Serious accidents—of any sort—are stressful, and if you’ve been injured in an accident that was caused by someone else’s negligence, you may not know where to turn. Many people who go through this experience are tempted to do everything they can to put the accident behind them and to just let the insurance company take care of the rest. This approach, however, does not serve your best interests. An accident can significantly affect your future in surprising ways that can involve your physical health, your mental health, and your finances. Your future is too important to trust the insurance company alone - you need an experienced Hartford, Connecticut, personal injury attorney.
Every personal injury claim is different and many can be complicated, so it’s critical that you find a personal injury firm that’s a good fit for you—a firm like Leighton, Katz & Drapeau that listens to your concerns and understands your unique situation. Our personal injury attorneys have the experience and the knowledge to help guide your claim toward the best result possible, but we also have the compassion to connect with you and focus on your individual needs as a client. All our cases—big and small alike—are handled with the same degree of dedication. If you’ve been injured by someone else’s negligence, call our Hartford office at 860-875-7000 today.
Obtaining Rightful Compensation
In Connecticut, personal injury law allows you to seek payment from anyone who hurt you due to negligence, carelessness, or intentional actions. Dealing with an injury is hard enough and it can be confusing to know what your rights are after an accident. Our experienced personal injury attorneys understand how difficult your situation is, and we’re committed to fighting for your rights to the payment you deserve. Your claim is too important not to seek experienced legal guidance.
The value of each personal injury claim is different and depends on many factors. You may be entitled to compensation for your medical costs, damage to your property, your lost wages and decreased future earning potential, and your pain and suffering. In some serious situations, you might also be able to collect punitive damages, which are designed to punish wrongful actions of the party that hurt you.
Calculating how much your claim is worth is a complex process, but at Leighton, Katz & Drapeau, we take the extra steps necessary to fully evaluate your claim to make sure that you seek the full amount you deserve. This is a crucial piece in the puzzle that is a personal injury claim, and we make sure that we get it right.
We Understand How Insurance Companies Work
Insurance companies play a critical role in recovering on personal injury claims. Many of them are aggressive when it comes to getting a statement from accident victims, but we strongly discourage you from providing the insurance company with any kind of recorded statement. Leave that important task to us, as we have decades of experience handling insurance companies in personal injury claims, and we’ll protect your interests by dealing with the company directly for you.
In fact, at Leighton, Katz, & Drapeau, all our personal injury attorneys have worked in the insurance business, and we know our way around in that arena. Because of our personal experience in the insurance world, we have a deeper understanding of how to protect your rights. Our commitment to all our clients is uniquely informed by our collective personal background working for insurance companies.
It’s important to point out that, although insurance companies are paid to provide you with coverage, these companies are first and foremost in the business of making money. Further, this motivation guides their every action. Your fair compensation is not the insurance company’s primary concern.
In their push for higher profits, some insurance companies (even some of the best-known insurance companies) are not above engaging in questionable tactics. “Tricks of the Trade: How Insurance Companies Deny, Delay, Confuse and Refuse,” a report put out by the , shares that many insurance companies will stoop low to help limit their payouts whenever they can and increase their profits. Several of these tactics include:
- When it comes to claims, some companies simply deny, deny, deny. Some even handsomely reward those employees who are most successful at denying claims - even valid ones.
- Another technique is to continually delay the processing of claims until you finally give up (or die). Yes, you read that right, some long-term care insurance companies have literally cashed in on the advanced age and poor health of their policyholders.
- All contracts can be confusing, but some insurance contracts are purposefully hard to understand (to keep policyholders from knowing their rights under their coverage).
- Some insurance companies penalized their customers for even calling to ask a question about their policies—some even count such calls as actual claims against the callers’ policies and increase premiums or add fees.
These tricks of the trade are unbelievable for many people, but the insurance companies don’t stop there: they also make you jump through endless hoops—including going to independent medical examinations and filling out mountains of paperwork—during the claim process. Again, we’re here to help - we know the ropes, and we’ll guide you through the confusing mess that the insurance company may create for you.
It is in the best interest of the insurance company to trip you up, and they do what they can to get that done. That’s where we come in since we have decades of experience protecting our clients from underhanded insurance tactics, and we’re committed to helping you fully recover on your personal injury claim.
At Leighton, Katz & Drapeau, our dedicated personal injury attorneys are highly skilled negotiators, and we have a proven track record for getting the compensation that our clients deserve. If an insurance company’s offer isn’t fair and we can’t get it negotiated to fair, we’re prepared to take the matter to court. Our top priority is your fair compensation.
