<p>My husband was recently injured by a hit and run driver. He will recover. He has a broken bone, a concussion, and some severe bruising. Three injuries, all of which will heal, all of which will require some physical therapy. Prognosis is a year to full recovery. We are fortunate; we are quite aware it could have been much much worse.</p>
<p>The police have located the driver and expect to make an arrest soon.
We are looking for a personal injury lawyer.</p>
<p>What I’d like to know – what questions do we ask and what do we look for in an attorney? We have a real estate transactions attorney, and while there’s a PI attorney in their firm, it’s not their specialty and the guy is hard to get hold of, so we are looking around.</p>
<p>Obviously, there is a lot more to this story but I would prefer not to relate any more details at this time.</p>
<p>I happen to have a very low opinion of plaintiff/personal injury lawyers, but I practice on the other side of the fence. Some are less horrible than others, though. Personal referrals are the best, because there are a lot (most) of low-lifes handling these types of cases. Do some google searches and see if anyone jumps out. Usually you can check with some past clients of the person. It sort of depends on your city/town. You may have lots of choices, or, in a smaller community there may be one or two stand-outs. If you want to PM me I might be able to get you a referral.
(I don’t blame you a bit for wanting to bring the action. I just haven’t run into many ethical PI lawyers…)</p>
<p>More than likely, there will be an insurance company involved, and if they arrested the other driver, more than likely he didn’t have insurance, so it will be your insurance that is paying out.</p>
<p>A good attorney will fight to make sure that your payout from your insurance company (or his if he actually does have one) will be the most that you can get. They will submit claims, negotiate with the insurance company over what is or what is not covered, and get you the largest check possible.</p>
<p>If he does not have insurance, you can look at your under/uninsured coverage to know how much is at stake. If it’s $30,000, I wouldn’t bother with one because you could probably justify $30,000 on your own without too much trouble. If you have $250,000+, then an attorney would be beneficial.</p>
<p>A good attorney will also take a look at the other driver to make sure they aren’t sitting on a pile of money. They might hire a private investigator to follow the other driver around to see if he lives in an expensive neighborhood, drives a nice car, owns a house, etc, etc. If so, these assets could be seized to pay for injuries.</p>
<p>I was the other driver in a similiar incident years ago…but it was an honest (but serious) accident so I wasn’t arrest fortuantely.</p>
<p>It sounds like you have decided for sure to hire one, but in case others read this thread who are considering hiring one.</p>
<p>Consider the cost of the attorney and how much extra they might be able to bring you. Typically, they take the settlement cost, deduct their fees, and then take 40% or 50% of what is left. So if you have a $150,000 settlement that cost $20,000 in attorney expenses, you might get $65,000. Attorney expenses might be professional witnesses, documentation costs, private investigators, etc, etc.</p>
<p>If you could have got $75,000 without an attorney, you’ve lost money overall.</p>
<p>But an attorney might be able to get more money than you can on your own, even factoring in expenses. Then it might be worth it.</p>
<p>However, no settlement is worth much unless someone can pay it. If the other guy has no insurance, he probably can’t pay much and then any settlement will be difficult to collect, except from your own insurance.</p>
<p>When my H was victim of hit-n-run, the lawyer who wrote our wills/trusts handled the suit. Since the driver was never found, the atty had to manage it as a claim against the “uninsured driver” coverage of OUR auto policy. Do you know if the guy who hit your H carries insurance? If not, be prepared for fighting your own insurance company. </p>
<p>In our case, this was not an easy claim. My H was cycling (yes, on a designated bike route) and hit from behind by a passing car. He broke 5 ribs, had MAJOR road rash, torn muscles, and a severly displaced fx of his clavicle which required a titanium plate and 10 screws. 6 months after the accident we learned he also cracked 3 vertibrae.</p>
<p>He missed work for 8 weeks and, like your H, wasn’t really whole for almost a year. Being self-employed, it was quite a hardship. We encountered the most resistance from the insurance company in the fight to recover lost wages. They counted phone calls to clients at week 2 as work, therefore they wouldn’t pay lost wages after that point in time. (H has a heavy lifting job. The money isn’t made on the phone.)</p>
<p>It wasn’t until we discovered the cracked vertabrae that the insurance company relented and paid lost wages for the whole 8 weeks. From start to finish the claim process took about 30 months and a lawyer’s persistance. On our own, we would have given up. </p>
<p>Best of luck to you. I know what you’re going through and it stinks.</p>
<p>Umm, I don’t think so. He got one-third, we got two-thirds. All three thirds did not come close to 24 weeks of income.</p>
<p>But the whole thing was on contingency. We had no risk, so any settlement was better than none. We didn’t feel a need to do a cost benefit analysis.</p>