Greenville Motorcycle Accident Lawyers

Greenville Motorcycle Accident Lawyers

Motorcycles are an invigorating mode of transport, but they also expose their drivers and passengers to great risk of harm in an accident with another motor vehicle. If you’ve been seriously injured in a motorcycle accident because of another driver’s negligence, you owe it to yourself to find out if you are due compensation.

If you’re reading this, you’ve probably been seriously hurt in a motorcycle accident. You’ve likely missed work due to your injuries. You’re doubtless worried about your finances in addition to dealing with pain and struggling to recover. You are probably stressed wondering where you can turn for answers about a motorcycle accident claim.

We are here to help. Our firm offers free legal advice. Call our Greenville motorcycle accident lawyers today.

Please don’t hesitate to reach out because you’re worried you’ll need to pay up-front for answers. Just give us a call and schedule your free legal consultation.

Injuries Commonly Suffered by South Carolina Motorcycle Accident Victims

Severe injuries are common when motorcycles and other motor vehicles collide, even when those on the bike are wearing helmets and protective clothing. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), motorcyclists are nearly 30 times more likely to be killed in accidents than other passenger vehicle occupants on the road. They’re also four times more likely to be injured. Due to their exposure and lack of protection, injuries to motorcyclists in crashes tend to be severe. Common injuries include:

• Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)
• Spinal Cord Injuries
• Lacerations
• Injury to the Limbs
• Broken Bones
• Head Injury
• Internal Organ Damage
• Paralysis
• Connective Tissue Injuries
• Scarring and Deformity
• Road Rash

If a motorcycle accident results in the death of the rider, the victim’s family may be eligible for a wrongful death lawsuit. If you’ve lost your loved one in a motorcycle accident, reach out to our South Carolina motorcycle accident lawyers to learn more about pursuing a claim.

Who May Be Found Responsible for a Motorcycle Accident?

To collect compensation for a motorcycle accident claim — or a wrongful death claim as a result of the accident — you must prove the at-fault party caused the accident due to negligence. You also need to connect that accident to the victim’s injuries and damages.

There are several ways a party may be found liable for a motorcycle accident, depending on the facts involved. Just a few examples include:

• The motorcycle was struck by another vehicle
• The parts were defective, resulting in a product liability claim
• A mechanic mishandled repair or maintenance of the motorcycle
• Another passenger on the motorcycle caused the collision
• A road maintenance entity, such as a municipality or construction crew worker, caused the accident

These represent just some of the possible configurations for fault in a motorcycle accident claim. If you are unsure whether the circumstances of your accident qualify for a motorcycle accident claim, contact us to schedule your free legal consultation.

How Can I Benefit from Hiring Your Greenville Motorcycle Accident Lawyers?

Hiring a lawyer will help to protect the value of your claim by preventing the insurance company from dropping its value at every opportunity. It will also give you the great benefit of being able to hand over the stress and complexity of trying to win a claim against big insurance so you can turn your attention to rest and recovery.

It’s unfortunately not uncommon for people to make the mistake of foregoing the help of a lawyer, believing they’ll save money. But there are many ways hiring the right lawyer can protect the value of your motorcycle accident claim, resulting in your ability to collect many times more in compensation than you could on your own.

• An experienced lawyer knows how to investigate accidents to locate evidence that may have been overlooked.
• Your lawyer can clearly establish all at-fault parties who are liable for your damages. This is essential to making sure you don’t leave compensation “on the table.” It’s entirely possible for an accident to have more than one responsible party. An experienced motorcycle accident lawyer will know how to identify who they are.
• Our Greenville motorcycle accident lawyers will know how to show causation, which means making those critical connections between the actions of the at-fault parties and your resulting damages.
• The right lawyer will have the skill to accurately determine all your damages, again ensuring you collect the maximum compensation possible.
• Your lawyer will be able to guide you about settlement offers, so you will know with confidence which offers you can pass up and which are worth your time and energy to consider.
• Our Greenville motorcycle accident lawyers can protect your claim by handling all communications with the insurance company. This ensures consistent messaging about your case and avoids costly miscommunications.
• Having the right lawyer prevents the insurance company from trying to delay and deny your motorcycle accident claim in hopes you’ll give up and go away. It tells the insurance company without a doubt that you mean business — that if they don’t agree to settle a legitimate claim, your lawyer will sue.
• And, going beyond threats and posturing, you will have the option to actually move forward with a lawsuit if in the end, the insurance company refuses to consider a settlement in good faith.

