By Matt Lalande in Car Accidents on January 17, 2022
After a serious car accident, you and your family may not know where to turn or what to do. You may receive advice and information from friends, physicians, nurses and hospital social workers, which can sometimes be more confusing than helpful. While these people often mean well, the best place to get sound advice is from an experienced Hamilton car accident lawyer.
If you or your loved one has suffered serious injuries in a car accident, you likely have questions that need answers, such as who will pay for my rehabilitation? Who will pay for my home modifications? Who will pay for my medications? Who will pay for my therapy? How will we pay the bills? How will we pay the mortgage, car payments, insurance or activities for the kids? How are we going to navigate the complex legal insurance and healthcare system? Who should I call?
Statistically, most people have never been involved in a serious car accident or suffered serious injuries. Most people have never been hospitalized or in a rehabilitation centre for an extended period. Most people have never had to deal with the complex trauma of being hurt and away from home. Most people have never had to hire a car accident lawyer or face significant legal or car accident-related insurance issues. So, how does one find the right Hamilton car accident lawyer?
Finding a reputable car accident lawyer is no easy feat, especially if you have never dealt with or hired a lawyer before. Do you hire an accident lawyer you’ve seen on a billboard, CP24, a bus, or a television commercial? Do you hire a car accident lawyer that you’ve heard on 680 News? Do you hire a car accident lawyer off the Internet?
Our Hamilton car accident lawyers always suggest that the best way to hire a car accident lawyer is to speak to friends, family members and acquaintances. Use your own network first. If there are no car accident lawyers in your social circle, then we highly recommend speaking to local attorneys in your hometown who may be able to recommend a car accident specialist.
It’s most important to do your research and apply due diligence. Remember, the practice of law in Ontario has become highly specialized. Most lawyers are no longer general practitioners, but rather experts in a particular field. If you’ve been involved in a car accident and have suffered severe injuries, it’s important that the person you hire is highly experienced in car accident law, Ontario auto insurance and the no-fault benefit regulations.
Instead of being persuaded by the media, flash advertising, television commercials and billboards, do your research and speak to people, talk to friends, read reviews, check the firm’s results and call around. We always recommend that you meet at least two car accident lawyers. Interview them both and decide who is best to work with and who will get you the best results.
You must involve an experienced car accident lawyer early in your case. Many things must be implemented immediately after a car accident, including applying for no-fault benefits and hiring your own occupational therapist – not one sent by the insurance company.
Although occupational therapists do work in hospitals, many are self-employed. We work with an occupational therapy team that liaises between our firm, your healthcare needs and the no-fault benefit carrier. They can assist with proper assessments of your home, requirements, and health care needs and complete the necessary forms for your attendant care and treatment plans.
Good occupational therapists can also help improve a car accident victim’s function throughout the recovery process, from the point of discharge from the hospital onward. Our occupational therapist helps us ensure that all your needs are met upon your return home from the hospital and coordinates all services that you may need, including rehabilitation professionals and attendant care providers.
Our occupational therapy team can also help ensure your home is modified to accommodate your return home if necessary. In some circumstances, car accident victims require modified environments to assist with everyday activities.
Accident victims who suffer serious injuries require proper discharge planning – and you must have representation from the beginning of the case to deal with the insurance companies involved. All of your no-fault documentation must be submitted on a timely basis to your insurance company so that your wages are replaced immediately, and your immediate medical and rehabilitative needs are taken care of, financially.
For example, a person who suffers a spinal cord injury in a car accident will need their occupational therapist to work with hospital social workers to help set up discharge from the spinal unit in a rehabilitation centre. Handling housing issues and working with no-fault benefit carriers are time-consuming but essential with discharge planning. For some spinal cord injury victims, once they reach the appropriate level of rehabilitation and are ready to go home, an occupational therapist needs to assess any property to be considered to ensure that the environment is suitable and prepared for living.
Our Hamilton car accident lawyers and occupational therapy team will work with discharge coordinators or nurses to ensure our car accident spinal cord injury clients have appropriate transportation home and ensure proper supplies, medications, items and services are in place.
This can include psychological therapy, physical therapy, wheelchairs and wheelchair supplies, adaptable shower modifications, orthotics and braces, a power home bed, no-turn air mattresses, lifts, portable ramps, standards, supplies for ADLs and bladder and bowel, skin care supplies, housecleaning, PSWs, and architectural or housing modifications.
