Albuquerque Personal Injury Attorney
We all have our daily routines. For many, they involve getting up in the morning, getting kids ready for school, and then heading off to work. In between, there are frequent trips to the grocery store, visits with friends and family, and the occasional “just for fun” trips. At any moment in those daily routines, your life can be entirely upended by an unexpected accident. These accidents can play out in many different scenarios, but they can all create emotional, physical, and financial stress on you and your family.
According to data collected by New Mexico Health, injuries are the leading cause of death for residents between the ages of 1 to 44. That breaks down to an average of 5 people dying from injuries each day, with another 40 being hospitalized and 700 folks making trips to an emergency room. The cost of all these injuries comes to around $4 billion annually.
Dealing with any type of injury is a challenge, and that is compounded when someone else’s negligence causes the injury. In those situations, you are entitled to seek a remedy for your losses, however great or small they might be. That is where the support of the Barrera Law Group LLC comes into play. Learn more about how our Albuquerque personal injury lawyer can guide you on how to approach your claim.
How the Barrera Law Group LLC Can Help
You didn’t plan to get into an accident. And for many residents, they have never hired an Albuquerque personal injury attorney before. We understand your challenges and want to ensure you don’t have to go it alone. We provide all our clients with many advantages to help them seek out fair compensation. Here’s how we can support your claim:
We Deploy Invaluable Skills
Our attorneys bring the necessary skill sets required to achieve positive outcomes for our clients. In addition to our negotiating and litigating skills, we have access to a team of reliable investigators and experts who help with accident recreation and medical documentation.
We Have Extensive Experience
We have nearly two decades of experience working with clients, negotiating with insurance companies, and navigating the New Mexico state court system. We bring that experience into every case and understand what it takes to prevail in a complex claim.
We Have a Record of Success
Our skills and experience are proven by our record of success. Among our more notable case results are a $73.21 million verdict for a birth injury, $13.5 million in a trucking wrongful death accident, and $2.4 million in a motor vehicle crash.
Injury Cases Barrera Law Group LLC Handles
Our expert team of litigators is equipped to handle all types of personal injury cases in New Mexico. We regularly take on cases involving:
- Car wrecks
- Truck accidents
- Drunk driving crashes
- Distracted driving collisions
- Motorcycle accidents
- Pedestrian accidents
- Bicycle accidents
- Medical malpractice
- Birth injuries
- Nursing home abuse
- Premises liability
- Slip and falls
- Dog bites
- Dangerous and defective products (product liability)
- Traumatic brain injuries (TBIs)
- Oil field accidents
- Mass torts
- Wrongful death
Our law firm has the resources and knowledge to handle a variety of cases and claim types. Even if your accident or injury isn’t listed above, we encourage you to contact our Albuquerque office.
A Free Case Evaluation
We offer 100% free, no-obligation initial case consultations to injury and accident victims in our community. Our goal with these meetings is to help you learn about your legal options and get to know one another so that you can decide if we are the right fit for your case.
When you schedule your case evaluation with our firm, you should bring the following items:
- Original diagnosis paperwork
- Discharge instructions
- All bills related to your medical care
- Receipts for any property damage repairs or replacement
- A copy of any police reports
Additionally, if you have the contact information from any witnesses to the accident, we should review those, as well. During that first consultation, we will want to get a general understanding of what happened from your point of view. We want to hear about the extent of your injuries, your recovery journey (so far), and how this accident has impacted your work and daily life.
We will also explain the various personal injury laws that apply to your situation, starting with the statute of limitations. In New Mexico, that statute is three years. It might seem like a long time to file your case, but when you factor in the potential delays from the insurance companies and investigate complex cases. That is why we recommend that you set up your free case evaluation as soon as possible.