Each of these aspects of hiring a lawyer benefits you, through its ability to contribute to the strength of your claim.

Ways You Can Help Protect Your Case

There are a number of ways you can help your claim retain its value, right from the start, before you’ve found a lawyer, and after your lawyer is hard at work.

Seek Out a Medical Exam

Even if you aren’t sure whether you’ve actually been injured in the crash, you need to find out. Your body’s adrenaline response to trauma can mask pain for hours and make you feel stronger and more functional than you are. Get checked out and let the doctor tell you whether you’re really free of internal injuries.

Having a record of an exam right after the crash will also reinforce your accident claim. If you don’t go to the doctor, you may feel pain the next day or several days later. Even if you do go get an exam after this delay, you’re likely to find the insurance company challenging whether your injuries were caused in the crash. Don’t give them a chance to cast doubt on your claim. Get a record of any injuries as soon after the crash as possible. The quicker you can prove you’re injured, the stronger the causation you can establish that the accident caused you injuries.

Stick to Your Doctor’s Instructions

Once you’ve been treated and released from the medical facility to continue your healing journey at home, you’ll be given a treatment plan. It’s important to follow it.

Too many people assume their treatment plan won’t make a difference in their claim. They may slack off on taking their meds and begin to skip physical therapy sessions here and there as life gets in the way. Treatment plans are especially vulnerable to slacking off during long recoveries.

But no matter how much or how little doing your stretches and going to PT is helping you recover, know that your plan has the potential to help or harm your claim, depending on how well you stick to it.

If you fail to take it seriously, the insurance company will take the opportunity to claim your own negligence is preventing you from healing, not the severity of your injuries.

Get plenty of rest, take your meds, go to your physical therapy appointments, do your stretches. Whatever you are instructed to do to help in the healing process, you must do it.

This includes not doing activities you are temporarily prohibited from. Remember that insurance companies still employ the help of investigators. If one of them follows you to a kick boxing gym and gets video of you coming out all sweaty, you may find your claim value dropped if doctors’ orders said hold off on strenuous exercise.

Don’t take chances with your claim. It’s worth repeating that your treatment plan is going to be very helpful to either you or the insurance company, depending on how closely you adhere to it.

Let Your Lawyer Handle Communications with the Insurance Company

You can expect the insurance company to call not long after the accident report is filed. The purpose of this call is not to help you with your claim. It’s to help them pay you as little as possible by finding ways to trip you up in a recorded interview.

If you take this call, you can expect the insurance adjuster to ask the same questions in numerous ways to confuse you and make you seem like you may be lying or exaggerating your injuries. It’s not fair and it’s not kind, but this is how the game is played.

The best way for you to protect your claim when the insurance company calls is to let your attorney handle all communications. This will ensure consistent messaging about your accident and prevent any costly miscommunications.

Hire Our Greenville Motorcycle Accident Lawyers as Soon as You Can

If you’ve been injured in a motorcycle accident, it’s true you’ll need to make sure you make the filing date for your claim before the statute of limitations runs out. But long before you need to worry about that deadline, you’ll want to get a lawyer started investigating your accident to look for any additional evidence that may be out there to support your claim.

Your attorney will read through police reports and review evidence photos of the scene, but they will also want to conduct their own investigation of the accident, with a specific interest in supporting your claim. Give them as much time and opportunity to do so by retaining your attorney as soon as you can.

If you don’t feel like you can handle even an online search for a lawyer as you begin your recovery, ask a loved one for help. Chances are they’ll be more than happy to have a way to help you with what you’re going through.

