No matter how much you try to avoid a car accident, sometimes it can happen before you can blink, giving you no time to react and get out of the way. These devastating accidents can leave you with catastrophic injuries and no way to support your family, or can leave your family without a loved one. Reach out to a Wisconsin car accident lawyer.
Dolman Law Group Accident Injury Lawyers, PA, can help those who suffer from injuries or lost a loved one in a Wisconsin car accident by looking out for your interests and ensuring you recover the compensation you deserve. Contact our office for a free, no-obligation case evaluation.
Why Choose Dolman Law Group Accident Injury Lawyers, PA, for a Wisconsin Car Accident Case
After a car accident, you may wonder how to navigate the complex legal system to recover the compensation you deserve. Instead of stressing out over your financial situation, let Dolman Law Group Accident Injury Lawyers, PA, handle that for you.
We can:
- Help you collect evidence, such as the police report and your medical records.
- Depose witnesses and the defendants to gather more information about the accident.
- Investigate the physical accident scene and other aspects of the accident, including damage done to vehicles, to help create a strategy to recover the compensation you deserve.
- Negotiate with the insurance company so you won't have to deal with the stress of fighting for the compensation you deserve while trying to recover.
- Prepare for litigation if the insurance company refuses a fair and reasonable settlement.
We have handled many car accident cases with excellent results. While we can't guarantee what results you'll receive since every case differs, our case results page shows you the kind of settlements and trial awards others received in cases like yours.
Recovering Compensation After a Wisconsin Car Accident
After a car accident, you could recover compensation for medical expenses and other losses. Wisconsin allows you to recover two types of damages: Compensatory and punitive. Compensatory damages have two categories: Economic damages and non-economic damages. Not everyone can recover all three types of damages.
Economic Damages
Sometimes referred to as special damages, economic damages have a monetary value. Most people injured in an accident caused by someone else's negligence can recover economic damages, including:
Medical Expenses
You can recover compensation for medical expenses. If you use your auto or health insurance, some of this money will reimburse them. Thus, you must save any receipts and invoices, especially for out-of-pocket expenses, so we can include them in the settlement.
Medical expenses include, but are not limited to:
- Doctors' appointments.
- Surgeries and follow-up appointments.
- Prescriptions and prescribed over-the-counter medications.
- Ambulatory aids.
- Medical equipment, such as oxygen tanks.
- Physical therapy appointments.
- Cognitive therapy appointments.
- Psychological therapy appointments.
- Occupational therapy appointments.
- Accessibility aids for your vehicle, including but not limited to hand controls and wheelchair ramps and lifts.
- Accessibility aids for your home, including but not limited to wheelchair ramps, grab bars, handrails, and widened doorways.
Income
In many cases, accident injuries might prevent you from working for a few weeks. You can recover these lost wages in a car accident settlement. In other cases, your injuries might cause long-term or permanent disabilities. You could recover compensation for loss of future earning capacity. Even if you can return to work, but your accident-related disabilities prevent you from working full time or doing the same type of work at your previous salary, you could recover loss of future partial earning capacity.
If your accident-related disabilities prevent you from earning what you did before the accident, you could recover enough compensation to cover the income you lost from the accident through the time you could retire.
Personal Property
You can recover compensation for damaged or destroyed personal property, including your vehicle and anything of value that suffered damage or was destroyed in the accident.
Death-Related Expenses
If you lose a loved one in a car accident, you could recover death-related expenses, including:
- Funeral expenses.
- Burial expenses.
- Cremation expenses.
- Certain probate court fees.
- Probate attorney's fees and costs.
Non-Economic Damages
Most people who recover non-economic damages, which do not have a monetary value, are those who suffered long-term or permanent disabilities caused by car accident injuries or lost a loved one in a car accident.
Sometimes referred to as general damages, non-economic damages include:
- Pain and suffering, including emotional distress.
- Loss of quality of life if you have to make lifelong changes, such as using ambulatory aids or taking prescriptions.
- Loss of companionship if you can no longer enjoy time with your family or attend family activities and events.
- Loss of consortium if you can no longer have a physical relationship with your spouse.
- Loss of a bodily function, such as bladder control or your eyesight.
- Loss of use of a body part, such as your foot or hand.
- Inconvenience if you have to hire someone to do the chores you usually do, including but not limited to house cleaning, lawn maintenance, grocery shopping, and home repair and maintenance.
- Excessive scarring and/or disfigurement.
- Amputation of a digit or limb.
Punitive Damages
The court can order a defendant to pay punitive damages to punish grossly negligent behavior. For example, the courts might deem driving at high speed through a parade or on a crowded sidewalk grossly negligent.
Most Dangerous Roads in Wisconsin
Every state has overly dangerous roads and intersections. Wisconsin is no exception.
These areas have more car accident injuries and fatalities than other areas in the state:
- I-41 in Green Bay between exits 157 and 161 had 13 fatal crashes that resulted in 14 deaths.
