Part 1: What to do Immediately After an Auto Accident Injury
(Last Updated: March 24, 2022)
If you’ve been in an auto accident in the greater New Orleans area, be sure to follow these steps to protect yourself and ensure the best possible outcome following your accident.
Table of Contents:
» What To Do Moments After a Car Accident
» Documenting Your Injuries After an Auto Accident
» What If Your Crash Was A Hit and Run?
» A Word on “UIM” and “UM” Situations
» Collecting Evidence After a Car Accident, Time Is of the Essence
» Seek Medical Help Immediately After a Car Wreck
» Ensuring Excellent Post-Accident Care
» Dealing with the Insurance Company After Your Accident
» Finding and Working with a Qualified New Orleans Auto Accident Lawyer
» Do You Need An Attorney to Handle Your Auto Accident Case?
» How To Find a Qualified Auto Accident Attorney in New Orleans
» How to Ensure an Excellent Working Relationship with Your Lawyer
When someone gets into a car crash, a great many problems arise that must be dealt with in a great many number of ways. You want to address these in a smart, time-sensitive manner.
What To Do In Moments After You’ve Been in an Auto Accident
After an accident, priority number one is always your health.
Call 911
If anyone involved has sustained even a slight injury, call 911 to pick up the injured party. Even injuries deemed “minor” at the scene have potential to grow into something worse. Medical professionals should attend to injuries on the spot. Avoid moving anyone who is unconscious or experiencing neck or back pain; the ensuing damage could be permanent.
Move Somewhere Safe
If the accident was minor — and the vehicle still operational — move the car to a safe portion of the road. This will prevent further collisions and keep everyone nearby, including oncoming traffic, safer. Park your vehicle, and turn on your hazard lights.
If you can’t move the vehicle without putting yourself or others at risk, don’t do so. In that case, move yourself a safe distance away from the scene of the crash. Cars in unstable condition are not safe to be around.
Gather Information
If you are able (or a passenger is able), gather as much information at the scene of the accident as possible. Exchange contact information with the other parties involved in the crash. This includes:
- Full names
- License plate numbers
- Drivers’ license numbers
- Insurance information
- Home and mobile/cell phone numbers
While gathering this information, do not admit fault; doing so could create liability problems down the line. Plus, you genuinely may not know who – or what – was at fault. Perhaps your brakes failed or slipped, for instance, causing you to veer into an intersection and into traffic.
Additionally, talk to any witnesses and get their contact information. This knowledge is power; your attorney can later sort useful from not-so-useful evidence later. For now, “over collect” potential evidence.
For immediate insight into your Louisiana car accident, call the Law Office of Keith L. Magness, LLC right now at (504) 264-5587.
Documenting Your Injuries After an Auto Accident
If you have a cell phone on hand – or if a fellow passenger has a cell phone – take pictures of any injuries as well as damage to all vehicles involved. Collect more photographic and other documentary evidence than you think you might need. Also, take pictures of the accident scene and surrounding area. If you are too “out of it” to take pictures or video, ask a passenger or witness to do this for you. Likewise, collect witness statements, too. Assuming you are not seriously injured, write down your experience, so that you can document a first-hand account of what happened. The court or insurance companies will value fresh evidence and testimony more than they will remembered evidence or testimony. After all, time has a funny way of changing even the sharpest seeming memories.
Even if it’s already been a day or two (or more) since the crash, hope is not lost, in terms of your being able to collect this testimony and evidence. But time is of the essence. Document what happened, talk to witnesses, take pictures of your car, and get a copy of the police report.
Unusual Evidence
Note any unusual things about the accident. For instance, do you see any open cans of beer or drug gear in the other vehicle? Is the license plate missing? Do you smell marijuana from the other car? Etc. Write down anything that catches your eye about what happened.
What If Your Crash Was A Hit And Run?
What if the other driver hit you and left the scene of the accident? Or what if a key witness – someone you saw noticing the crash – left the scene?
