Santa Rosa Personal Injury & Accident Lawyers
Accidents happen all of the time in Santa Rosa, California. These accidents often lead to injuries, which may require medical attention or can lead to mental, physical, or emotional damages. These accidents are often the fault of a negligent party. Whether by driving poorly and causing a car accident, not maintaining a property site safely enough to prevent a slip and fall, or making and selling a dangerous product, accidental injuries are a part of life.
What Is a Personal Injury Claim?
A personal injury claim is a formal demand for compensation. Victims who have been hurt by someone else’s negligence make these claims to avoid paying for the costs of the accident out of their own pockets. By demanding monetary compensation for their losses, victims try to hold the at-fault person responsible for their actions in the matter.
Legal claims often begin with the insurance company that represents the victim or the negligent party. Depending on the type of personal injury case, the insurance company will send an adjuster to evaluate the accident by investigating the injuries, property damage, or other losses that it caused.
Based on the adjuster’s investigation of the accident case, the insurance company will make a settlement offer. It is important to remember that insurance companies are for-profit companies, so their concerns are not for the victim’s recovery. The settlement offer that they make is designed to seem enticing to the victim, while also drastically under-compensating them for their injury costs.
If the insurance company’s settlement offer is inadequate, victims can escalate their claim by filing a personal injury lawsuit. This is an official court filing that details what happened, how the victim was hurt, and why the negligent person should pay compensation. A trial date will be set and if no settlement is reached before then, a courtroom judge or jury will decide whether the negligent person should pay the victim compensation, and how much should be paid.
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Featured Personal Injury Attorney
Brooks founded Cutter Law, P.C., with offices in Sacramento and Oakland, with a mission of providing injured people with great lawyers to help them get the compensation they deserve and the resources they need.
Brooks and his team are awesome. I can’t say enough about how professional they are.
What Types of Cases Does a Personal Injury Attorney Handle?
Because accidents can happen and hurt people in a wide variety of ways, personal injury lawyers handle lots of different types of injury cases. Each individual case has its own unique elements. Some of the most common practice areas include:
Other practice areas include:
- Truck accidents
- Motorcycle accidents
- Premises liability
- Workplace accidents
- Dog bites
- Medical malpractice
- Products liability
The key common feature is negligence or other wrongful conduct. In each type of personal injury suit, the person who caused the victim’s injuries or losses must have acted negligently or wrongfully. If someone else’s negligence caused you or a family member injuries, you do not have to seek justice in your personal injury matters alone.
How Do I Know if I Have a Case?
Victims can prove their personal injury claim and recover the compensation they deserve by showing 4 things at trial:
- The other person had a legal responsibility to keep them safe,
- That other person failed to uphold that responsibility,
- That failure caused the victim’s injuries, and
- The victim suffered legal damages in the accident.
Because these elements have to be proven at jury trial, they influence all of the earlier stages of the personal injury claims process. Insurance companies keep these 4 elements in mind when they decide how much to offer in their initial settlement. For example, if it appears that the accident was caused by something other than the negligent party’s poor conduct, the insurance company will likely reduce its settlement offer.
In many cases, but especially for multi-vehicle car accidents and premises liability claims, the victim may have been partially at fault for his or her injuries. In these cases, California’s comparative negligence law comes into play in the legal system.
What Should I Do if My Insurance Adjuster Calls Me?
Whenever an insurance company’s client gets hurt in an accident, the company will send out an adjuster to see what happened and how bad the victim’s losses were. After the adjuster investigates the accident and the victim’s injuries, the adjuster will make a settlement offer.
This settlement offer is very important. Victims who accept their insurance company’s settlement money relinquish their right to pursue a personal injury claim. Victims cannot accept the offer and then file a personal injury lawsuit if they realize that the settlement offer does not cover all of their losses.
Unfortunately, this is often what happens, as the settlement offer is designed to entice victims. It usually covers medical bills and other medical costs that have already accumulated, and the offer is usually made right when the victim starts to feel the financial pinch from their accident and injuries.
Insurance companies maximize their profits by getting victims to settle their claim for as little as possible. For best results, Santa Rosa injury victims should strongly consider having a consultation with a personal injury lawyer before talking to an insurance adjuster or accepting a settlement offer.
How Long Do I Have To File a Personal Injury Claim?
Accident victims have a time limit for filing a personal injury lawsuit. This timeframe is governed by the California personal injury statute of limitations. For most personal injury cases, victims have 2 years to file their lawsuit. However, certain types of claims are different. For example, claims against public entities must be filed within 6 months of the date of injury. The statute of limitations for medical malpractice, for example, is 1 year from the discovery of the injury or 3 years after the malpractice occurred, whichever comes first.