The bottom line is that it is never too early to hire an experienced Hamilton car accident injury lawyer. The sooner you have help and representation, the better.
Our Hamilton car accident lawyers strongly advise that when you look for a car accident lawyer in your area, you avoid what is called a settlement mill. Settlement mill-type law firms focus on handling a large number of cases and collision claims rather than a limited number of critical injury claims that may require a trial. These types of law firms rarely take cases to trial or hire the best experts. They look for quick settlements and often, and unfortunately, resolve victims’ claims for far less than what they’re entitled to.
Most car accident lawyers do not charge a consultation fee, making it easy to meet with multiple lawyers before deciding which is best for you. Our firm never charges potential new clients to sit and discuss their cases.
Once a meeting is set up, that lawyer will meet you in the hospital or at your home if you are too injured to come into the office. Our firm offers in-person meetings at a place convenient to you or your family, at our office, or by videoconference by (Zoom, Google Meet, FaceTime, etc.)
Our Hamilton car accident lawyers will review your situation with you or your family and answer any questions you may have. We expect you to bring any relevant documentation to ensure a successful and productive meeting.
This includes information about the date and location of the accident, your driver’s license, your health card, a police report if you have one, the details and contact information of all your medical professionals, any photographs you have of the vehicles or your injuries, contact information and any communication that has occurred between yourself your family and the insurance companies involved.
If we decide to work together, we will review an engagement letter that describes the terms of the relationship with you and require you to sign health authorizations. This will permit us to request your medical and non-medical documentation to prove your case. We’ll also include a breakdown of the fees you will pay in the event of a successful outcome. If we do not win the case, you will pay nothing.
While some firms require you to complete an intake questionnaire, we prefer to speak to you and your family and have a long conversation about the events and details surrounding the car accident and your serious injuries.
After this, we typically wait 3 to 4 months after your discharge home to request medical and health documentation. We would immediately contact the at-fault driver’s insurance company and place them on formal notice of your intention to file suit, which you must do within 120 days. We would then communicate with your no-fault insurer, obtain the appropriate documentation and forms needed to start the claims process, meet with an occupational therapist, and then begin your case.
Although any lawyer licensed in Ontario can handle a car accident case, you must hire a personal injury specialist who specializes in litigating car accident cases. A lawyer who only handles complex personal injury and car accident cases will be much more experienced with and knowledgeable of complex Ontario insurance laws than a lawyer who maintains a general practice or practices in other areas of law.
When you hire a car accident lawyer, it’s also vital that you discuss that lawyer’s trial experience. Although many personal injury cases are resolved out of Court, you must hire a car accident lawyer who will be prepared to take your case to a judge or jury if necessary.
The takeaway is to hire a car accident lawyer specializing in car accident law and having courtroom experience to try your case if necessary. While many car accident lawyers are successful in settling cases, not all can take cases to trial and win. A car accident victim cannot hope for maximum compensation without a proper trial lawyer.
Hire Local. Our Hamilton car accident lawyers believe it’s best to try and hire a local car accident lawyer. Instead of hiring a firm 50 or 60 kilometres away, hiring a local car accident lawyer allows you to set up in-person meetings as often as you wish. A lawyer who deals with home courts saves you immense travel time. Also, when you hire a local car accident lawyer, you know exactly who you are dealing with. If you decide to hire a lawyer in another city off the Internet or television, you might not get the chance to sit with your lawyer or even worse, it might not be the lawyer you think working on your case. Hire somebody local to you who has a strong reputation in the community.
Reviews. Have you read your car accident lawyers’ reviews? Although reviews can be a good indication of what you can expect, studies show that reviews are quite circumstantial and normally left when emotions are involved, so they should be read with a grain of salt.
It’s important to read reviews; however, always pay attention to contextual details and specific facts rather than a reviewer’s general impression. Try to ignore emotional rants and focus on positive and critical reviews. Remember, research tells us that people are motivated by helping others make decisions.
Access to Experts. While some firms are simply settlement mills, other car accident law firms know how to build a proper car accident case with the appropriate and required experts. Your car accident lawyer must have first-hand contact with the best specialists – vocational, occupational therapy, economists, accountants and economic valuators to assist in the assessment of both your economic and non-economic damages.
