Personal Injury and Wrongful Death

An injury caused by another party's negligence produces two problems at once. The first is medical. The second is financial, and it arrives while you are least able to deal with it: wages stop, bills continue, and an insurance adjuster telephones within days asking for a recorded statement.

What a claim has to establish

A negligence claim requires four things. That the party you are claiming against owed you a duty of care. That the duty was breached. That the breach caused your injury. And that the injury produced loss capable of being measured in money. Each element must be proved, and a claim that is strong on three and weak on the fourth will fail.

Missouri applies pure comparative fault. Under that rule, a share of responsibility on your part reduces your recovery in proportion to that share, but it does not extinguish the claim. A person found twenty percent responsible for a collision recovers eighty percent of their damages. This differs from the rule in several neighbouring states, and it means that an admission of partial fault, however casually made at the scene, has a direct financial consequence.

That is why the first advice we give is to say nothing to any insurer until you have taken advice. An adjuster who telephones within days of a collision is not gathering information for your benefit. The recorded statement they seek is taken while you are medicated, before the full extent of the injury is known, and it will be produced in evidence if the answers can be made to sound inconsistent with your later account.

Why the first weeks decide the case

Evidence begins deteriorating from the moment of the event. Vehicles are repaired or scrapped. Surveillance recordings are overwritten on ordinary retention cycles, frequently within thirty days. Skid marks are washed away, road furniture is repaired, and the witnesses whose names appear on the police report move and become difficult to trace.

Where a commercial vehicle is involved, the electronic control module records speed, braking and throttle position in the seconds before impact. That data is recoverable, but not indefinitely, and not once the vehicle has been returned to service. A letter demanding preservation must go out early, and it must be specific enough that its breach carries consequences.

We therefore begin investigation at once rather than waiting for treatment to conclude. Scenes are photographed and measured, recordings are demanded before they are lost, witnesses are interviewed while they still remember, and where the mechanics of the collision are contested an engineer is instructed to reconstruct it.

Establishing what the injury has cost

Liability is only half of a claim. Damages must be proved with the same rigour, and they extend considerably beyond the medical bills that have already been incurred.

A serious injury produces future medical expense, diminished earning capacity over a working lifetime, the cost of care and adaptation, and non economic loss for pain, disfigurement and the loss of activities that gave life its character. Establishing those items requires treating physicians willing to state a prognosis, vocational evidence about what work remains available, and in catastrophic cases a life care plan costing the treatment and assistance a person will require for the remainder of their life.

One of our attorneys practised as a registered nurse before entering the law, and that clinical background is applied directly to the medical record, which in these claims is frequently the decisive evidence.

Fees, and what a claim costs you

Personal injury and wrongful death matters are handled on a contingency basis. The fee is a stated percentage of the recovery and no fee is payable if there is no recovery. The percentage, and the treatment of case expenses such as expert fees and deposition costs, are set out in the written engagement agreement before any work begins.

The consultation is free of charge and carries no obligation. If we conclude that a claim is not worth pursuing, you will be told at that consultation rather than after a year of expense.

Time limits

Every category of claim is subject to a limitation period fixed by statute, and a claim filed after it has expired will be dismissed however strong its merits. Claims against public entities may additionally require formal written notice within a period considerably shorter than the limitation period itself.

The periods differ according to the nature of the claim and the identity of the defendant, and certain circumstances alter them. We will tell you precisely which deadlines apply to your matter at the consultation. Do not rely on a general figure you have read: telephone and ask.