Not complying with the statute of limitations can create legal issues. Lawsuits that are filed after the statute has expired can easily be dismissed by the person being sued. Even if the victim’s case is extremely strong, filing late will likely get it thrown out of court.
However, there are some exceptions and complications that can delay the start of this crucial time window.
The most important is the discovery rule. If it was not reasonably possible for the victim to discover that they had been hurt, it will delay the statute of limitations. The time limit for filing the lawsuit will only begin when the victim discovers, or reasonably should have discovered, the injury. This is especially important for medical malpractice injuries, where a doctor’s negligence causes serious injuries, but the problems do not begin to show for years after the mistake.
What Damages Can I Recover For?
There are 2 main types of legal damages in California:
- Economic damages
- Non-economic damages
Economic Damages
Economic damages are those that can be easily shown and presented in a monetary amount. Proving the extent of a victim’s economic damages can be as easy as showing the bills and receipts. Examples include:
- Medical bills
- Property damage
- Lost wages
Non-Economic Damages
Non-economic damages are those that are difficult to state in a monetary amount. They are often internal or emotional injuries, like:
- Physical pain from any injuries. The most common types of injuries include back injuries, neck injuries, traumatic brain injuries, broken bones, and other physical injuries.
- Mental suffering and anguish
- Emotional distress
- Loss of enjoyment for life
- Losing the love and best friend of one’s life
Just because a hospital does not bill patients for these losses, does not mean that victims do not suffer them. Because the victim would not have suffered them, were it not for the other person’s negligence, the victim deserves to be compensated for them.
Verdicts and Settlements
How long will a personal injury case take?
As with the value of the case, the time it will take to bring a personal injury claim from start to finish can vary. While the statute of limitations requires the lawsuit to be filed before a certain number of years have passed, once the lawsuit is filed, it can take as little as one week for an adequate settlement offer to be made, or as long as several years for all appeals to be exhausted.
Some important factors include:
- Whether an insurance company or the negligent party, personally, is being sued
- Whether a novel or unsettled area of law is at issue
- Whether the court’s docket is filled up
- The victim’s intent to go to trial rather than take a settlement
Someone should choose our firm because we’re a group of lawyers who take our responsibility to our clients very seriously. We strive to build good relationships with our clients and take our ethical responsibilities seriously.
Brooks Cutter,
Founder of Cutter Law
401 Watt Avenue Suite 100 Sacramento, CA 95864
1901 Harrison Street Suite 910 Oakland CA 94612
51 E St Santa Rosa, CA 95404
How Can a Santa Rosa Personal Injury Lawyer Help Me?
Having an experienced personal injury attorney from Cutter Law represent you throughout the personal injury claims process is crucial. Our lawyers can:
- Handle all of the communications with the other parties involved
- Explain your legal rights, answer all your questions, and handle your personal information with care
- Deal with the insurance claims process
- Gather evidence of the accident, including statements from expert witnesses and witness testimonies
- Write and file the complaint in court
- Provide experienced legal advice and knowledgeable insight into the adequacy of a settlement offer
- Present the personal injury case to a jury
- Give you the peace of mind that comes with knowing that super lawyers are handling your case from start to finish
Victims should always reach out to a personal injury lawyer with years of experience at our Santa Rosa law firm as soon as they can. Waiting will only make the evidence stale. Getting a lawyer on the case as soon as possible helps the attorney gather the evidence that can lead to a larger settlement or verdict.
Contact our legal team at Cutter Law today through phone, website, or email, to get a free case evaluation from our experienced personal injury lawyers.
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Start with a free consultation. We listen to what happened, how it’s affected your life, and what you need to move forward.
You’ll have a direct line to our attorneys. We keep communication open and ensure you always know what’s happening with your case.
From day one, we go all in—gathering evidence, negotiating with insurers, and preparing for trial if needed. You pay nothing unless we win compensation for you.
California’s comparative negligence law divides the fault and uses that ratio to determine the damages a plaintiff can receive (even if they are more than 50% at fault).
California operates under an at-fault insurance system, meaning the driver responsible for causing an accident is liable for damages.
The general rule in California is that most components of personal injury settlements are not taxable income.
As a family run California law firm we pride ourselves in providing every client personal attention and representation. The outstanding results we have gotten for our fire clients are a direct result of our commitment to understanding and presenting all aspects of their case.
Hear from our previous clients about the relationships we build together.
The attorneys at Cutter Law are knowledgeable and client-focused. They’re easy to work with and they deliver quality results. I highly recommend them if you’re looking for a personal injury attorney in California!
My experience with Cutter Law has been extremely positive. The staff are professional, responsive, and passionate about their clients. Highly recommend this law firm.
Brooks has a long-established, respected reputation as a skilled trial attorney and a record of proven success.