Zachar Law Blog

When is the right time to call a personal injury lawyer?

Speaking with a personal injury lawyer in Glendale, AZ as early as possible will improve the odds of your claim being successful.  Delay in doing so often leads to the loss, destruction or deterioration of relevant evidence such as (1) early vehicle inspection; (2) video surveillance, (3) scene and injury photos or (4) witness testimony.  Witnesses become difficult to locate or often have a less clear memory of what they saw, heard or did as time passes.  Retaining an attorney early on can assist in counteracting these issues.  In addition, clients often say things they should not to adverse parties or witnesses that may hurt the client’s case.  Once an attorney is retained, the adverse party representative is prohibited from communicating with the client and this helps alleviate these problems. 

Besides hiring a personal injury attorney in Glendale, Arizona at the earliest possible time, you as the client can do several things to improve the success of your claim.  Promptly responding to your attorney’s requests and being frank and honest with your attorney is paramount.  A client’s honesty about their own damages when questioned by the adverse party (in the presence of their Attorney) while at a potential deposition significantly improves the success of the claim.  A client that neither overstates nor understates their injuries makes a reliable, believable witness and one that an adverse party fears most.  Being trustworthy, honest and maintaining a realistic understanding of the value of the claim all significantly increase the claim’s value. 

If some of my injuries were present before an accident, can I still sue?

Yes. Prior injuries can act as a double-edged sword when making a claim. While most people (including personal injury attorneys) presume that a prior injury will interfere with or devalue a claim, this is not accurate for all claims and all cases.  Arizona law actually contemplates prior injuries.  In order to understand a prior injury’s impact on the value of a case, it is important to first understand what an injured claimant may claim as damages under Arizona law.

Under Arizona law, tort victims may claim the full cost of their medical expenses, now and in the future, pain, discomfort, suffering, disability, disfigurement, and anxiety already experienced and reasonably probable to be experienced in the future.  Tort victims are also entitled to claim loss of earnings to date, any decrease in earning power or capacity in the future as well as the loss of enjoyment of life (the participation in life’s activities to the quality and extent normally enjoyed before the injury). 

A prior injury is by definition not related to the accident upon which your lawsuit is based.  That does NOT by itself detract from those injuries that are related to the accident and that does not mean the prior injury is not relevant.  It is.  Arizona law has addressed prior injuries in two ways:  (1) aggravation of the prior injury may be claimed, and (2) a prior injury may cause the claimant to be more susceptible to injuries the claimant incurred in the present accident.  Thus, if a physician can determine that the prior injury was aggravated or made worse by the accident- the aggravation is compensable.  In addition, some injuries or conditions make the client unusually susceptible to injury.  For example, a normally healthy person may incur a minor concussion in an accident.  A person with a history of head injuries or concussions is more susceptible to an accident-related injury than a normal healthy person.  Thus, a normally healthy person may have had a brief visit to an emergency room with little to no residual injury from an accident.  In contrast, a previously injured person that is more susceptible to injury may incur a weeklong stay and length residual problems as a result of an accident due to their condition.  As such, the prior injury will impact the value of the claim.  

Why does an insurance company want to talk to me immediately following a car accident? What are they trying to do?

When an accident occurs, insurance companies go into protection mode. They have one of two goals:

1. Pay you nothing, or

2. Pay you as little as possible.

Most often, given the circumstances of the accident, they will not be able to accomplish their first goal (pay you nothing). As such, they focus on the second goal (pay you as little as possible).

How can an insurance company accomplish this?

The easiest way is for the insurance company to get you in a conversation, either in person or on the phone and before you have an attorney on your side. They ask you questions that seem harmless enough, but their questioning is designed to get information out of you, which they are going to use against you later to either deny your claim or pay you as little as possible.

When the insurance company calls, do you know what you should say?  Do you know what you should not say? They are asking the questions and they are recording the conversation, so the wrong information or wrong answers from you can really hurt your case.

What can you do about this?

The best thing you can do is to avoid talking to any insurance company before you have an experienced Phoenix personal injury attorney on your side. An experienced Phoenix personal injury attorney will then control the conversation and the flow of information.  The purpose is to protect you and to protect your case. Once you have an experienced injury attorney on your side, insurance companies no longer have the right to contact you directly.

