can’t take back the accident or heal the injured victim. All that negligent person can do is pay for the financial damage they caused the victim and offer some compensation as an acknowledgment of the severe bodily injury, the pain, and the suffering their accident inflicted. In legal practice, we describe the legal obligation to compensate the victim as “making the victim whole.”
A personal injury client who was injured by another person’s negligence can seek to recover all the following damages:
1). Past and Future Medical Bills, Cost, and Expenses — The large and numerous medical bills injury victims begin to incur become the first and most persistent new expenses for clients.
- emergency medical treatment, surgery, anesthesia, medication, hospitalization, lab tests, MRI’s, CT scans, x-rays, invasive procedures, and costs incurred for emergency transportation by ambulance or helicopter;
- follow-up medical treatment, outpatient tests, rehabilitation, multiple types of therapy, in-home nursing care, domestic services, adaptive equipment (wheelchair, lift, in-home hospital bed, ramps), and any other accident-related healthcare requirement, including all of the above that may be required in the future.
2). Lost Wages, Earnings, Salary, or Other Lost Financial Benefits — The inability to work because of an injury caused by another person’s negligence is among the most frustrating realities for accident victims. That’s why Clauson Law fights to win compensation for ALL you lose when you miss work.
- lost wages, salary, self-employment earnings,
- overtime (payment for lost overtime regularly worked)
- sick days (payment for the sick days you lost or failed to accumulate)
- vacation days (payment for days off you used or failed to accumulate)
- other benefit days (paid holidays, comp days, or personal days used or not accumulated)
- bonuses (pay for bonus or commissions missed or unearned due to injury)
- missed raises
- lost retirement contributions
4). Loss of Earning Capacity— Your earning capacity is your ability or potential ability to earn income as distinct from what you earned in your current job or occupation. In cases of severe or disabling injury, victims often lose the ability to perform tasks as they once did or are unable to fulfill the planned goal they were progressing toward, or they hoped to achieve. This damage is very fact-dependent in each case. Clauson Law explores the application of this damage with you to identify any basis that may exist.
5). Loss of the Enjoyment of Your Life— The impact of serious, long-term, or permanent injury on an accident victim’s life is impossible to quantify in dollars and cents. The law recognizes that the impact, while indescribable, is real. This loss is compensated as distinct damage, separate and apart from other injuries.
6). Pain and Suffering — Compensation for the physical agony, the burning, the sharp jabs of pain, the long hours of aching, fatigue, and the inability to find physical comfort is what this part of the settlement is intended to compensate.
Any psychic or emotional injury is also compensable. People injured in Greensboro accidents frequently experience periods of depression, sadness, frustration, anxiety, fear, anger, resentment, embarrassment, shame, apprehension, loss of confidence or self-esteem, fatalism, social withdrawal, personality changes, sleep disturbance, eating disorders, and even substance dependency from accident-related medications. The Clauson Law Firm assigns a great deal of value to this form of suffering. These damages are extremely difficult to overcome and should be considered at least as valuable as the victim’s physical injuries.
7). Property damages — The negligent party is obliged to repay the value of any damaged, destroyed, or lost property, including the costs incurred for a rental or replacement vehicle, or transportation expenses incurred due to the unavailability of your property
8). Loss of Consortium or Society — In some cases, the victim suffers an extremely severe injury (permanent spinal cord or brain damage). In such instances, compensation is available for a spouse or other family member whose loss of the injury victim’s companionship, society, or sexual attention is lost, either permanently or for an extended period.
9). Punitive Damages — Punitive damages are reserved for cases where the victim’s personal injury is the result of more than the mere negligence of the responsible party, such as with an intentional act or conduct so grossly inappropriate that it demonstrates a wanton and reckless disregard for the welfare of others. As the name suggests, punitive damages are intended to punish the wrong-doer and to deter others from engaging in the same injurious conduct. In North Carolina, punitive damages are capped at the greater of either $250,000 or three times the amount of the compensatory damages awarded.
How do most car crashes happen?
Statistics reveal that most auto accidents for which we have data involve excessive speed, distracted driving, aggressive driving, or impaired driving. Each constitutes negligence for which the at-fault party is obliged to pay compensation to anyone they injure.
- Excessive Speed: High speed is the single most common denominator among serious car crashes and the injuries and deaths they cause. Excessive speed refers to more than just those who roar past us like rockets on the highway. Excessive speed is any speed that is too fast to control your car under the circumstances then present. In heavy rain, 30 mph can be too fast for a driver to stay in their lane on a curve. On a dark road at night, if you are traveling any faster than you can stop if you suddenly see a pedestrian in your headlights, then you’re driving at an excessive speed for the conditions.
- Distracted Driving: Distractions are too common when we’re behind the wheel. When someone texts, or scrolls through their phone contacts, or talks on the phone while driving, their attention is divided between that task and the road. Such a distraction may seem minor but if a driver is even 1 second slower in reacting to an emergency hazard, avoidable collisions occur, and people are seriously injured or killed. When you are behind the wheel, eating, reading, making a note, searching for better music, attending to a child or a pet, or thinking about an upsetting event at work are all distractions that diminish your ability to react quickly.
- Aggressive or Impaired Driving: Both behaviors are inherently dangerous for the same reason. In each case, a driver’s ability to react quickly and safely is compromised. Aggressive drivers leave too little space to ensure they can avoid a crash if another driver acts unexpectedly. Drivers impaired by alcohol or drugs, whether prescription or illegal, are slower to perceive events and react to them safely.
Greensboro Personal Injury Lawyer FAQ's
Hiring a Greensboro personal injury lawyer is the best way to ensure that you recover all the compensation you are entitled to after suffering injuries in any kind of accident caused by someone else’s negligence.
Working with Clauson Law is a great investment that usually pays big rewards to our clients. You pay nothing unless and until your Greensboro personal injury lawyer succeeds in getting the responsible party or their insurance company to cover all your past and future damages.
The best Greensboro personal injury lawyers handle injury cases involving car accidents, medical mistakes or malpractice, dangerous products, unsafe drugs, and injuries suffered on unsafe property. When people suffer serious injuries or even wrongful death, the Greensboro personal injury lawyers at the Clauson Law Firm are ready to provide experienced, skilled representation for you and your family.
The chief benefit of working with an experienced Greensboro personal injury attorney is that you will be able to rely completely on their professionalism and commitment to winning you the biggest settlement possible. The insurance company you will be up against will try to minimize your damages and keep the settlement as low as they can. Skilled personal injury lawyers like Clauson Law defeat these big corporate tactics every day.
Before you hire a personal injury attorney, the insurance company will try every trick to get you to trust them and to sign for much less than you could win with a good personal injury lawyer. The ultimate fee the lawyer earns will come from a much larger settlement than you would have obtained yourself.
Practicing personal injury law in Greensboro is both a blessing and a burden. The Clauson Law team deeply values the trust the Greensboro community has placed in us, and we love to fight and win such large settlements for our clients. At the same time, we carry a great and solemn responsibility that we take very seriously because we know that your family is counting on us to ensure that your future is everything it could and should be, despite the negligence of the party who caused your injuries.
It is never a good idea to delay placing a claim with an experienced lawyer against a person or company that injured you negligently. North Carolina law permits an injured party to file a legal claim in court against the responsible party up to three years after the date of the injury. But some cases are more complex and must be filed as early as two years following the death of the victim.
Every day that passes before you commence a legal claim is another day that evidence to support your claim is lost, witness memories fade, and our investigation of the events is made more difficult.