In the unpredictable realm of vehicular mishaps, the aftermath of an auto accident can often leave individuals feeling disoriented and overwhelmed. Whether it’s a minor fender-bender or a more severe collision, the repercussions of an auto accident can reverberate long after the initial impact. In this exclusive interview with auto accident attorney, Ali Salimi on The Legal Odyssey podcast, we uncover critical tips for navigating the aftermath of an auto accident. Through these comprehensive tips, we reveal the intricacies of post-accident protocols, highlighting essential advice and insights gleaned from years of experience in handling auto accident cases. Join us as we unravel the intricacies of auto accident proceedings and equip you with the tools to safeguard your rights and well-being in the face of adversity.
What led you to choose the niche of personal injury and auto accidents?
The catalyst was that I used to be a criminal defense attorney. I actually had a DUI client that was involved in an auto accident and it was not his fault. About two years after I represented him for his DUI, he asked me if I could represent him in the auto accident that he was in. I said, yes, because I have that personality and value the relationship I build with each of my clients. I did end up working alongside another personal injury attorney for the case, since it was the first time I had really taken on this type of case and we worked together through that case. I enjoyed it so much because I saw at the end of it, the same client, same attorney, and the first time he came to me, before I lifted a pen or did any work, I told him, “You’re going to have to pay me for my time,” that’s how the legal industry works, almost like everything else. However, with the personal injury case, he never had to reach into his pocket, he didn’t have to give me a penny. I represented him, I advocated for justice, granted I did it with the help of another attorney, but he never had to reach into his pocket to pay me anything. At the end of my work, I ended up giving him a check. I was extremely attracted to that concept and my ability to use my expertise to help him without him necessarily paying me upfront. It was something that I’d never experienced before and I realized I would love to do that more often.
A lot of the time, the attorney in a personal injury case is only getting paid if the client is getting paid themselves, right?
Absolutely. If we take the case for an injury after an auto accident, and we litigate it three years down the road and we lose… I don’t see a penny.
When you are in an auto accident, how important is it to call the police to get a police report filed? Especially for a minor accident, are you required to call the police?
Up until about two to three years ago, I would proselytize about how important a police report is. I would have told anyone to always call the police, no matter how minor the accident may seem. In the last few years, we’ve seen a huge delay in response time with police officers. Given that and how dangerous it is to be on the side of a road on an active road with others driving, it could possibly make things more dangerous to stick around and wait on the police.
So, assuming that it is a minor accident like a rear end collision and both parties involved agree that it is a clear cut accident and one party is certainly at fault, you don’t need the police there to investigate. In a rear end collision, the standard is negligence. You don’t need to prove specifics as to how it happened, for example, you don’t need to prove that the person was on their phone and that is why they hit you. You don’t need to prove that they were following too closely and that is why they hit you because, again, the standard is negligence. The fact that they hit you, as far as the law is concerned, is enough to determine liability.
That being said, there are certain cases where it’s really important to have the incident documented otherwise, even if you have the other party’s insurance information, you can run the risk of the opposite party’s insurance denying coverage. If the other person provides conflicting information to their insurance with the information you are providing, you can find yourself in a messy situation. Insurance companies are not in the business of turning money over. All they need is for their insured individual to claim that they did not do it, or that they were not at fault for the accident. When you call to make that claim to get your car repaired or submit any of your hospital bills, the insurance is absolutely going to deny the claim if there is no clear statement from the opposite party that they were at fault and that they were negligent.
Therefore, police reports are very important to get unless you’re in a dangerous area and it is a clear rear end collision. I think the best advice I could give is to go ahead and call 911 that there’s an incident at least called. Provide thorough and clear information on that call because we can always request 911 phone calls through the freedom of information act. If it turns out that it’s a delay and they’re not coming and you can leave the scene safely, do so. However, it is critical to note that you should first, get pictures of the accident, get the insurance information of the parties involved, get the driver’s license information, and truly collect as much information or evidence as you safely can.
What are some of the most important ways to collect the evidence of the auto accident before leaving the scene?
Assuming you are the person that is not at fault in the auto accident, it would be great if you can get some sort of demonstrative evidence of the other party admitting liability. Again, this is just because it’s going to make it that much easier for you to submit your claim to their insurance company. Otherwise, like I said earlier, insurance companies don’t want to pay out, so all they need is the smallest little thing to prevent them from paying out the claim and usually that comes down to a determination of liability. So if you have the other individual admitting liability, then it should be golden, and the claim should be easy to make and receiving coverage for repairs or medical care should not be too difficult.
Sometimes, people will have their phone on video to record the conversation with the other party when they get out to speak with them. I always recommend taking as many photos as you can. People will sometimes take surrounding photos before they even get out of the car to collect the insurance information and driver’s license of the other individual.
As we discussed, if there is any confusion in who was at fault for the auto accident, you need further evidence that will help the insurance company determine the at fault party. Police reports and witnesses are always great information to support your claim.