At that point, you can focus on your medical treatment and getting better, and let your experienced attorney focus on getting you the best recovery possible for your claim.

Questions? Zachar Law Firm has been helping injured victims in Arizona for 25 years.  We are certified specialists in injury and death cases, and for 25 years, it is the only type of law we have done.

Consultations are always free. If you have questions, pick up the phone and call us. We are here to help.

How the Police Accident Report Can Impact Your Insurance Claim in Arizona

Here’s what you need to know about accident investigations and how police reports can influence the adjuster handling your insurance claim.

Police Auto Accident Investigations

Police officers are typically dispatched to accident scenes when:

• The accident involves reported injuries or fatalities;
• The accident is blocking traffic;
• One or more drivers are intoxicated; or
• Participants are being disruptive or fighting.

The police may arrive at a scene of your accident but you must call 911 first.  After an accident, check for injuries and call 911.

Tell the dispatcher your location with a description of any landmarks; if you or anyone else is injured, feeling sick or trapped in the wreckage; or if there are any immediate dangers, such as leaking fuel or downed power lines.

Police officers receive training in vehicle accident investigation. Once they secure the scene, officers will investigate the accident and its causes. Police officers don’t normally create the official accident report at the scene. They use a worksheet, and then later prepare and file the official report. 

The officer will gather a variety of information: 

• Date, time and location of the accident
• Personal information and statements from the drivers, passengers, and witnesses
• Descriptions of injuries to the drivers and passengers
• Vehicle descriptions: year, make, model and color
• Weather and road conditions at the time of the accident
• Type and extent of property damage to the vehicles
• Contributing factors, such as speeding, non-working brake lights or turn signals, etc.

The investigating officer may take photographs of the scene and damage to the cars if the accident is a serious one.  Also, more and more officers are using “body cameras” to film their investigations of accident scenes.  Obviously, these do not capture the crash, but rather, the aftermath (vehicles and position), and interviews of those involved and witnesses to the crash.

The police officer will conduct field sobriety tests if he/she thinks alcohol or drugs contributed to the accident and will make an arrest for DUI, if necessary. When traffic laws have been violated, the officer may issue tickets to one or both drivers.  The officer will also call for a towing company if any of the cars aren’t drivable or if a driver is incapacitated.

ZLF TIP:  Get the report number from the investigating officer. You’ll use this when requesting a copy of the official police accident report.  Get the names and phone numbers of any witnesses at the scene who may have information about the accident.  Often, the police do not note witnesses in the report, and their identities are lost and usually never found.

After clearing the accident scene, the police may drive to the hospital to follow up on more serious injuries sustained by drivers or passengers. When the follow-up investigation is complete, the officer will return to the station and begin transferring the information from his/her worksheet to the official accident report.

The accident report usually includes the officer’s written account of the details and causes of the accident, including a description of the at-fault driver’s actions which caused the accident, and a drawn diagram of the accident scene showing the point of impact.

Within a few days after the accident, the police accident report should be complete. Some jurisdictions make accident reports available to the general public, while others limit access to accident reports to the involved drivers, the drivers’ representatives and the drivers’ insurance companies.

It is IMPORTANT to know that most police officers are not well-trained in accident reconstruction.  A police officer may get everything right but very often they miss things, improperly draw a diagram or reach the wrong conclusion.  This can negatively impact your case with the at-fault driver’s insurance company because insurance companies know that regardless of right/wrong, juries and judges put weight on a police officer’s opinion.    

Often, the police report is not entirely in your favor, and it should be. This is when ZACHAR LAW FIRM can help.

We have experts in accident reconstruction who we work with on serious injury accidents.  These experts are much better educated and trained than police officers.  Our experts often need to rely on the police report with respect to evidence found at the scene, as well as the statements of the parties and witnesses, but the expert’s conclusion may be very different from the police officer’s. 

When a case goes to court, the police officer may not be able to testify as to his/her “opinions” of what happened, according to the rules of evidence, or if the judge does not think the officer’s training is sufficient to testify about certain matters.  The police officer can testify regarding their investigation at the scene and the evidence they found, but not necessarily regarding his/her “opinions” of what may have occurred.   Experts usually can testify as to such matters because they have been trained to do so and they have had time to conduct a more thorough, technical investigation.