Unfortunately, you have limited options, other than calling the police and engaging in the fact finding we’ve already discussed. However, again, early documentation of anything you remember can help an investigation later. For instance, maybe you remember that the driver looked to be a male in his mid-30s with a mustache. By remembering those facts and documenting them, perhaps you can help the police track the person down and help you obtain compensation for your injuries. Even if you are never able to find that hit and run driver, you still could potentially obtain compensation:
- Assuming you’re properly insured (hopefully you are!) your insurance company can help pay for your injuries, time off of work, therapy and long-term care after a hit and run.
- Some other party that indirectly contributed to the crash could be made to pay. For instance, maybe the hit and run driver veered into you at a shaded intersection or rear-ended you at a traffic light that had been on the fritz. In that case, you could potentially seek compensation from the city responsible for caring for and making those devices. Or you could be able to seek compensation from the manufacturer of equipment in your car that failed — an airbag that didn’t go off at the right time or a seat belt that didn’t work, for instance.
Don’t give up hope. Even if the first week fails to turn up strong evidence of the driver, a smart investigation of the crash site, in conjunction with witness reports can maybe identify the hit and run driver.
A Word On “UIM” And “UM” Situations
Whether your crash was relatively simple – involving just one driver with very clear fault – or it was a messy collision involving multiple drivers – you need a source of money to get paid. But what if one or more of the liable parties lacks enough insurance (or worse, has not insurance at all) to pay for damages to you, your car, or your future?
Obviously, the scene of the accident is not the place to sort out such details, but you should be at least aware of the possible problems. Hopefully, you already have under-insured motorist (UIM) and uninsured motorist (UM) coverage of your own. That coverage lets you tap your own insurance to pay for damage caused by underinsured (or uninsured) drivers.
Here are some signs that there could be UIM/UM trouble.
-  The car that hit you is in terrible shape; it’s falling apart, smoke is belching from the air pipe, etc.
- Â The driver refuses to provide proof of insurance or acts defensive and aggressive when you ask for a copy of insurance information;
- Â The driver gives you fake information;
- Â The insurance information you get seems dubious. For instance, the expiration date for the insurance is over a year ago.
Note such problems; a driver who lacks insurance could potentially be a flight risk or untrustworthy. A qualified attorney can protect your ability to get compensation through your insurance or through some other means.
Even if the other driver lacks insurance AND your UM/UIM coverage doesn’t apply, you might still be able to obtain compensation by, for instance, suing the driver’s employer, if he or she had been driving a company car or had been on a work trip when the crash occurred.
When It Comes to Collecting Evidence in a Louisiana Car Accident, Time Is of the Essence
Police and road crews will likely clean up the debris from your collision within hours to a day. Witnesses will slowly but surely forget what they saw – or misremember what they saw, which can be just as bad, from a legal point of view. Your ability to document the nature and extent of your injuries also faces a ticking clock. It’s a lot better to show a picture of a broken, mangled knee at the scene of or right after an accident than it is to provide an MRI or x-ray of a sprained knee taken three months later, since the insurance company might be able to argue that something other than the accident caused the knee problem.
What If You Played a Role in the Collision?
As we mentioned earlier, never admit fault after a crash. Stick to the facts, as well as you can remember them. At this point in time – time zero to one week post-crash – you genuinely do not have enough information about the wreck to be able to describe it in full. There is no way for you to know, for instance, whether the other driver hit you because he’d been chatting on a cell phone or because his brakes failed.
In complex situations involving multiple cars or tricky intersections or foggy or rainy weather, investigators may need to spend a lot of time and energy to get to the root cause of a crash.
Especially after serious crashes involving commercial vehicles, like trucks, potential defendants often get to work right away to minimize liability. While you may have heard critics meanly refer to personal injury lawyers as “ambulance chasers,” the truth is that the true “ambulance chasers” are often insurance company representatives.
Here is the gist of what can happen. Trucking companies and insurance companies deal with hundreds of wrecks throughout their course of business. These companies know how much can be at stake – the crash could cost them six or seven figures or more. To that end, they work hard to avoid paying those large amounts.