Remember, car accident lawyers must present convincing evidence to discharge the onus of proving your case. Our Hamilton car accident law firm hires the best experts to calculate every cent of your wage loss and evaluate your loss of housekeeping and home maintenance capacity, future healthcare costs and all other financial losses you and your family have suffered due to your injuries.
Ultimately, each case is different. Some cases could take several months, while others could take two to three years. A case cannot be adequately evaluated until a car accident victim reaches maximum medical recovery. Maximum medical recovery means that a physical or psychological plateau has been reached, and there would likely not be any further improvement in one’s condition.
Once a victim reaches maximum medical recovery or injury permanency, we can retain the appropriate experts to provide opinions on your future prognosis and how your injuries will affect you both economically and non-economically for the remainder of your life. If a person takes longer to reach maximum medical recovery, their case will last longer. The length of a case is also determined by factors such as the court system, insurance companies, other lawyers’ schedules and the medical doctors involved.
The cost of hiring a car accident lawyer depends on the case’s outcome. Our Hamilton car accident lawyers work on a contingency fee basis, meaning you do not pay an upfront retainer or hourly rate. Instead, your car accident lawyer is paid a percentage of the dollars recovered in your case. In other words, what you pay your car accident lawyers is contingent upon the amount of compensation you receive. Most car accident lawyers in Ontario charge between 25% and 33.3% in a car accident lawsuit.
Personal injury cases are costly, and there are significant upfront costs for clinical notes and records, specialist records, pharmacy records, hospital and ambulance records, specialists, doctors reports and court costs. Your car accident lawyer will pay all these upfront fees in a standard contingency fee arrangement. The contingency fee agreement allows clients access to justice without spending money upfront. That being said, most car accident lawyers are very selective with the cases they take on contingency.
There’s no real way to “maximize” your car accident settlement. Each case is decided on its individual facts. In a typical car accident case, the victim will claim economic and non-economic compensation. If a person is severely injured with orthopedic injuries or brain trauma, they likey won’t ever return to regular gainful employment.
If this is the case, then wage losses, both past and future, can be claimed in the lawsuit. Further, non-economic damages for pain and suffering, loss of enjoyment of life and loss of amenities are determined in a “range” comparable to other cases previously decided in Canada.
A good car accident lawyer will advocate for payment of damages at the higher end of the range and will build a case with the appropriate medical records and experts to justify why their client should be compensated accordingly. We always recommend that clients follow their doctor’s advice, participate in the recommended rehabilitation and do their best – and let us handle the rest.
Matt Lalande and his firm have been practicing car accident law since 2003. Although we represent clients injured in a wide variety of circumstances – we have recovered tens of millions in settlements and verdicts for car accident victims all over southern Ontario – and have helped countless families regain their lives.
Talk to our Hamilton car accident lawyers about your accident to discover if compensation is available to help pay for the enormous expenses your injuries have caused. If you’ve been hurt in a car accident and live in the Hamilton/Niagara/Burlington areas call us today at 905-333-8888 or no matter where you are in Ontario at 1-844-LALANDEtell to set up your free no obligation consultation today. Over the past 20 years, we have assisted car accident victims in Hamilton, Burlington, Ancaster, Stoney Creek, Grimsby, St. Catharines, Welland, Niagara, Sudbury, Milton, Oakville, Toronto, Ottawa, Oshawa and all over Ontario.
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I was a dental hygienist that suffers from really bad scoliosis. My insurance company ignored my doc & cut my benefits off & told me I could do “something”. Matt got me CPP Disability and and LTD settlement – I don’t know what I would have done without him.
My daughter was killed by a drunk driver and it forever changed all of our lives. It seemed that for two years time stopped. This was no an easy journey. Matt let me sit in on the discovery of the driver and boy, he never let up. In the end, our grand-daughter was taken care of and we were compensated for our loss – which we then donated to a cause we believed in.
I call Matt my knight in shining armour. After I was struck by a car while cycling and permanently crippled, he fielded all communications with my especially difficult and downright nasty insurance adjuster. Every step of my care was a battle and I did not have the strength to fight alone.
I lost my leg in a terrible motorcycle accident and Matt help me recover compensation I need because I could not work and the cost of prosthetics and rehab are out of this world. I don’t know what I would have done without him.
My brother ended up paralyzed after a car accident and Lalande did SO MUCH to help get things straight from him getting out of the hospital to all his care for life. We are so grateful for Matt & Heather. I don’t know how my family could have done this without them.
