Also it is only legitimately that accident victims, already in distress, rarely turn automatically to a lawyer for victims of bodily injury, wrongly thinking that the role of the lawyer is framed in the field of litigation.
But… what does the accident victim want? The victim already wants to get out of this nightmare and that’s normal. But when she is confronted with a severe handicap, she will have to learn to live with a handicap. The only solution is then to assess his damages and compensate them.
How then will a victim assess alone the extent of his bodily injury, then the assessment of his bodily injury?
In reality, in the absence of assistance and representation by a lawyer for victims of bodily injury, the victim will allow himself to be guided by his insurance, thinking that he has mastered the workings of compensation on the grounds that he will have read such and such an article on such and such a or such legal blog.
In reality, the lawyer for victims of bodily injury is called upon to intervene at all stages of the procedure: administrative stage, legal stage, amicable stage, or litigation stage, and this from the start and perhaps even for certain victims of route, as soon as they are admitted to the hospital (in cases of contestation of responsibility).
The lawyer for victims
The lawyer for bodily injury victims then intervenes at all stages with different roles. Sometimes he will put on the hat of a conductor, sometimes he will be a real actor but in all cases, he will have only one objective: the defense of the interests of the victim of bodily injury.
The victim traumatized by his traffic accident , often in a state of shock, is naturally “guided” by his insurer and sometimes even by the opposing insurance when the victim is a pedestrian.
This is the first mistake that should not be made since relations between insurance companies are governed by internal agreements, and therefore between insurance companies. In the case of bodily injury on the road, it is the IRCA convention that will manage the responsibilities.
All situations are provided for and as soon as the victim explains the circumstances of his accident, the responsibilities will be determined according to this IRCA convention and especially the coverage.
It is then possible, according to this convention, for the victim to be declared liable when in reality, in criminal law, his liability is completely cleared, or also, according to a certain ceiling, it is the victim’s own insurance. victim who will have to compensate him.
This then introduces a distorted and biased report since it is the victim’s own insurance which then assists him in his steps which will perhaps have to compensate him. Insurance, like any company, will want to make savings above all else and pay as little as possible and therefore seek the own responsibility of its insured in the accident in order to refuse compensation or reduce it considerably.
From then on, the personal injury lawyer will speak with the victim, if of course he is able to speak, in order to hear the precise circumstances of the accident.
The lawyer for victims of bodily injury
It should be noted that if the responsibility of the victim were to be engaged, the compensation would then be conditional on the existence of an insurance contract of the driver’s guarantee type, also assuming that no exclusion of guarantee disturbs the situation (alcohol, narcotics, etc.).
In all cases, the lawyer also has in principle skills in traffic criminal law, serving him precisely to contest any criminal liability falsely incurred and/or failing that, to contest the exclusions of guarantee covered by the insurance, a real adversary.
Once the criminal situation has been settled and determined, the lawyer for victims of bodily injury will then endeavor to solicit all the documents useful for compiling the file.
The road traffic and personal injury lawyer who assists victims of road accidents must necessarily have some medical knowledge even if his role is certainly not to replace a doctor.
Nevertheless, the lawyer to ask useful questions, must know for example that in matters of head trauma there is a scale to measure the degree of seriousness: it is the Glasgow scale.
Also the lawyer intervening for the victims of traffic accident will ask all the useful questions on the bodily injuries of the victim and will then request the useful documents.
He will ask the injured victim to provide him with, for example, the initial medical certificate , a certificate given in principle on leaving the hospital and which establishes the victim’s after-effects.