Let’s say a trucking company gets word that one of its drivers was in an accident. Per policy, the company might call its insurer ASAP, who will send a rep to the field to “check out” the scene. This representative can then do things like interfere with the police investigation, collect or even influence witness statements, and do other things that are unethical if not downright illegal. We’ll talk more about tricks and tactics that insurance companies use later in this book.
Depending on what happened in your accident, your attorney may need to take legal action immediately to preserve evidence from the scene. In most cases – a small fender bender that leads to a whiplash case, for instance – the victim can get away with delaying legal action.
However, not all accidents are created equal.
In your case, your injury lawyer may need to sue almost immediately to find and preserve evidence, before workers clean up the crash scene.
To sum it up: after the crash, collect all the documentation that we’ve discussed and write down what you’ve seen, heard or experienced.
For immediate insight into your Louisiana car accident, call the Law Office of Keith L. Magness, LLC right now at (504) 264-5587.
Seek Medical Help Right After an Auto Accident
First off, we want to make it clear again that this website offers neither legal advice, nor medical advice. If you have any doubt that you could be injured, seek insight from a qualified medical professional ASAP. If you are obviously injured – for example, you have a broken bone or a gash in your leg — you probably will not need to be reminded that you need to see a doctor.
However, that’s not always the case!
In one of the most memorable scenes from the 2014 movie, Whiplash, the main character gets into a car crash and immediately leaves the scene to play drums at a concert. That kind of scenario – where someone who’s obviously injured leaves the scene – is quite uncommon.
Here’s what’s much more common, however: individuals who believe that they are “not that hurt” unwisely delaying going to the doctor.
When in doubt – if your symptoms occupy this kind of “grey zone” – seek assistance. Do so, even if you are worried about medical insurance or the immediate costs of seeking care.
First of all, if you are more hurt than you think you are, you want to get a good diagnosis not only to protect your health but also to protect your pocketbook. Treating a concussion or a sprain effectively in the hours after an accident can speed up recovery time, minimize costs, and obviously lead to less suffering. Science bears this out: seek medical help when in doubt.
Signs that you might need medical help
- Weakness or numbness or tingling in your arms or legs.
- Loss of bladder control
- Bloody nose or blood coming out of your ears
- Headache or fatigue following the accident that won’t go away.
- Bruises forming on your head, particularly near your ear.
- Trouble swallowing, eating, seeing or hearing.
- Chest or abdominal pain.
- Neck pain.
- Sharp pain anywhere in your body, particularly in the head, neck and abdomen.
Emergency room personnel – or your doctor – can treat your injuries and give you follow-up instructions. Make notes of any treatment you get. Ask a family member or a friend who wasn’t in the accident to help you keep track of what you need to do and why.
Ensuring Excellent Post-Accident Care After Your Auto Accident
Listen carefully to your caregiver’s instructions. Be self-interested as a patient. Make sure that your needs are heard and met. If you believe that you are not getting solid answers or good care, speak up! Sloppy care can lead to medical troubles.
For instance, let’s say that the accident caused a mild concussion and gave you a headache and a bloody nose. Different imaging programs – CAT scans, PET scans, etc – have different success rates at being able to identify brain injuries. If caregivers use inadequate imaging, they may miss evidence of brain damage and send you on your way while your brain is bruised, bleeding or filled with fluid.
Ask a lot of questions. Pay attention to how you feel after the injury.
Someone should monitor you, if you’re not in the hospital. You may also find it useful to keep an injury journal. This is a diary of how you feel during the first few days and weeks after a crash. If you are too hurt to write this journal yourself, ask a friend and family member to help you. The journal can highlight the progression of your injury as well as help your doctors track your progress and guide your therapy.
Erring on the Side of Caution
If you don’t feel “that hurt,” you may be tempted to hop back into your regular routine as soon as possible. After all, odds that your life was already pretty hectic before the crash, and you may want to get back to making money, taking care of your kids, playing sports, sleeping in your own bed, etc. This drive to return to normal makes a lot of sense, but you need to be careful. If you’re in pain due to a whiplash or muscle strain, take a break from playing sports, working out or doing heavy lifting. Your body and maybe your brain could be in a very sensitive state; you need to rest. Ask friends or neighbors to help with child care, yard work, money matters, and so forth.
