Kirk Bernard

In the large urban center of Seattle, neatly poised on the Puget Sound, all kinds of personal injury incidents happen every day. Washington residents impacted by an event commonly look for ways to pay their medical bills and get compensation for an incident in which they were a victim of preventable harm, whether it’s a workplace injury, a car accident or some other kind of event caused by another party—including an individual or local business.

As the first part of identifying any personal injury case, it’s important to know the criteria for such a case. An individual needs to be able to prove a direct and causal relationship either between a careless mistake or dangerous condition and an injury, or between an unsafe environment and the onset for a chronic condition. In other words, there must be a real and definable injury with a concrete cause. The other part of the case will be to link the cause to an action or omission by a responsible party.

There are several beginning steps commonly involved in a Seattle personal injury lawsuit. These include defining your case, writing up a formal grievance statement for use by a judicial or legal process and seeking a Seattle personal injury attorney. In the state of Washington, those looking to claim personal injury should realize that specific statute of limitation requirements restrict their time frame. For many of these cases, local legal experts cite a three-year period as the applicable statute of limitations, but this can vary according to several factors.

Individuals and families seeking to litigate a Seattle personal injury lawsuit, either against another individual or business or against an insurance company, look to legal professionals to assess their cases. Personal injury attorneys in Seattle and across Washington help weed out frivolous lawsuits where too much unfounded litigation can hurt the state’s legal system. At the same time, clear-eyed assessment helps the plaintiffs to know whether they will be successful in getting a specific sized settlement.

Residents in the state of Washington and elsewhere are often heavily insured against injury; therefore, many personal injury cases rely on an insurance contract. Many of the cases that are essentially insurance claims are settled out of court. In fact, other kinds of personal injury cases often settle out of court as well. Legal teams will be able to see early on whether a settlement is likely to occur, or whether a court trial may be needed to assign responsibility to a defendant. Local Seattle legal teams can also help their clients negotiate a settlement, which is key in providing for all of the costs of a personal injury—including medical bills, lost wages, and pain and suffering. The Washington personal injury lawyers led by Kirk Bernard at the Bernard Law Group can look through the specific Washington state regulations to see if pain and suffering compensation can be part of a settlement, or whether that has been nullified by certain contingencies in state insurance law.

All of this is just part of what clients rely on personal injury attorneys for in a Seattle personal injury lawsuit. The next step will be thorough research, including interviews, to help determine the details of a case. The legal team will look through all applicable case precedents, applicable standards, and insurance contract agreements to get an accurate picture of what the outcome is likely to be. Local victims of personal injury look for professionals who will hear their case proposals realistically, and with compassion and concern, to help obtain the best compensation results from an adversarial insurance company or a careless third party. Because of the complex process that awaits an individual or family with a personal injury case, having a skilled Seattle personal injury attorney on your side for guidance is a good strategy to recover costs when a sudden negative event has blindsided a household. To learn more about whether you qualify to file a personal injury claim in Washington, contact the Bernard Law Group. Call 1-800-418-8282 for a free consultation today.