The Range of Injuries
There is a wide range of injuries possible after an accident. Whether you’ve taken a fall in a grocery store or were rear-ended by a semi-truck, you could be dealing with anyone (or more) of the following injuries:
- Head and neck injuries
- Traumatic brain injuries (TBIs)
- Shoulder injuries
- Ligament damage
- Broken bones
- Nerve damage
- Back injuries
- Spinal cord injuries (SCIs)
- Internal organ damage
- Soft tissue damage
- Loss of limb (amputation)
- Paralysis
- Puncture wounds
- Eye damage
- Dental injuries
Those injuries can require surgery, physical therapy, and recovery time away from work. In severe accidents, there could be ongoing problems with mobility and cognitive functions that require additional treatment that could last several months or for the rest of your life. All of those injuries come with a long list of medical bills that you could be entitled to be reimbursed for.
How an Albuquerque Personal Injury Lawyer Calculates Your Accident Compensation
An accident will generate losses. Whether those losses are for a hospital stay or replacing your car, you should not have to pay for them if you didn’t cause the accident. This is the basic principle of why we have insurance. It is getting that compensation from those insurance companies that becomes the challenge. First, creating an accurate accounting of the damages is vital to present to the insurance company.
A skilled Albuquerque personal injury lawyer understands that compensation can be broken down into basic categories: economic and noneconomic damages.
Your economic damages would be any number that can be backed up by a bill, receipt, or pending invoice. Those damages can include the following:
- Past, current, and future medical bills
- Lost wages
- Loss of benefits
- Travel costs (especially for medical care)
- Domestic services (such as cleaning services)
- Cost of renovating a home to accommodate a new disability
- Vehicle repairs
- Property damage (such as broken items of value)
- Other out-of-pocket expenses
Noneconomic damages are every bit as genuine as economic damage, but they need to be calculated in a different way. You need to identify which of the following noneconomic damages would apply to your situation:
- Emotional distress
- Mental anguish
- Pain and suffering
- Loss of enjoyment in life
- Decreased quality of life
- Disfigurement
- New or worsening disability
When the accident causes the death of a loved one, their immediate family could be compensated for funeral expenses, loss of companionship, and future earning potential.
Calculating the Value of Pain and Suffering Damages
Because you don’t get a “bill” for your pain and suffering, you need to apply different methods to value those damages. An Albuquerque personal injury attorney’s most common methods are the per diem method or the multiplier method.
With the multiplier method, the impact of your injuries will be assigned a value from 1.5 to 5. Determining the severity depends on the following factors:
- The type of injury you sustained
- The severity of the injury and whether it caused a disabling condition or impairment
- Whether you can return to work
- The duration of your recovery
- The type of medical treatments and rehabilitative therapies required to treat your injuries
- The impact your injury has on your daily activities, your life, and your relationships
- The need for ongoing medical treatments, personal care, or nursing care
The number value will then be multiplied by the total number of your economic losses.
The per diem method is most often applied to injuries that are essentially recoverable and don’t involve permanent challenges. A daily figure is set and then multiplied by the number of days you were suffering. For instance, if you broke your arm in a slip-and-fall accident, it might take four weeks for your arm to heal. At that time, you experienced pain and couldn’t work or go about your normal activities. That could be worth $3,000 a day multiplied by 30 days for a total amount of $90,000.
How Comparative Negligence Affects Your Damages
New Mexico utilizes a pure comparative negligence standard for resolving personal injury cases. That means you could be found to be partially at fault for causing your injury. In that scenario, your final compensation settlement would be reduced by the percentage of fault you are assigned. That reduction could apply to all compensatory damages, including pain and suffering.
For example, if the final settlement is for $100,000 but you were found to be 20% at fault, you would only receive $80,000.
Taking on Insurance Companies
Insurance companies are happy to boast about all the support they offer their policyholders and how they deliver peace of mind. However, outside the commercials, insurance companies can be notorious for delaying or denying claims outright. Our Albuquerque personal injury lawyers are extremely familiar with how insurance companies work.
After an accident, all parties will contact their insurance companies and report the incident. At that point, the insurance company is compelled to respond to close the case and minimize their financial exposure.