Note: When you’re in a serious accident, your body will flood with a variety of hormones such as adrenaline which can fuel the so-called “fight, flight or freeze” response. This is a natural stress response that’s designed to help you survive after a severe injury to the body or other shock. This response can change your sense of how injured you are.
For instance, you won’t feel much neck or shoulder pain in the hours after a crash not because you’re not hurt, but because these hormones block the pain. That numbing will eventually wear off, though, leaving you feeling your injuries more; they could be worse than you anticipated.
Dealing with the Insurance Company
Depending on what happened, the insurance and legal “fireworks” may begin pretty quickly after the collision, particularly if the crash was big, widely publicized or led to serious injuries or damages.
We’ll cover how to handle insurance adjusters in more detail in future posts. For now, here’s a simple takeaway message: before you discuss your case with an insurance company representative, find and retain an attorney. Avoid admitting things that could hurt your claim. Remember, the insurance company is not “on your side,” since the insurer might be liable for thousands upon thousands of dollars in your case.
The adjuster is not a friendly individual but rather an employee of a company that potentially could owe you a lot of money. So play it smart, and talk to an attorney first.
Of course, this leads us into an important question: how do you find an appropriate attorney for your needs?
How To Find and Work with a Qualified Auto Accident Lawyer
Before we get into the “nuts and bolts” tips, take time to determine what you hope to get out of any relationship with a lawyer. What’s your “why”? Are you worried that you won’t get a fair amount of money if you deal directly with the insurance company? Do you need compensation to handle a major medical problem? Do you want fairness? Do you just want guidance for how to deal with an aggressive insurance company?
The clearer you understand what you want from the relationship with your lawyer, the better that relationship will serve you.
To that end, spend some time thinking about the kind of values that you want to govern your relationship with the attorney. Do you want someone who is going to be attentive? Do you need to find somebody nearby? Do you want to make sure an attorney (not a paralegal) handles your case? Do you want to minimize your fees or get the most money?
Imagine the rules that you would give someone to find an attorney for you. In other words, what “recipe” would the other person have to follow?
For instance, your rules might be:
- Find an attorney who has handled at least a dozen accident cases like mine successfully;
- Find an attorney who has a lot of experience dealing with soft tissue injuries, like sprains, whiplash, muscle pulls, etc;
- Find a lawyer who can give me lot of personal attention.
- Find an attorney who shares my values and politics.
You get to make up whatever rules make you the most comfortable.
Exercises You Can Try
1) Describe why you want to find an attorney?
2) Think about your “unspoken rules” for finding legal help?
Do You Need An Attorney to Handle Your Auto Accident Case?
There’s no rule that says you must hire a lawyer. However, most people would consider it pretty foolish to take the “DIY” approach. After all, you probably wouldn’t try to do surgery on yourself or build your own house from scratch if you’ve never done construction work before. It takes years of study, not to mention years of experience, to learn how to handle the complex legal processes that can unfold after a crash.
Plus, a seasoned attorney will know how to identify and prevent insurance company tricks (which will discuss soon) and also provide you a sense of stability and peace of mind as you rebuild your life.
What If You’re “Not That Hurt”? Is It Still Worth it to Call an Attorney?
The answer is yes. Here’s why. There are four basic scenarios that could play out:
Scenario #1: You don’t have a claim, and you don’t call a lawyer.
Scenario #2: You don’t have a claim, and do call a lawyer.
Scenario #3: You do have a claim, and you don’t call a lawyer.
Scenario #4: You do have a claim, and you do call a lawyer.
Let’s think about the consequences of each one of these. In Scenario #1, you don’t have a case, and you’re not wasting any time. It’s a wash.
In Scenario #2, you spend about 10 or 15 minutes on the phone with an attorney, and the lawyer clarifies that you don’t really have a case. That’s the end of it. Yes, you’ve technically “wasted” 15 minutes of your life. 15 minutes you could have spent doing something else, like surfing the internet. But that phone call might help you worry a little less, so it can’t be considered a complete waste of time.
