Personal Injury

Insurance Lawyer

HAVE YOU SUFFERED A SERIOUS INJURY?

Reno Personal Injury Lawyer

Our Reno personal injury lawyer is your best advocate

After an accident, you might suffer mental and physical trauma. You could have large medical bills and no way to pay them. Your injury might even prevent you from working. An accident for which you bear little, or no fault could destroy your health and finances unless you get injury compensation. Our Reno personal injury lawyer can help you to pursue compensation when someone else’s actions have caused you harm.

Below, we’ll discuss Nevada personal injury law and how our Reno personal injury attorney can help you after an accident.

To schedule a free consultation to discuss your accident, contact our experienced Reno personal injury lawyers at Leverty & Associates Law at (775) 322-6636.

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What Are the Different Types of Personal Injury Cases?

Looking for a Reno Personal Injury Lawyer with Relevant Experience

If you suffer an injury due to someone else’s actions, you may have grounds to file a lawsuit. In some cases, like claims for injuries caused by defective products, Nevada law imposes strict liability on another party.

In cases where you can prove intent, like sexual assault, you can pursue additional compensation in the form of punitive damages.

However, most personal injury cases arise from negligence. Some common types of personal injury cases are:

Because every case is different, you should speak with our Reno personal injury attorneys to determine whether your accident will support a claim for injury compensation.

When Should I File a Personal Injury Claim?

It would be unfair for you to bear the burden of paying medical bills or to suffer a loss of income after an accident that was not your fault. Instead, these burdens should fall on the person or entity that caused your injuries.

You should have the freedom to focus on your recovery, rather than rushing back to work or skipping medical treatment because of a mounting pile of bills. Skimping on treatment could leave you with permanent disabilities that cause pain and limit your abilities for the rest of your life.

While some accident victims rely on their health insurance or the MedPay coverage in their auto insurance policy rather than pursuing an injury claim, there are limitations to the ways your coverage can be used.

Limitations on using health insurance and MedPay for your injuries include:

  • Health insurance may require you to meet a deductible or pay a copay for treatment.
  • MedPay may not cover ongoing or long-term medical expenses.
  • Healthcare providers might not accept MedPay coverage.
  • If you pay out of pocket, your insurer could reject reimbursement.

If you choose to pursue an injury claim, you can seek compensation for all your relevant medical expenses, including any copays or deductibles you paid upfront. If you win or settle your case, you can use some of the funds to pay your medical providers.

Your compensation should adequately cover your present and future expenses for injuries related to your accident. This means that an adequate settlement offer or award should be enough to cover your expenses for ongoing treatment, therapy, or long-term care, if needed.

What You Need to Prove to Get Injury Compensation

Our Reno Personal Injury Lawyers Explain the Compensation Process

To recover injury compensation, you and your Reno personal injury attorney must prove liability for your injuries. In a case based on an intentional act, you will usually need to prove intent and causation.

Intent means that the person who caused your injury intended to perform the injurious action. The law does not require you to prove that the person intended to injure you. Instead, causation means that the person’s actions were a step in the sequence of events that caused your injury.

In a strict liability case, you need to prove that the cause of your injury fell within the control of the person or company involved. In a product liability case, for example, you must show that the manufacturer, designer, or seller put a defective product into the stream of commerce and that you suffered an injury as a result.

Most cases stem from negligence. Negligence in Nevada requires proof of four elements:

Duty

The person or business you sue must have owed you a duty of care. Some examples of legal duties include:

  • Drivers owe a duty to other road users.
  • Healthcare providers owe a duty of care to their patients.
  • Owners and occupiers of a property owe a duty to those who are invited onto the premises.

A person or business satisfies its duty by acting in a reasonably prudent manner. This means that the person or business must act with good judgment and common sense in the given circumstances.

Breach

To be negligent, the person or business must have breached their duty of reasonable care. The breach might happen in a number of ways, depending on the nature of your accident. For example, people and businesses can breach their duties by:

  • Driving in an unreasonably dangerous way
  • Failing to provide a level of medical care recognized as reasonable by other healthcare providers
  • Neglecting to discover or repair hazards on the premises in a reasonable time and manner.

Bear in mind that not all injuries support an injury claim. If the person or business acted reasonably and you were still injured, negligence would be difficult to prove.

Damages

Almost any time you suffer an injury, expenses can pile up. Examples of common economic damages include:

  • Medical bills
  • Prescription drug costs
  • Physical or mental health therapy
  • Lost salary or wages
  • Diminished earning capacity.