Once the parties have been identified, the at-fault party’s insurance company might reach out to you to get your version of the accident. They are entitled to do that. You are equally entitled to politely decline to speak to them until you have legal representation set up. Once you have retained the services of the Barrera Law Group LLC, we will take over all the communications on your behalf.
The insurance company wants to minimize the amount of money they pay out to you. Ideally, they would like to deny the claim altogether. If you say something to them that could complicate determining who was at fault, it will trigger that denial.
Another tactic we can prepare for is when the insurance company offers a quick lump-sum settlement. This kind of settlement might seem reasonable, but it could also undercut the true nature of your damages. Actually, these first offers are most often low-ball offers that should be just the start of negotiations for a fair settlement.
Vital Personal Injury Accident FAQs
Dealing with the aftermath of a serious accident will generate many questions. Here are some of the frequently asked questions.
What should I do after a personal injury accident?
The first thing you need to do is report the accident. If it is a car accident, the first report could be to 911 and the police. If you’re injured on a premises like a store or restaurant, you must inform the staff or manager before you leave. Before leaving the accident scene, you should also try to get the contact information of any witnesses.
You also need to visit a doctor and take photos of your injuries. It might take a few days for the full effect of the injury to show up, but you should be documenting your injuries along the way. Speaking of documentation, you should also write down your version of the accident as you remember it. The further you move away from the accident, the cloudier your memory could become. Additionally, you should keep a recovery journal that tracks your daily pain and discomfort levels and how that injury impacts your life.
Will I have to go to court with a lawsuit?
When we work to settle a personal accident claim, all options for a resolution need to be on the table. There might come a time in the process when filing a civil complaint is the only option to get what you are due. Some of the reasons why this might happen are the following:
- The at-fault party’s insurance carrier does not offer a settlement
- The at-fault party’s insurance carrier offers an unreasonable settlement
- The liability or damages are disputed
You might also want to present your case to a jury. We will support all of your decisions, and if the case is strong enough, activating a lawsuit might be enough to motivate the insurance company to make a fair settlement offer.
What happens at a deposition?
If you do move forward with a lawsuit, you will most likely be called on to participate in a deposition. A deposition is a question-and-answer session between you and the defense attorney. We will fully prepare you for the deposition and be right by your side throughout the questioning. There will also be a court reporter and possibly a videographer to record the questions and answers. All of the information presented in a deposition can be used in the trial.
Some of the topics you will be asked about include the following:
- Your general background information, such as work history, family life, etc.
- Your health condition before the incident
- Details of the accident
- The medical treatment you received for the injuries
- How the accident has impacted your life
How long do I have to wait until I get a settlement?
There is no definitive amount of time to settle an accident case. Initially, conducting investigations and gathering all the evidence could take several weeks. The back-and-forth negotiating rounds with the insurance company might take another several weeks. If those negotiations reach an amount that you think is reasonable, we can move forward with a settlement release and generate the check.
If the offer is unreasonable, you might decide with our counsel to proceed with a civil lawsuit. That could mean another few months to schedule the hearing and present the case. Fortunately, settlement negotiations can continue throughout the entire trial process.
What is a settlement release?
You must sign a release to finalize the offer when both parties agree to a settlement. That release means you will not be able to go back and reopen the case for additional money. The release would also cover all the litigants. For instance, if you get into an accident with a truck, you could sue the truck driver and the trucking company. You won’t be able to settle with the driver without settling with the trucking company.
Get the Right Legal Guidance from the Barrera Law Group LLC
There is a lot to sort through when you are recovering from a personal injury accident. The bills will start piling up, and you might need to resolve this matter as quickly as possible. At the Barrera Law Group LLC, we can provide you with the right legal guidance every step of the way. That help begins with our initial free consultation. We want to hear what happened and let you know the best way to proceed.
Call to set up your consultation with an Albuquerque personal injury lawyer today.