- I-90 in Janesville between exits 171B and 177 had 16 fatal wrecks, resulting in 19 deaths.
- SR-31 in Kenosha between SR-50 and 18th Street had 12 fatal accidents that resulted in 12 deaths.
- U.S. 51 in Madison between Anderson Road and SR-30 had 17 fatal wrecks that resulted in 17 deaths.
- SR-57 in Milwaukee between West Pierce Street and W. Capitol Drive had 15 fatal crashes that resulted in 17 deaths.
- SR-59 in Milwaukee between South 1st Street and South 76th Street had 17 fatal accidents that resulted in 18 deaths.
- I-94 in Milwaukee between exits 305A and 310B had 16 fatal crashes that resulted in 16 deaths.
- SR-175 in Milwaukee between West Center Street and West Bobolink Avenue had seven fatal wrecks that resulted in seven deaths.
- SR-190 in Milwaukee between SR-100 and W. Hopkins Street had 19 fatal accidents that resulted in 23 deaths.
Types of Accidents
No car accident is the same, even if it seems to be.
Any two similar accidents, such as a head-on wreck, will differ because of:
- The size of the vehicles.
- The speed of the vehicles.
- How the other vehicle hits you.
- The area of the vehicle that makes direct contact with your vehicle.
Types of car accidents include:
Rear-End Crashes
This type of accident involves one car hitting another from behind. Rear-end wrecks usually happen because of tailgating, the front vehicle stopping too quickly, or distracted driving. Multiple car accidents often involve several rear-end crashes – one car runs into another, causing that vehicle to rear-end the vehicle in front of it.
T-Bone Wrecks
A T-bone wreck is when one car drives into the side of another vehicle. This type of crash usually happens in intersections or when someone pulls out of a side road, driveway, or parking lot.
Head-On Accidents
This type of wreck happens when the front of one vehicle hits the front of another. This type of accident usually happens when one vehicle crosses the road's centerline, veers over the line in a curve, or drives the wrong way on a one-way street or highway.
Rollover Crashes
A rollover crash can happen to anyone, but it's more common with vehicles with a higher center of gravity, such as an RV, a pickup truck, or a tractor-trailer truck. Rollovers can happen when one vehicle hits the other on the side, taking a curve too fast, or when a vehicle is carrying an unbalanced load.
Sideswipe Wrecks
A sideswipe happens when one vehicle merges into another, and the sides of each vehicle hit the other. These accidents are common when someone changes lanes without looking, takes a curve on the wrong side of the road – if that doesn't cause a head-on wreck, or when a driver misjudges distance.
Multiple-Car Wrecks
A multiple-car pileup usually happens when the weather significantly reduces visibility or makes the road slick. Multi-car wrecks are more common on highways but can happen on surface roads. Often, drivers involved in multi-car pileups do not leave a safe distance between themselves and the vehicle in front of them.
Car Accident Injuries
The injuries you suffer in a car accident depend on several factors, including the size of the vehicles, speed, how the other vehicle hits you, and more.
Car accident injuries include:
- Bumps, bruises, scratches, cuts, and scrapes.
- Road rash.
- Strains and sprains.
- Pulled and torn muscles and other soft tissue injuries.
- Simple and compound fractures.
- Face and eye injuries.
- Crushed bones and other crush injuries.
- Head, neck, and shoulder injuries.
- Chemical and thermal burns.
- Ear injuries, including deafness, in the event of an explosion caused by the accident.
- Traumatic brain injuries.
- Internal injuries.
- Back and spinal cord injuries.
- Amputation of a digit or limb.
Fighting the Insurance Company
After a car accident, you must file a claim with the other driver's car insurance. However, let an experienced car accident lawyer file the claim. When you file a claim, the insurance company will find a reason to deny your claim or offer you a pittance.
Insurance companies are in business to make a profit. Every claim they pay out cuts into their profits.
They know the average person doesn't know all the laws, so they'll:
- Twist what you say to put more or all of the blame for the accident on you.
- Ghost you, hoping you'll forget about the claim.
- Wait until the time to take legal action expires by putting you off. Adjusters might say they need more information (they don't) or are waiting on another department for additional information (they're not).
- Undercut the value of your case.
- Admit that the insurance company's customer is at fault, but tell you it can only pay a certain amount (almost always a lie).
There are just a few of the tricks insurance companies play. Instead of worrying about recovering the compensation you deserve, an experienced car accident lawyer can handle settlement negotiations on your behalf and help you recover the compensation you deserve.
Contact a Wisconsin Car Accident Lawyer
If you suffered injuries or lost a loved one in a Wisconsin car accident, contact Dolman Law Group Accident Injury Lawyers, PA, at 833-552-7274 (833-55-CRASH) for your free case evaluation.
The Dolman Law Group Accident Injury Lawyers, PA, works with local counsel in any jurisdiction outside Florida for the purpose of filing lawsuits in jurisdictions wherein we are not licensed. Thus, we will follow each state's ethical rules to ensure a local attorney is involved.