Choose Your Attorney Carefully

It’s important to remember that just like doctors, not all lawyers share the same specialized focus. All motorcycle accident lawyers are attorneys, but not all attorneys are motorcycle accident lawyers. This means you’ve got to make sure your search for the right attorney focuses on someone who spends the majority of their focus in personal injury. Your father’s business litigation lawyer is not the best fit for your claim unless he spends most of his time in personal injury and has a winning record resolving motorcycle accident claims.

In addition to hiring a personal injury attorney, make sure this person is a trial attorney. The last thing you need is to accidentally turn over your case to a “settlement mill.” This is a firm that makes its money on the high volume turnover of accident claims, with no intention of pushing any of them to trial to attain higher compensation. You need an attorney who is both skilled and willing to fight for you in court, if necessary, to bring you the compensation you deserve.

Greenville Motorcycle Accident Client Story

We are sharing the following client story with you to provide additional information about what to expect in a motorcycle accident claim. Though details and names have been edited to protect client privacy, the value of the information remains. Please read it through, then give us a call to schedule your free legal consultation. We’d like to give you answers about your claim.

Vic Matsson was on his way home from work one summer evening in Greenville, South Carolina not so long ago without a care in the world. It was Thursday, and he was one day away from taking off for a week with his best friends for a motorcycle ride up the coast to Asheville, North Carolina. They went every summer, and he couldn’t wait.

The trip would be made even better this year because Vic’s twenty-six-year-old son Sean would be going with him on a bike he’d spent the past year and a half rebuilding. With all his major work responsibilities wrapped up, Vic just had to go home and finish packing. In twenty-four hours, they’d be free to relax and hit the open road.

Traffic was light and moving well as Vic cruised northwest up Laurens Road. He was crossing Haywood when a pickup ran the light and slammed into his bike.

Vic woke up in the hospital in a lot of pain. His right arm and leg were badly mangled. Sean was by his side and would remain there in the weeks that followed as his dad underwent and struggled to recover from the amputation of his right leg below the knee.

Vic and his son talked a lot during that time. They hadn’t always been close, and Vic was grateful they’d found their way back to solid ground.

After a rebellious phase following his parents’ divorce, Sean had moved to Philadelphia with his mom. He’d gotten into a lot of trouble, but Vic stuck with him, visiting as often as he could and providing a steady stream of supportive yet firm parenting.

The day Vic watched his son graduate high school, he offered to move to Philadelphia to help him through college. Sean surprised him by announcing his acceptance to school down in Greenville. He moved in with Vic and spent the next six years working his way through a bachelor’s degree.

Two years later, Sean shared an apartment with a roommate, had a great job, and had taken up his father’s love of riding. Vic and his son had come back from the brink of a broken home and managed to build a strong bond, for which Vic would always be grateful.

Vic lay in the hospital, his nerves frayed from pain and the loss of his leg, as well as a damaged right arm that was unlikely to regain full function. He struggled to remind himself of every one of his blessings, his son most of all. Even as he reminded himself of all he still had, he felt he was scrambling to keep from a swift slide into depression.

Doctors came and went. Vic would be transferred to a rehabilitation facility at the end of the month to continue his recovery before being discharged to adjust to his new circumstances. The doctors encouraged him that they’d been able to leave enough tissue below the knee to make a prosthetic a possibility. He told himself it was a blessing. He just needed time to believe the words.

Three weeks after the accident, Sean suggested Vic speak with motorcycle accident lawyer Josh Christian of Christian & Christian Attorneys at Law. He’d read about the firm online and said they offered a free legal consultation.

“You’ve got nothing to lose by finding out if they think you’ve got a claim, Dad,” Sean had said reasonably.

Vic told himself it was the sensible thing to do. Nothing to lose was right. He just didn’t feel like he could deal with one more thing, but he told Sean to go ahead and arrange it. If the attorney came to him, why not?

Attorney Christian arrived at Vic’s hospital room two days later to answer his questions about a potential claim in what Sean confirmed truly was a free legal consultation.

How much does it cost to hire a motorcycle accident lawyer?

“Before I get ahead of myself here,” said Vic somberly, “I need to know how much it costs to hire your firm.”

