Injured At A Family Gathering: How To Make Things Fair
When you have a personal injury case that involves a family gathering, it can be difficult to navigate a fair settlement while keeping family relationships intact. Here are some steps for keeping a peaceful and fair personal injury case.
Get a Medical Evaluation
For one, you'll want to get a thorough medical evaluation as soon as possible. This will help to link your injuries to the gathering and tell you how severe they are. Without a medical diagnosis, you may not know how much healing time you will need or how expensive the treatments could be. A medical record is key to getting compensation through your insurance company or in a personal injury case. It's also one way to make the decision about compensation more straightforward; since your doctor estimates the amount of damage done, you'll have a starting point for figuring out what's fair in terms of compensation for medical bills and time off work, among other costs.
Talk Through Fair Compensation Options
Once you know what kinds of injuries you have, you can sit down with the homeowners to talk about the types of compensation that would be reasonable. For one, your medical bills are obviously an expense that should be compensated. But will there be any compensation for time off work? What about pain and suffering, or loss of the ability to do activities and meet your personal goals? The depth of the compensation will depend on whether you file an insurance claim or use a personal injury attorney to file a claim; personal injury cases tend to cover more subjective sources of damage, such as pain. You may want to discuss with your relative to see if you are on the same page about whether what compensation is owed because you might already be on the same page.
Consider a Lawyer
A personal injury attorney makes this situation easier, because they have much more experience in seeing how different types of injuries amount to various compensation amounts. For example, they've seen what the compensation package looks like if someone breaks an arm on another's property. There's less arguing to do about what's fair when you have a legal professional on your side from the beginning. And having a lawyer speak for you may make things less tense and more professional as you're negotiating what's fair. It seems less like a personal attack when you consult the legal advice of a lawyer and follow their advice.
