If you’ve been injured in a truck crash, then you know the damage that it can cause to your life. Your newfound injuries can be painful and physically limiting, and any savings that you may have can quickly evaporate as medical bills come due.
Additionally, your inability to work can leave you on uncertain financial footing. All of this taken together can cause a significant amount of emotional distress, too, leaving you uncertain about your future.
Although that can be incredibly stressful, you might be able to find relief through a personal injury lawsuit.
That said, even the most straightforward cases can be fraught with unexpected complexities. That’s why you need to start building your case now if you want to increase your chances of recovering the compensation that you need following your truck wreck.
Tips for building your personal injury claim
Now is the time to start building your case. While that might leave you on edge, you can work incrementally closer to presenting a strong case by diligently working to do each of the following:
- Follow your doctor’s recommendations: Even if you successfully prove liability in your case, you’re not going to take home any money unless you can prove your damages. To maximize the showing of your financial losses, you need to make sure that you follow your doctor’s recommendations. Otherwise, you’ll struggle to demonstrate the full extent of your injuries and your need for ongoing treatment. This can restrict your ability to recover your economic and non-economic damages.
- Talk to witnesses: This seems obvious, but you’d be surprised at how often truck accident victims forego talking to witnesses because they feel like the physical evidence speaks for itself. But you don’t want to get taken by surprise at the negotiation table or at trial, so you’ll want to speak with each witness so that you fully understand what they saw and what they’ll testify to.
- Consider your own actions: The defense is probably going to try to sidestep liability by shifting the blame back onto you. After all, comparative negligence can significantly diminish your recovery. Therefore, you’ll want to assess your driving actions leading up to your truck wreck to determine if there are any arguments that the defense can raise with regard to comparative fault. If so, then you’ll need to find a way to minimize them to protect your interests.
- Think about experts: When dealing with complicated aspects of your case, such as determining fault in a multi-vehicle accident or showing the true extent of your damages, it may be easier to have one or more expert witnesses on your side. An accident reconstruction expert, for example, can use the laws of physics to assess the evidence at hand to determine how the crash was caused and who is to blame for it. This kind of expert testimony can go a long way toward building a strong personal injury case.
- Track your expenses: To ensure that you’re capturing all of your damages, you should make sure that you track all of your accident-related expenses. Keep receipts of all purchases that you make related to your wreck, and make sure that you have your medical bills and payment stubs to support your request for medical expenses and lost wages.
Don’t let your opportunity to reclaim your future pass you by
An improperly handled personal injury case can leave you without the compensation and closure that you need to successfully move on to the next chapter of your life. That’s why even though it may be hard to do as you’re focusing on your recovery, now is the time to start aggressively working on your case.