It is not about how catastrophic the auto accident was. It is more about how clear cut the liability is. In a rear end collision the liability is usually pretty clear. However, fender-benders or small accidents can occur where the liability is not as clear. In those situations, having a witness and a witness statement from somebody that was not involved in the accident can help ensure the insurance claim is not denied.
When one is involved in a minor car accident, how can they determine if they need to seek medical attention and document any effects to their bodies after the accident?
Most plaintiff attorneys that are asked this question will say that no matter what the impact is, you should get checked out. My personal stance is that nobody knows your body better than you know your body. I understand the constant demands of a busy life. So, I would just be looking out for symptoms. If you’re completely asymptomatic, I mean, there’s really no need to go get a medical evaluation. When I say to look out for symptoms, I do mean to look out for even the smallest of symptoms. The smallest of aches or pains. It could be just as slight as a headache. For example, we have had cases where a headache, just a persistent headache that has not gone away, was a symptom of a very serious injury. Once we got the diagnostic imaging done it turned out that there was a mild traumatic brain injury involved in that case. So always look out for things like a headache, nausea, limited range of motion, any sort of stiffness in the neck or back. Those are things that typically, people in a minor accident, will not associate as dangerous or sometimes, not even associate with the auto accident because they think it was so minor.
It’s critical to understand that it doesn’t take that much of an impact to affect your vertebrae. If you think about whiplash, for example, your neck, this small little thing, is holding up a bowling ball (your head). If you have an impact, it’s going to snap the head back and forth on this vertebrae and your vertebrae are sitting in between this spongy material. If that moves enough, you easily could get a full disc herniation, or you could get a disc bulge, which means that disc material in between the vertebrae just touches a nerve, and that can cause all sorts of symptoms and complications that you would have not otherwise experienced without being in the auto accident.
Be aware of how your body feels and remember to check in on anyone else that was in the car with you, especially if you have children in the car. Listen to how they feel, stay aware of changes in their behavior and complaints of aches or pains – especially a minor headache and seek medical evaluation to ensure that the impact of the auto accident did not cause more damage to the body than what is visible on the outside.
What if somebody in an auto accident does not realize they need to seek medical attention right away and months later decides to be evaluated just to find that they truly did experience an impactful injury?
The truth of the matter is that any delay in reporting physical symptoms and effects of an auto accident will devalue the case. That does not mean that you do not have a case. It does not mean you have to face all the medical bills and treatment on your own because it was reported late.
In the state of Georgia, for example, there’s a two year statute of limitations. So you have two years from the date of accident to bring a claim. If you’re talking about a four month gap in between the accident and seeking medical treatment, you still have 20 months left to bring that claim.
However, in practical terms, once you bring that claim forward, the defense counsel is going to argue that maybe there was an intervening event that actually caused that injury. Like it’s been four months since the accident. You’re just now talking about these symptoms. What happened in these four months? The other thing is that they they’ll try to diminish the plaintiffs injury by saying that they are not actually hurt and that they are trying to bring the claim forward to recover money. They make you feel bad for bringing the claim forward, where in reality, the four months that it took to recognize the impact on your body is not that long.
Like I said everyone is busy with life. I’m a father, I have kids, and I know how easy it is to just get caught up in the everyday demands of life that you just don’t find the time to seek the help you need and deserve. I will easily deal with something for four months until it’s like, you know, this is unbearable, I need to seek treatment. So you can still bring a claim forward within the statute of limitations, but the true reality is that the insurance company will try to devalue it.
What should individuals keep in mind when communicating with both their own insurance company or the opposite party’s insurance company after an accident?
I have two completely different pieces of advice based on which insurance carrier you are talking with. When you’re dealing with your own insurance carrier, it’s actually critical that you communicate with them as soon as possible. Whether you were at fault or not, you need to contact your insurance carrier and make them aware of the situation because most insurance policies have clauses that state that if you don’t report an accident to your own carrier in a timely manner, some of them say 24 hours and others within a week, that it could possibly relieve them from paying out any benefits on that claim. You may not be filing a claim with your insurance because you were not at fault, but they should be aware that you are filing a claim with the at fault party’s insurance company just in case you run into a situation where that person is underinsured or their insurance lapsed. In which case, you may need to tap into your underinsured motorist protection. You don’t want to be in a situation where your insurance company can just say, nope, you didn’t report it, so we don’t have to pay.
