Our Trusted Indiana Car Accident Lawyers Get Results
Car accident survivors frequently find themselves contending with neck pain after an accident. At first, you might not take this injury seriously, particularly if you have more immediate losses to worry about. The longer you leave your neck pain unaddressed, though, the more likely your injuries are to compound on themselves.
Whether the Spaghetti Bowl or a smaller road is to blame for your losses, injury victims like you can work with Indiana car accident lawyers to take action in the wake of car accident neck pain. Vaughan & Vaughan can bring your concerns before a civil judge. Together we can fight for the fair settlement you deserve in the face of someone’s negligence.
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Assessing Your Pain After a Car Accident
The pain may be severe, sharp, shooting, pulsing, stiff, or tender. It can limit your range of motion, ruin your sleep, and stop you from driving or going to work. Left untreated, neck pain can develop into chronic pain. The agony can impact your relationships and love for life.
This neck pain after a car accident is often a sign of a severe injury. Some of the most common types of injuries to prolong your neck pain after a severe accident can include:
- Whiplash. The rapid jerking back and forth and side-to-side motion when you come to a sudden stop in an accident does significant damage to the neck. Whiplash is one of the most common injuries sustained in car accidents. Left untreated, whiplash can develop into chronic pain and other complications. It is important to see a doctor about whiplash injuries and follow their treatment instructions. Even with treatment, many injured car accident victims are pained by whiplash for a long time.
- Stiffness, strain, or sprain. The wild movement of an out-of-control car can damage the soft tissue in your neck. Sometimes, surgery is necessary to remove damaged tissue and replace or repair tendons, ligaments, and muscles. Other times, pain can be reduced through ongoing physical therapy, regular medical care, and/or medication.
- Jaw injury. Dislocation or fracturing of the jaw joint and bones can cause serious neck pain and affect your speech and ability to eat solid foods.
- Nerve or spinal cord injury. This type of injury includes a slipped disc, herniated disc, bulging disc, pinched nerves, or nerve damage. The upper portion of the spine at the back of the neck is frequently damaged in car crashes.
- Fractures. Whether it is a full break or hairline fracture, any damage to your neck bones, or the cervical vertebrae, is serious.
It’s our responsibility as your experienced personal injury lawyers to ensure that your neck injury settlement amount reflects the severity of your physical injuries. With that in mind, bring your medical bills and expert testimony regarding your care to our initial case consultation. We can integrate those expenses into our estimate of your case’s value.
Common Symptoms of Neck Pain Injuries
There are often signs that let you know your neck pain might be more than a little ache. Symptoms that neck pain may be caused by a serious underlying injury include:
- Swollen or tender neck and/or shoulders.
- Stiffness limiting range of motion.
- Bulge on or near the spine.
- Dizziness or lack of balance.
- Muscle spasms.
- Blurred vision.
- Fatigue.
- Pain increases when you move your neck.
Sometimes, neck pain does not develop until days or even weeks after a car accident. Delayed pain injuries like whiplash are well-documented.
Still, insurance companies often assert that any injury that does not cause immediate and terrible pain after a car accident is made up or caused by an unrelated incident. That’s one of the reasons you need to see a doctor right away, and it’s why you need an attorney.
How Long Can Neck Pain Last After a Car Accident?
Unfortunately, injuries that cause neck pain often take a long time to heal. It often takes months or even years to heal from a neck injury. Sometimes, neck injuries result in chronic pain that victims must contend with for the rest of their lives. Our lawyers know that your case must consider future pain. That’s why we always build cases that demand maximum compensation.
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Contending With Your Insurance Company After an Accident
While the specifics of your circumstances may vary depending on what insurance provider you work with, you usually have no more than 24 hours to report an accident to your provider. After reporting an accident, your provider should send an insurance adjuster out to your home to assess the extent of your losses.
Unfortunately, insurance adjusters work with an insurance company’s bottom line in mind. While you should receive adequate compensation for pain, an insurance provider may try to deny you the neck injury settlement amount you deserve. When you bring in an Indiana personal injury attorney, though, you can combat an insurance company’s efforts to undermine your losses.
Our legal team can communicate with your provider. We can estimate the value of your accident injuries and back that estimate with evidence from the scene of your accident. Once we’ve established the baseline of your insurance claim, our representatives can defend your right to a fair settlement in negotiations. Should the need arise, we can then take your claim to trial.
How to File a Neck Pain Car Accident Claim
You don’t have to contend with long-term physical pain without taking legal action. If you can prove that negligence contributed to your need for medical attention after a severe car accident, you can work with personal injury lawyers to demand compensation from a liable party.
