Automobile Accidents

• Should I get medical care after an injury?

  John Cooper | October 30, 2006 3:10 PM | 0 CommentsNorfolk, Portsmouth & Hampton, VA

  One of the initial questions faced by the victims of other's negligence is whether they should seek medical attention.While the answer to this question is driven by the facts of the particular incident (i.e. the age of the victim, site of the injury, degree of trauma, etc.), early and appropriate medical care will frequently hasten the recovery from a personal injury. This is particularly true...

• Multi-State Injury Cases Are More Complicated

  John Cooper | October 12, 2006 3:13 PM | 0 CommentsNorfolk, Portsmouth & Hampton, VA

  If your personal injury case involves more than one state, it is more complex and requires an attorney familar with handling such cases.Lots of personal injury cases involve more than one state. For example, if you are from North Carolina and you have a car crash just across the border in Virginia, your injury case involves more than one state. This situtation is very common in today's mobile...

• Mild Brain Injury Verdict

  John Cooper | September 18, 2006 4:12 PM | 0 CommentsNorfolk, Portsmouth & Hampton, VA

  Not long ago, we saw a huge verdict of $3,000,000.00 in a mild brain injury case in Hampton, VA.A 41 year old woman was driving when a dump truck took a left turn in front of her. In addition to orthopedic injuries, the woman suffered symptoms of brain injury like memory loss, anxiety and loss of balance. The emergency room doctors found no evidence of actual brain injury. This is very...

• Plaintiff's Lawyers Share Power of Information

  John Cooper | September 12, 2006 9:06 AM | 0 CommentsNorfolk, Portsmouth & Hampton, VA

  Trial lawyers representing injured people have in recent years gained a huge advantage by sharing information over the internet with fellow plaintiff's side lawyers through listserves or groups of lawyers with a common interest.For years, defense lawyers have shared information with other lawyers representing big clients like insurance companies and corporations defending tort claims. These...

• Allstate's Dirty Hands Policy

  John Cooper | September 06, 2006 4:27 PM | 0 CommentsNorfolk, Portsmouth & Hampton, VA

  A book is about to be published, over Allstate Insurance Company's objections, entitled "From Good Hands to Boxing Gloves - How Allstate Changed Casualty Insurance in America." This new book criticizing the insurance carrier is written by author David Berardinelli of New Mexico, who is a plaintiff's lawyer. He and his co-author allege that Allstate started a policy in the early 1990s to...

• Med Pay - The Forgotten Insurance Coverage

  John Cooper | September 05, 2006 4:02 PM | 2 CommentsNorfolk, Portsmouth & Hampton, VA

  Medical payments ("med pay" for short) coverage, an option on automobile insurance, is extremely important to getting a good result in a personal injury case arising out of a car crash.Many people forget about med pay. Because it is an optional coverage on your automobile insurance, people do not always buy it. Medical payments coverage says that if you or anyone else gets hurt arising out of...

• Insurers Listen to Computer Not People

  John Cooper | August 19, 2006 3:26 PM | 0 CommentsNorfolk, Portsmouth & Hampton, VA

  Many insurance companies, including Allstate, State Farm and Farmers, use a computer program to determine the value of injury claims. Some companies, such as Allstate, take the number that their computer program called Colossus spits out as the value of the claim giving no discretion to the claims representative negotiating the file. By hiding behind the computer, these insurance companies...

• Its No "Accident"

  John Cooper | August 17, 2006 2:29 PM | 0 CommentsNorfolk, Portsmouth & Hampton, VA

  Personal injury lawyers are trained to use words to persuade. One key word that comes up in personal injury litigation again and again is the word "accident." People are very used to talking about automobile accidents or car accidents. The problem is that accident implies that it is nobody's fault. It allows the at fault driver to simply say, "Sorry, it was just an accident." There is even...

• Auto Black Box Secrets-Is Your Car Spying On You?

  John Cooper | August 16, 2006 2:03 PM | 0 CommentsNorfolk, Portsmouth & Hampton, VA

  The use of black box or event data recorder in late model cars is becoming a hot topic in criminal and civil litigation. More police are using black boxes to help solve traffic crimes. In Virginia, police officers are routinely downloading this information, when necessary to help figure out what happened in a fatality crash. The police department in Norfolk, for instance, has the technology...