Скачать или смотреть Do I Need A Lawyer To Prosecute An Injury Claim In Massachusetts?

Settling a personal injury case in Massachusetts without a lawyer. Good afternoon. My name is Neil Burns. I'm a lawyer here at 6 Beacon Street in Boston, Massachusetts, along with my partner, Roshan Jain, we represent victims of motor vehicle accidents here in Massachusetts, and we've been doing this since 1985 and in this building since 1987.

So people sometimes call and ask if they can do this on their own. Represent themselves. You know, there's an insurance company, there's an insurance policy. That should be, it should be easy. They think they know what they're doing. Their lawyer did it the last time or a lawyer, a friend, had it done. And they think they can do it without paying the fee to a lawyer.

And absolutely. There's no law that says you need a lawyer. And it's not that hard if you know what you're doing, but it's complicated. And it can be even more complicated once the insurance company starts putting up roadblocks and they will. They absolutely will, they do it every time to us, they find something and especially if the case is complicated or has a value that's more than minimal value.

So you need to get the police report, the accident reports, the PIP statements of all sides. You need to get all that to them. Medical records, medical bills, the PIP log of all the monies that were paid by PIP, personal injury protection to the doctors and medical providers. And then you need to, if you need an expert, you need to have your doctor write a report and the doctor, he or she needs to put in the magic words of, that the insurance companies need with respect to any permanency.

Then you need to show how long the permanency will be for, how many years, what's your life expectancy. The insurance company knows or should know, but they're not going to tell you if you don't give it to them, they know what they're looking for. And sometimes they even tell you what they're missing.

But not always. And sometimes you're missing something very significant. The two things that we find most are that people forget that people neglect that the attorney insurance companies don't tell them that there's a lien on your case. There's a medical lien, Medicare, MassHealth, Harvard Pilgrim, whoever the medical provider is, UnitedHealthcare.

They all have a lien in your case. So PIP pays something, then the medical insurance pays something. And if you weren't injured as a result of a third person's negligence, they wouldn't have a lien. They don't have a lien if you go in for gallbladder surgery, if it's just caused by your gallbladder failing.

But if it's the injury and the medical bills are caused by the negligence of someone else, then that insurance company has a lien in your case. That lien has to be paid. It can be negotiated. But the insurance company you're going against, the car insurance company won't tell you. And that can eat up a lot of your settlement.

The other thing you need to know about is future medical bills. How are they going to be handled? So, if you want to settle a case on your own, there is no law against it. We would highly recommend you get a professional. Get someone that does this every day. Get someone whose paralegals are used to getting the exact right documents to the insurance company on time so they understand the case on a timely basis.

Get someone who has the skill and the resources to present your case to an insurance company because if it doesn't settle right at the beginning, you need to file suit. And again, you can file suit as a lawyer in Massachusetts a lot easier than you can file suit without a lawyer. The process is very tough once you get into courts.

Very, very tough to do civil procedure. I would say almost impossible for the brightest people and the people who spend the most time studying. It's really impossible to do that. So, If you're in a car accident, if you're a victim of negligence, somebody's negligence, call a lawyer.

You wouldn't do your own dental work. You went to your own medical work. Call a lawyer. These are serious cases. There's a lot of steps you have to go through. Call Burns and Jain for a financial consultation. 617-227-7423. Thank you.