Scenario #3, however, is the really bad scenario. In this scenario, you actually are injured, but you don’t take appropriate legal action. And let’s say you end up racking up $160,000 in medical bills and on things like missed work, etc., over the next 10 years. Since you cannot obtain money from the wrongdoing party, you must foot that bill yourself.
In Scenario #4, you are hurt, and you do have a case, and the attorney helps you get that $160,000.
Let’s say there is a 99% chance that there’s actually nothing wrong with you. You almost certainly don’t have a case. An attorney can’t help you. Etc. Even in that scenario, it always makes sense to call an attorney. 99% of the time, you are going to “waste” 15 minutes of your time making that call. But if you get unlucky, that 1%, low likelihood outcome could cost you $160,000. Here’s the bottom line: If you are even slightly concerned about what happened in the crash, strongly consider getting legal help.
For immediate insight into your Louisiana car accident, call the Law Office of Keith L. Magness, LLC right now at (504) 264-5587.
Tips For How to Finding and Working with Your Auto Accident Attorney
First of all, identify two to three prospective attorneys. Do research on the web, and talk to friends and family members for referrals. Check out the firms’ marketing materials. Do they seem to be in tune with your needs and values? For instance, at the Law Office of Keith L. Magness, LLC, we charge a much lower contingency fee than our competitors do. Thus, a lot of our clients come to us because they want more compensation for their auto accidents. We’re obviously not for everybody, though! It’s important to reflect before you start to research firms.
Once you’ve chosen a few firms that appeal, schedule free consultations. Most injury attorneys will provide you an opportunity to discuss your case to give you a sense of your options and whether the firm is a good fit. Schedule these consultations, and take excellent notes.
Questions to ask an auto accident attorney during these consultations:
- What inspired you to become a Louisiana auto accident attorney?
- What is special about your firm? What helps distinguish your approach from your competitors’ approaches?
- What do you expect from your clients?
- What process would govern my case? In other words, what can I expect, and what would you expect out of me?
- What are your fees?
- What are some reasons why someone like me shouldn’t hire your firm?
- Given the facts of my case, as I have reported them to you, what would be next steps for me, if you took my case?
Once you’ve done these interviews, take time to reflect. Ask a friend or family member to give you an objective assessment. Use your rational mind to assess the pros and cons of each firm as well as your gut. Then retain your attorney!
How to Ensure an Excellent Working Relationship with Your Lawyer
To work effectively with your lawyer, observe the following tips:
- Be truthful, 100% of the time. Your conversations with your attorney are protected by attorney-client privilege. Plus, you want to tell the truth, because if you exaggerate or lie, your case can be put in jeopardy. (for example, if you claim that really hurt your back, and a witness sees you re-roofing your house (true story) the week after a crash, your case for compensation may be blown up.)
- Learn the attorney’s processes, and become familiar with the staff. Treat your team with respect, but demand good service. Your phone calls and emails should be returned promptly, and you should always have a clear idea about what’s going on with your case and what you need to do next.
- Follow your attorney’s suggestions. The whole point of retaining legal representation is so that you can maximize your claim and get back to “real life” as soon as possible. Take your attorney’s advice to avoid problems with the case.
- Collect your questions or thoughts, so that you can ask them all at once to your attorney. Prepare to have thoughts about your case at inconvenient times, such as when you are behind the wheel or in shower or at an office meeting. Carry a pen and pad with you, or use your smartphone to jot down these thoughts. Then try to “ask them all at once” to your attorney via email or a phone call. You’ll be less likely to forget important or urgent points of business.
- Notice anything odd about the attorney experience? Speak up! For instance, maybe your attorney has failed to respond to your emails, or maybe the office staff didn’t alert you about a key deadline or explain something in clear language. Say something, and make sure corrective action is taken. If you are not getting good help, get a second opinion from another qualified Louisiana auto accident attorney. This is your case, your body and your financial future. Protect it!
For immediate insight into your Louisiana car accident, call the Law Office of Keith L. Magness, LLC right now at (504) 264-5587.
