Lakewood Car Accident

Meeting Location By Appointment Only. Call 800-537-4154 For Your Consultation. While Lakewood may appear to be a quiet Ocean County community, tragedy can strike you or your loved ones in an instant if other motorists fail to exercise care and caution while driving. A motor vehicle crash can leave you or your loved one with serious, life-threatening injuries that can require thousands of dollars’ worth of medical treatment in order to correct. Not only this, but you may need to miss days, weeks, or even months of work while you recover. This can not only strain your family’s finances, but also jeopardize your health and prolong your recovery.

The Lakewood auto accident attorneys from Aretsky Law Group, P.C. are proven in our ability to achieve just results for their clients who were injured in a car accident through no fault of their own. Aretsky Law Group’s attorneys understand how much a car wreck can disrupt the life of the injured person as well as their family. The immediate aftermath of a serious car crash often leaves the injured person and their family scrambling to find ways to replace the income the injured person’s family is without because of missed work in addition to having to pay for unexpected medical bills. It is not easy. Fortunately, the Lakewood auto accident attorneys with Aretsky Law Group, P.C. are there to help. Let our years of experience help you recover for your Lakewood auto accident.

Auto accident claims can involve very complex legal issues. One of the most complex legal issues is negligence. Negligence is the legal theory most often used in car accident cases to determine which the of the parties involved in the accident are liable to the other for damages. Negligence is the failure of a person to use the degree of care necessary to avoid an accident when a duty exists to act, or not act, in a particular manner. The negligence standard is based on the “hypothetical reasonable man” standard. In other words, the question of whether a person negligently caused a car accident is whether the person set in motion a series of events that a reasonable person of ordinary caution would not have set in motion.

The negligent person is liable to every person injured in the car crash if the injuries were foreseeable. In the average car accident case, the injuries are foreseeable. The reasonable person should foresee that running a stop sign will cause injuries if failing to stop causes a crash, for example. The driver need not be clairvoyant. However, a person operating a vehicle in New Jersey must operate it in such a way as to avoid injuring others because everyone on the road has the right to expect that every other driver on the road will drive safely.

An injured person is entitled to recover damages for their injuries. In New Jersey, an award of damages should be tailored to fairly and adequately compensate the person for their injuries. Under New Jersey law, damages are:

• Past medical expenses,
• Future medical expenses,
• Past lost wages,
• Future lost wages,
• Pain and suffering,
• Loss of life enjoyment,
• Disability, and
• Impairment of quality of life.

Additionally, the spouse of the victim can receive compensation in some cases. A spouse can receive compensation for loss of consortium and society caused by the car crash.

Under New Jersey law, damages can be reduced by the claimant’s actions. For example, consideration may be given to the fact that the person did not wear a seatbelt if one was not worn when the crash occurred. Also, a potential award can be reduced if the injured person failed to attend medical appointments or delayed seeking medical attention thereby increasing the resulting medical costs. Furthermore, an award of damages can be reduced because the injury was an aggravation of a pre-existing injury.

Additionally, an award of damages can be reduced by the amount to which the claimant contributed to the accident if any. This is known as the theory of comparative negligence. In New Jersey, a person may recover for their injuries even if they were also negligent in causing the crash. However, the person’s recovery will be reduced by the percentage of fault they share in the accident.

Insurance companies make money by paying out less money in compensation for damages than premiums their customers pay. It is a relatively simple business model. Insurance companies’ business models put pressure on claims adjusters to settle for less than a claim is worth.

Car insurance companies use a database to determine the value of damages suffered in a car wreck. Thus, insurance adjusters will pay out claims based upon the book value of the injuries, assuming liability for the accident is clear. Often, the book value of the damages is insufficient to compensate a person for their suffering. Therefore, it is vital to the success of your claim to demonstrate that your case is worth more than what the database says it should be. That is accomplished by truly showing how your life has changed since the accident. Insurance companies do not take into account the humanity, the physical pain, suffering, and how another’s negligence diminished the quality of your life.

If you are like many Lakewood residents, your knowledge of the lawsuit process following a car wreck comes from the anecdotes of friends and family members, television shows, and other similar sources. This can lead to misconceptions such as:

• I can’t recover any compensation if I did something wrong. In fact, New Jersey is one of several states which allow injury victims who are partially at fault in causing a wreck to bring suit against another, at-fault party. So long as the injury victim filing a lawsuit is not the primary cause of the accident, he or she will usually be permitted to file his or her suit (the amount of compensation to which he or she is entitled may be reduced, however).
• New Jersey is a “no-fault” state, so I can’t file a car wreck lawsuit. While New Jersey is considered a “no-fault” insurance state and therefore in some cases each person’s insurance company pays for his or her own losses, crashes that result in a victim sustaining certain catastrophic injuries (or that kill a victim) are typically not covered by the “no-fault” laws. Instead, in these situations victims and/or their surviving family members may be able to bring an auto crash lawsuit.
• I can file my own claim for compensation. New Jersey law does not require Lakewood car collision injury victims to retain legal counsel, but doing so can be quite helpful in positively resolving your claim in a timely manner.

Aretsky Law Group, P.C. will not only help you resolve your claim, but we will help dispel misconceptions about the lawsuit process you may have so that you can be fully informed as to the steps through which your case must progress before you can obtain compensation. Call Aretsky Law Group, P.C. at 800-537-4154 number or email Mr. Aretsky at Eric@aretskylawgroup.com for your initial consultation. You may also view our firm overview, attorney biographies and our areas of practice when you visit our website at Aretsky Law Group.