“Entirely understandable,” said Attorney Christian. “There are no up-front charges for us to handle your motorcycle accident claim. We work on a contingency-fee basis, which means we front all case costs from start to finish. When your claim wraps up, you only pay us if we succeed in resolving your case. We only get paid when you get paid.”

Sean nodded to his dad. “Sounds good to me,” he said.

Vic nodded back. “It does sound doable.”

How much is my motorcycle accident claim worth?

“How much is a claim like mine worth? Obviously money alone won’t give me back my leg or restore the use of my arm. But just from a survival standpoint, my entire life crashed with my bike. I’m fifty-four years old. I can’t return to work like this,” Vic said, despair raw in his voice.

Attorney Christian nodded. “The accurate determination of your claim’s value is absolutely essential,” he said. We begin with a thorough accident investigation into the facts of your case. We gather evidence, speak to witnesses, and if necessary, bring in someone who specializes in recreating the accident to support your claim. We’ll identify all at-fault parties and work to connect their negligence to the damage that’s been done to your life in every way it has. This is the first factor in determining the value of your claim.

“The second factor is your actual damages. To make sure we identify them all, we’ll need your help, Mr. Matsson,” said Christian.

“Please call me Vic. Mr. Matsson is my father,” Vic said roughly.

“Okay, Vic. We’ll need you to reach what is called ‘maximum medical improvement,’ or MMI. This simply means you’ve got to recover all the way back to your pre-accident level of health — or as close to it as you can get. It means following all your doctors’ instructions, doing your physical therapy, getting as much rest as possible, and not doing anything beyond what the doctors recommend. Apart from the fact that overdoing it could set your recovery back, it can also damage your claim, neither of which we want. You do not want to give the insurance company any opening to blame you for any shortfall in your recovery,” Attorney Christian said.

“Blame m— me? They’re gonna blame me?” Vic said, his voice raising in outrage as he began to sputter in frustration.

Attorney Christian raised a calming hand. “It’s not fair and it’s outrageous, but that’s how they operate. They will take any chance they get to deflect blame in an effort to pay you less in compensation. So, you’re not going to let them, and neither are we. You are going to pour all your energy and frustration into your recovery. You’re going for steady, lasting progress.

“When you are through with surgeries and the doctors have a clear understanding of how your future will be affected by your injuries, they’ll let us know when they feel you’ve reached MMI. At that point, we’ll understand your damages,” said Christian, holding up his right hand. “We’ll then combine those with the facts we have from your accident investigation,” he said, holding up his left hand and bringing the two hands together. “And from both, we will have your claim’s true and reliable value.”

How long will my motorcycle accident claim take?

Vic squinted at the attorney from his hospital bed. “How long does all this take?” he asked.

“The first determinant will be how long it takes you to reach MMI. We’ll investigate right away, but your claim can’t go faster than the time it takes you to reach maximum medical improvement.

“When you get there, we’ll send the insurance company in a demand letter based on your claim’s value. How they respond to that letter will set the pace for the rest of your claim. If they are willing to work out a fair settlement, we’ll wrap it up and get you your compensation. But if they fight us, we’ll drag them to court.

“Please don’t let the possibility of a trial deter you, though. We have a long and solid record of winning motorcycle accident claims, both via negotiation and at trial. If they insist on going to trial, we’ll be more than happy to take them on in the courtroom. That’s why I urge you to make sure you hire a personal injury trial lawyer, whether you decide that’s us or another firm. Make sure you’ve got someone who’ll go to battle to stand up for you, wherever that needs to be.”

Vic was satisfied that he’d gotten the answers he needed from his free legal consultation. He retained Christian & Christian, and Attorney Josh Christian won him over eight times the amount initially offered by the insurance company.

Call Our Greenville Motorcycle Accident Lawyers Today

We hope the information above has given you a better understanding of how motorcycle accident claims work. Give our Greenville motorcycle accident lawyers a call today to find out how we can help you with your claim. You shouldn’t have to fight to be made whole while recovering from serious injuries. We want to help you get all the compensation you deserve, so you can get your life back on track.