You could also have non-economic damages. These damages result when an injury diminishes your quality of life. Examples of non-economic losses include physical pain, mental suffering, and loss of the ability to participate meaningfully in certain activities.

Causation

For a negligence case, the breach of duty must have caused your damages. Under Nevada law, causation has two parts.

Cause-in-fact means that the breach was an event in the series of events that led to your injury. Suppose that someone threw a brick at your car. Even if the brick did not hit you directly, if you swerved and hit a light pole, the person who threw the brick was still a cause-in-fact of your crash and your injuries.

Proximate cause means that your injuries were a reasonably foreseeable result of the breach. You do not need to prove that the person or business knew that your exact injuries would occur. Instead, you must show that the breach was the type of act or omission that could reasonably injure someone.

For example, failing to empty the trash cans in a parking structure might be a bad business practice. But a Nevada court might not consider that failure to be the proximate cause of a car accident when wind-blown trash from an overflowing can obscured your view and caused you to hit a parked car.

Every case is unique, and the attorney you choose to represent you matters. Call Leverty & Associates Law at (775) 322-6636 to set up a free consultation with our experienced personal injury lawyers in Reno. We can evaluate the facts of your case to assess the strength and value of your injury claim.

How Do I Pursue Compensation in a Personal Injury Case?

We Know What It Takes to Battle Uncooperative Insurance Companies

Our Reno personal injury attorney will identify all possible sources of compensation, including the at-fault party’s assets and insurance policies. Insurance policies are contracts between the insurer and the insured. When the insured incurs a liability listed in the policy, the insurer should pay the claimant.

Every owner of a registered vehicle in Nevada is required to carry liability insurance. When a driver causes an accident, their insurer has a contractual duty to investigate the claims that are filed and negotiate with the claimant in good faith. If it fails to do so, the insurer can become liable for its own bad faith actions, on top of the actions of the insured party.

Personal Injury AttorneysMost people and businesses have insurance coverage. Homeowner’s insurance, business liability insurance, property insurance, and other policies might be used to cover damages suffered when an insured person or business causes an injury.

For example, Nevada does not require boat owners to carry liability insurance. But in some cases, creative personal injury lawyers can find a way to claim coverage under the boater’s auto or home insurance policy.

Our skilled personal injury attorneys in Reno have knowledge and experience in insurance law that is unmatched by other Reno law firms. Gene Leverty represented insurance companies for over ten years. He is also a former Nevada deputy insurance commissioner. Patrick Leverty earned a Master of Laws (LLM) degree in insurance law and is listed on The National Trial Lawyers list of Top 10 Insurance Bad Faith Trial Lawyers – Nevada.

A high level of understanding of insurance law helps our firm’s lawyers to identify all sources of insurance coverage that might be able to cover a client’s injuries. Aggregating policies in this way can help our attorneys to fight for the full compensation a client may be entitled to.

Frequently Asked Questions About Personal Injury Law

Get Answers from our Reno Personal Injury Attorneys

Personal injury law varies from state to state. When you need answers about your personal injury case, look to someone with experience and knowledge in the relevant area of law. Our lawyers at Leverty & Associates Law include a Nevada Justice Association-certified Personal Injury Specialist.

To help you better understand your ability to file a personal injury case, here are a few of the most common questions our clients ask about personal injury cases.