Specifically, car accident lawsuits that center on your neck pain constitute personal injury claims. This means that you have a responsibility to bring forward evidence to both identify a liable party and outline your right to economic and non-economic damages. Moreover, you need to bring this information forward within Indiana’s personal injury statute of limitations.
Indiana Code §34-11-2-4 gives you no more than two years to compose a neck pain car accident lawsuit. If you try to file a claim after your deadline has passed, you may lose your right to fair compensation. Fortunately, an experienced lawyer can keep you on top of your filing deadlines.
Using Evidence to Establish Your Right to Civil Action
Bringing forward evidence of another party’s negligence after a severe car accident allows you to argue that a named party:
- Owed you a duty of care at the time of an accident
- Violated that duty of care via inappropriate and/or reckless behaviors
- Caused you to endure the soft tissue injuries that now cause your neck pain
- Owe you damages
It is tempting, in most cases, to name another driver as the at-fault party liable for your losses. While you could follow the trail of negligence back to a driver, there may be other parties involved in your case. There’s a chance that a corporation, automotive manufacturer, or even government official may bear some of the liability for your losses.
That’s why it’s important to work with experienced attorneys when establishing liability after an accident. Our legal team has a track record that displays our ability to wrangle the parties that may be liable for your losses and distinguish between them.
Whether a careless driver or an international corporation is to blame for your losses, you can count on our legal advice to guide you toward fair financial compensation.
Estimating Your Possible Compensation After a Car Accident
Typically, the more severe and impactful an injury is, the greater the compensation. The intensity of injury treatment and duration of pain can also drive up compensation. Every accident is unique, so it is difficult to give an average compensation amount.
However, because neck pain is often a sign of a more serious injury, the compensation you deserve can be up to tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars. You need to discuss what compensation you may deserve with neck pain car accident lawyers in Indiana. These early conversations let you better understand how to calculate the value of your case.
What Type of Compensation Can I Receive If I Have Neck Pain After a Car Accident?
There are two types of damages an injured victim can recover after the actions of a negligent driver cause an accident – economic and non-economic.
- Economic damages are for things that have standard value, like medical expenses, lost wages, lost future earning potential, and compensation for property damage, including replacement services and vehicle repairs.
- Non-economic damages compensate you for subjective losses like pain and suffering, mental anguish, emotional distress, loss of consortium, reduced mobility, or loss of enjoyment of life.
Your lawyer can calculate the value of your claim and collect the evidence necessary to demand maximum compensation from the insurance company. In rare cases, you may be able to collect punitive damages as well.
You may not request punitive damages in your initial neck pain car accident claim. Instead, only a judge can award you punitive damages upon an assessment of your case. These punitive damages serve as an extra slap on the wrist designed to discourage both the offending party and future offenders from gross negligence and recklessness.
What to Expect After Filing an Accident Claim
Once you’ve brought your claim forward, you may receive the right to summon an at-fault driver or similarly liable party to discuss your right to an accident settlement. You can initiate these conversations in negotiations conducted out of court. Your attorney and the defendant can elaborate on your right to fair compensation based on the severity of your losses.
If it appears that a liable party’s insurance provider isn’t willing to provide you with the financial support you need, don’t panic. You have additional legal options available to you. An experienced lawyer can transition you out of neck pain car accident negotiations and into a trial setting.
If you choose to go to trial to pursue compensation for your losses, you should prepare for all elements of the trial process. These include:
- Discovery
- Opening statements
- Examination
- Cross-examination
- Closing statements
- Jury deliberation and verdict
A personal injury attorney can prepare you for each stage of a neck pain car accident trial. You, in turn, can keep a dialogue open with the other parties involved in your case to return to negotiations so long as you do so prior to your closing statements.
You can discuss which path to financial support suits you best during initial case consultations and as an investigation into your losses progresses.
How Expensive Is Legal Assistance After a Car Accident?
Our Indiana car accident lawyers work on contingency. That means that there is never an out-of-pocket charge for our services. Our Indiana neck pain car accident lawyers’ fee is an agreed-upon percentage of the personal injury settlement or verdict. We only get paid if we win.
Let Vaughan & Vaughan’s Legal Team Fight for Your Rights
Depending on injury severity, treating car accident neck pain can involve multiple surgeries, medication, and medical devices. Chronic pain may require lifelong physical therapy or other forms of ongoing treatment. This can all get very expensive very fast. You cannot afford to settle your injury claim for less than your pain is worth.
Our law firm has helped thousands of Indiana car accident victims recover damages. We know what it takes to rebound from a car accident neck injury and how to get justice for crash victims.
Our neck pain car accident attorneys in Indiana offer free case consultations to potential clients. At no cost to you, one of our experienced lawyers can answer your crash-related legal questions, estimate the value of your claim, and fight for financial support. Contact us to schedule your free case consultation today.
