Deciding When And When Not To Sue

Posted on behalf of Pfeifer Morgan & Stesiak

on December 13, 2011

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. Updated on May 6, 2022

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If you’ve been injured due to someone else’s error or negligence, you can be understandably angry with the other person involved, and want justice in addition to reparations for your injuries.

However, it’s important to keep a clear head as you try to decide how to move forward. Not all injuries can result in a winning case, or one which is sufficiently strong to receive a settlement out of court.

What to Consider When Talking to Your Personal Injury Lawyer

1. How serious was the injury? It’s important to keep in mind that in the end, this is the biggest single question to ask yourself, and that in the end, the answer to this question will be a number. Specifically, it will be the amount of money required to sufficiently compensate you for your injury. You may not be able to work out a good answer to this question without the assistance of an attorney, but you can start by compiling medical bills, and figuring out how much of your wages or other income were lost due to the injury. If you were in a car accident, the cost of repairing or replacing your car would also factor in here. If you’ve been permanently disabled in any way by the accident, this number is of course harder to calculate, but it is doable.

2. Can you establish that the injury was the result of someone else’s action or inaction? Who else? This answer can also be a bit tricky. For example, in a car accident, there could be more people involved than just the person who immediately caused the accident, such as the authorities responsible for maintaining safe road conditions. This will be different in every case, but the main question is whether or not it can be established, from a legal standpoint, that your injury was someone else’s fault (and whose fault it was).

If you’re having trouble coming up with a definitive answer to these questions, it may not be the best idea to pursue a lawsuit that can take several months, when there’s little discernible benefit from doing so.

However, in many cases, these answers are much easier to come up with after speaking with a personal injury attorney in South Bend, IN.

In most cases, your attorney won’t get paid unless you do, so you can count on them to be honest with you about the feasibility of pursuing your case.

Pfeifer, Morgan & Stesiak

Serious Attorneys for Serious Cases