Conversely, when you’re dealing with the at fault insurance company, you have to be very careful. You can talk to them. There’s a lot of lawyer advertising that says, never talk to the other insurance company. You can, but you need to be mindful of what you say and what the purpose of the phone calls are. Anytime you’re dealing with the at fault insurance companies adjusters, their number one goal is to minimize any claims that they might have to pay out. When you’re talking to them, nothing is off the record. The entire thing is recorded. Typically one of the strategies that they like to use is simply appealing to our social norms. They talk nicely, as if they are checking in on you after the car accident that they heard you were in. They say, “I heard you were in a car accident. I’m so sorry to hear that. I hope everything’s okay. I hope you’re not hurt,” Social norm is that you want to minimize and you naturally don’t want to complain too much, you’re trying to appease that person. People often say something like, “Oh, no things are fine. I am okay, thank you for checking in.” That little interaction will be used as a piece of the evidence against the claim if that case ends up in litigation. That statement is going to be used to discredit the plaintiff as their own witness. The defending insurance will say, “Look, I just talked to them one day after the accident, they said they were fine,” “Why is it now that they’re trying to get us to pay for all of these hospital bills?”
What is one of the most important things to consider when seeking medical attention after an accident that you were not at fault for?
Since we’re sharing tips here, I think one of the most important things I can impart to those reading is that when you’re involved in an auto accident, and someone else is at fault and you’re taken to the hospital, there’s this natural reaction to think, “The other person caused all my damages, I don’t want to use any of my own insurance, whether it’s auto or health insurance.” When you go to the hospital, the hospital intake department will ask if someone else was at fault, and if so, you don’t have to present your health insurance. Obviously, that goes right in line with your own paradigm that I’m not at fault, I shouldn’t have to pay. The reason that’s the wrong thing to do is because health insurance companies have contractual rates with medical providers, right? For example, I had taken my own daughter to the hospital years ago and there was ibuprofen on the invoice. It showed that it was billed for $800 for ibuprofen and I think the actual contractually paid rate from our health insurance carried was around $1.25. So the hospital is more than happy to not take your health insurance. What they’ll do instead is they’ll file a lien against any future settlement from your car accident case. So that means that their lien is going to be dollar for dollar of what was invoiced. So when you have, let’s say a $100,000 settlement and you just have that one ibuprofen for $800, they’re going to file a lien for $800 for that ibuprofen. Whereas when you use your own health insurance at the hospital, the health insurance will pay the contractual rate, $1.25 for example, and then obviously when we get the settlement, yes, your health insurance has a right of reimbursement. We would rather reimburse your health insurance company their contractual rate of $1.25 as opposed to giving the hospital their dollar for dollar lien at $800. In my opinion, especially in quarter one and quarter two of the year, I think that everyone involved should be using their own health insurance because you’re getting settlement money to take care of the bills later and you are contributing to your deductible. If it’s a big enough visit, you may pay off your deductible. Ultimately, that’s coming from settlement money. That means you have the entire rest of the year to use your health insurance without being concerned about any deductible payment.
As a personal injury attorney, is there any other advice or tips you’d like to leave for our audience when it comes to auto accidents?
I want to dispel a couple of common misconceptions. First, the notion that the insurance company is going to handle your claim and that people don’t need to retain an attorney to bring an action because they feel like they’re suing the person. There’s a huge disconnect.
We get so many intake calls where people have cold feet about retaining our firm because they’re doing something wrong to the person that caused the accident. They think it was an accident, it wasn’t done on purpose, they don’t want to sue the person. Again, the standard is just negligence. We’re not saying that person is a bad person. They were negligent at that moment and is caused you damage. You’re not suing that person. They’re not reaching into their pocket and paying all the money for medical recovery or car repairs. All of us carry insurance so that if we cause damages to another person, that insurance covers the damages that we’ve caused.
The misconception that the insurance company is going to pay for their claim no matter what and what they pay is going to take care of the injuries suffered, regardless of representation is also important to dispel. You cannot think, “No matter what happens, attorney or no attorney, my damages and injuries are worth X amount that the insurance is claiming they are worth’ and therefore, choose not to hire an attorney. As I said before, insurance companies want to minimize the claims as much as they possibly can. Hiring an attorney does not mean you are just going to eat into that exact payout. The appropriate paradigm is that any attorney should be earning their fee. That’s not just our firm, that’s any plaintiff’s attorney that does personal injury on a contingency fee basis, they should be earning their fee. In other words, even if they were to charge you X% for attorney’s fees, that means that your net result should be higher than what you could have done on your own.
In conclusion, the aftermath of an auto accident can be a daunting and tumultuous experience, but with the guidance of a seasoned auto accident attorney, navigating the complexities of the legal system becomes markedly more manageable. From the initial consultation to the resolution of your case, an auto accident attorney serves as your staunch advocate, tirelessly fighting for your rights and ensuring that you receive the compensation you deserve. By leveraging their expertise and intimate knowledge of personal injury law, they adeptly maneuver through the intricacies of your case, meticulously crafting a strategy tailored to your unique circumstances. Through open communication, unwavering support, and relentless dedication, an auto accident attorney provides invaluable peace of mind in the midst of uncertainty. So, if you find yourself grappling with the aftermath of an auto accident, don’t hesitate to seek the guidance of a trusted auto accident attorney who will stand by your side every step of the way, ensuring that justice is served and your rights are safeguarded. Search for esteemed personal injury attorneys at Lawyerguide.com