Seeking the Damages You Deserve
If your claim does move forward to court, it’s good to know a bit about that process, and we’ll keep you fully informed. As the injured party, your personal injury case will focus on obtaining compensation—known as damages—for the injuries you’ve suffered and for the negative effects those injuries have had on you (and will continue to have on you in the future). Ultimately, a judge or jury will decide the extent to which the defendant (the person whose negligence caused your injuries) is responsible for your damages.
Your Medical Damages
- The damages associated with your case may be based on many factors that will include your medical costs, which can be immense:
- Emergency transportation from the accident scene;
- Initial emergency care;
Medical care and treatment provided by your doctor and any medical specialists, including surgeons;
- Surgeries and aftercare;
- Hospital stays;
- Treatment and care that is ongoing;
- Physical therapy and other forms of therapy;
- Prescription medicines; and
- Adaptive healthcare devices.
Because accidents that lead to personal injuries are often so emotionally devastating, many sufferers also incur expenses associated with mental healthcare services.
Further Damages
A personal injury claim will typically include a variety of other damages that go beyond simply the medical costs:
- Wages lost because of days lost on the job;
- Decreased earning potential because you can’t return to work or because you returned to work at lesser pay (if your injuries are chronic); and
- Property damage, such as car damage in a car accident;
Any of these are collectible under personal injury law in Connecticut. These laws are put in place to help accident victims like you regain your pre-injury quality of life as much as possible.
Evidence in Your Personal Injury Case
Evidence is critical to every personal injury case, and our skilled personal injury attorneys know how to collect and present important evidence of liability in each case. Evidence is also needed to support your claim of damages and will include several forms of medical documentation:
- The medical instructions written for you and the letters written by your physician to your employer;
- Medical documentation related to the injuries you’ve sustained;
- Your medical appointment and therapy session schedules; and
- A documented record of your medical expenses in their entirety.
Our committed personal injury lawyers will also focus on collecting evidence in support of other losses, which will likely include lost income, your decreased earning potential, any emotional and psychological effects you may have suffered or continue to be suffering from, and your pain and suffering overall. These losses can be harder to prove but our attorneys have the resources to support the full amount of damages you deserve in your case.
The Claims We Handle
At Leighton, Katz & Drapeau in Hartford, Connecticut, we’re experienced at handling many kinds of personal injury claims:
- Car accidents;
- Commercial truck accidents;
- Motorcycle accidents;
- Bike accidents;
- Pedestrian accidents;
- Slip and fall accidents (if you fall on private or public property because it wasn’t kept in reasonably safe condition);
- Premises liability (if you’re injured on private or public property because it wasn’t kept in reasonably safe condition);
- Traumatic brain injuries, which are among the most severely debilitating;
- Dog bites and other animal injuries;
- Recreational accidents; and
- Burns and explosions.
A Claim of Wrongful Death
If your loved one is killed in an accident caused by the negligence of someone else, Connecticut law has a wrongful death law in place to help protect you. With a wrongful death claim you can seek damages on behalf of your lost loved one to protect your family members and your loved one's estate. The extent of those damages will be determined by a variety of factors:
- The medical expenses associated with your loved one’s final injuries;
- Your loved one’s lost earning potential and financial support;
- Your loved one’s funeral expenses;
- The pain and suffering that your loved one suffered before dying from the injuries sustained; and
- Your lost loved one’s loss of enjoyment of life.
The State of Connecticut allows damages to be doubled or even tripled if a driver who caused your loved one’s death deliberately violated a traffic law or recklessly ignored a traffic law and if that recklessness or traffic violation was a major factor in your loved one’s death.
Contact Leighton, Katz & Drapeau for a Free Consultation with a Hartford Personal Injury Lawyer
At Leighton, Katz & Drapeau we’ve been representing the citizens of Connecticut since 1989, and we are honored and privileged to do so. We select the cases we represent very carefully, so our clients always receive the highly personalized legal support they deserve. You won’t ever feel like just another client because that’s not how we treat our clients.
Our dedicated personal injury lawyers will take the time to get to know you and the circumstances that make your claim and your experiences unique. We’ve been doing this for decades, and we understand how difficult the process can be for you and your family. We have the compassion to care about your claim’s rightful outcome, the grit to aggressively protect your rights, and the experience to help navigate your claim toward its most positive resolution.
At Leighton, Katz & Drapeau we handle many kinds of personal injury claims, and we’re committed to this mission. Personal injury claims drive our firm, and because their outcomes are so pivotal in the lives of the clients whom we serve, we give it our all from beginning to end. Our legal fees are contingency based, and we won’t get paid until you’ve been compensated for your personal injury claim. We’re proud to continue to serve the people of Connecticut, and if you’ve been injured in an accident that was caused by someone else’s negligence, we encourage you to or call our Hartford office at 860-875-7000 today.