Even if you do not suffer a catastrophic injury like a spinal cord or brain injury, you can still be faced with medical bills and lost income. It would be unfair for you to bear these costs without assistance. More than half of bankruptcies in the U.S. result from medical expenses. Medical bills can add up quickly, even after a minor injury. The cost for an ambulance ride, emergency room visit, X-rays, and a few stitches can run into the thousands of dollars. An injury claim can ensure that those bills fall on the entities who caused your injuries instead of falling on you, an innocent victim.
Your damages include your economic damages and your non-economic damages. Economic damages include all the ways your injuries affect you financially. You can usually estimate your economic damages by adding up your medical bills and missing paychecks. Your non-economic damages include compensation for the non-financial impact of your injuries on your life. Sleepless nights, pain, depression, anxiety, and inconvenience are just a few ways you can prove your non-economic damages. An experienced Reno personal injury lawyer can assess the value of your case by reviewing your bills and discussing your post-accident life with you.
Nevada law provides a two-year statute of limitations for injury claims and a one-year statute of limitations for medical malpractice claims. The statute of limitations sets the time limit for filing a lawsuit. If you file a lawsuit after the time has expired, a judge must dismiss the case. These statutes of limitations might seem like long periods of time. But when you spend several months recovering from a serious injury, you can lose track of time. Speak to our Reno personal injury lawyer early in the process so you avoid missing any deadlines on your claims. This will give your lawyer ample time to prepare your case, assemble the evidence supporting your claim, and negotiate with the insurance company to try to get fair compensation. If your lawyer cannot settle the case, you will still have time to file a lawsuit.
Nevada law does not impose any time limits on insurers to settle a case. Insurers must respond to claimants promptly. They must also accept or deny claims in a reasonable time frame. But insurers have an incentive to drag out the claims process to try to wear you down. As a result, a claim could take a few weeks or several months to settle with the insurance company. If you need to file a lawsuit, it could take several months to over a year before you reach a jury trial.
Nevada uses the standard of comparative negligence to allocate damages among liable parties. This means that if you share blame for your accident, you can still seek injury compensation. A court or insurance claims adjuster will reduce your compensation by your share of the blame. Thus, if you bear 10% of the blame for the accident, you can only receive 90% of your damages. If you bear more than 50% of the blame for your accident, Nevada law bars you from recovering any injury compensation.
Most injury claims settle before they get to trial. The likelihood that you will need to go to court could be fairly low. At the same time, your personal injury lawyers in Reno may advise you to file a lawsuit if settlement talks slow down or you approach the end of the statutory time limit. This does not mean you will need to go to court. Oftentimes, a lawsuit will motivate an insurer to settle the case, rather than risk a big jury verdict. You should look for a lawyer who has trial experience and can stand up to insurers in court. The personal injury attorneys at Leverty & Associates Law have had extraordinary successes in past court cases, including several million and multimillion-dollar judgments.
Many claimants file insurance claims on their own after an accident. But bear in mind that insurers could try to take advantage of you during the claim process. By handling your case on your own, you risk missing out on compensation to which you are legally entitled. In extreme cases, an insurer could even deny your claim entirely if you file a deficient claim. Hiring Reno personal injury lawyers who are familiar with insurance law will reduce the risk of a claim denial. And if you cannot settle your claim, our lawyers will be in place to prepare and file a lawsuit.
Most Reno injury lawyers charge on a contingency fee basis. This means that the lawyer takes a percentage of your settlement or damage award as a fee. With this approach, you do not pay the lawyer if you lose your case. Our lawyer will also be able to start work on your case without taking any money upfront. Our personal injury lawyers in Reno typically offers a free consultation. This consultation allows you to get a feel for the value of your case. You can also determine whether you think the lawyer fits your needs. You should use this consultation to ask any questions you might have so that you can fully understand the injury claim process.

Client Testimonial

”Pat was prompt and thorough, and explained a fairly complicated issue with exceptional clarity. I appreciate his insights and integrity. Wish I had contacted him sooner.” – Wayne H Wilson (Google Review)

Attorney Patrick Leverty

Attorney Patrick LevertyWith his master’s in insurance law, Patrick routinely helps individuals and businesses who are having issues with their insurance company. He also has extensive experience with personal injury actions, complex tort actions, product liability matters, and class actions. Patrick Leverty is rated AV by Martindale Hubbell (the highest rating) and has been granted membership in the Million Dollar Advocate Forum, and Multi-Million Dollar Advocate Forum. Patrick Leverty has been certified as a Personal Injury Specialist by the State Bar of Nevada. [ Attorney Bio ]

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    Why Choose Us?

    Benefits of Hiring Our Experienced Reno Personal Injury Lawyers

    The most important qualities to look for in a Reno personal injury lawyer include experience, knowledge of the law, and compassion for clients.

    The lawyers at Leverty & Associates Law have extensive experience in personal injury law. We also have experience working for and against the insurance industry. As a result, our lawyers have recovered over $150 million in injury compensation for our clients.

    Just as importantly, you need a lawyer who understands your challenges and can provide the attention your case deserves. Our clients consistently praise the caring and attentive representation provided by the firm’s lawyers.

    Contact Leverty & Associates Law at (775) 322-6636 to set up a free consultation with an experienced Reno personal injury lawyer. Our lawyers will listen to your story about your accident and injuries and evaluate your case so you can decide how to move forward.