When the at-fault insurance company is evaluating your claim, it will not do so without a copy of the police accident report and for the reasons stated above, the police report can have a huge impact on the outcome of your injury claim.  When a claim is opened, one of the first things an insurance adjuster will do is request a copy of the police report.  If the officer’s conclusions favor the insurance company’s driver (right or wrong), it is likely that the insurance company will take the side of the insurance company’s driver and not you.

Again, that is where Zachar Law Firm can help you.

Fault isn’t always obvious and clear-cut.  Even when it seems so, the insurance company will often find a way to fight it.  Arizona is a “comparative negligence” state.  This means that even if you are partly at fault for the accident, you can still pursue a claim with the other driver’s insurance company.  The degrees of the fault of all drivers are determined; often disagreements on how that fault is divided occur, but our attorneys will fight for your position when this situation occurs.

If the insurance company refuses to cooperate or denies your claim, you have nothing to lose by contacting ZACHAR LAW FIRM. It costs you nothing to have our attorneys to assess whether your claim has merit and value.  Often times, the insurance company will want to take your statement. This could adversely affect your claim with the insurance company if you are not advised of certain legal ramifications of your statement.  It’s best to contact a skilled accident attorney before you give any such statement.

Don’t give up, even if the police accident report implicates you for causing the collision. Contact ZACHAR LAW FIRM to discuss your case and your options. Quite often, the police have it wrong!

Arizona ranks low for highway safety: We need to make a change

Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety is an entity and independently evaluates and ranks the States for highway safety.  The ranking system mirrors a traffic signal: green means good, yellow means there is still more work to be done and red means there need to be major improvements when it comes to saving lives on our roadways. 

The rankings focus largely on what safety laws are or are not in place.  This week, Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety put Arizona in the red. 

Arizona was one of the 12 worst states for not having some of the 16 laws this organization has deemed crucial for roadway safety. 

Arizona does not have a primary seat belt law, does not have an all-rider helmet law, does not have a booster seat law and does not have stronger restrictions for new drivers. 

A lot of people think that crashes are just a byproduct of so many cars on the road, you know, that they just happen.  The truth is that car crashes are 100% preventable. They don't have to happen. 

We know seat belts, helmets and not using a cell phone while driving saves lives. While having these laws in Arizona would help with the red ranking, do we really need a law to tell us to do or not do these things?

Excessive speed, inattention, distraction, and stupidity is what causes car crashes.  Get rid of these four things, all occurring from “choices made by drivers”, and we can very largely say goodbye to car crashes. 

We really don’t need a law to tell us that. 

What are the economic damages that the survivors are entitled to in a wrongful death case?

Wrongful death claims are generally the same as other personal injury claims, though procedurally differ from other personal injury claims.  When a person dies, the decedent essentially loses his or her claim.  However, the Arizona legislature enacted laws (statutes) that allow the claim to be prosecuted by either (or both):  (1) decedent’s estate or (2) family members of the decedent, which the legislature has specifically listed in the statute.  The “survivors” as referenced in the statute, would be the family members of the decedent.  If an improper act caused the death of the family member, the claim must be pled and prosecuted under the wrongful death statutes.  As such, the statute itself defines the claim, when the claim must be filed, those that may make the claim and the remedies permitted.  Here is what Arizona’s wrongful death statute permits as it concerns claims by the surviving family members:

1. The wrongful death “beneficiaries” include only the following:  (a) surviving spouse of the decedent; (b) surviving parents of the decedent; and (c) surviving children of the decedent.  No other relatives of the decedent have a claim.
2. While all of the referenced wrongful death beneficiaries may have a claim, only one of the beneficiaries may file the claim- but when doing so, the beneficiary that files the claim must bring it on behalf of ALL the wrongful death beneficiaries. 
3. The wrongful death beneficiaries’ claims are essentially a loss of consortium claim- meaning the damages the survivors may claim is the loss each may have suffered from the loss of the decedent.  Thus, while all of the beneficiaries listed in the statute have a claim, the monetary value of each of their claims is based on the quality of the relationship they had with the decedent.  Thus, a beneficiary that had a close and long-lasting relationship may have a greater monetary loss than a beneficiary that had a poor or non-existent relationship with the decedent.  In addition, the beneficiaries (more applicable to children or spouse of the decedent rather than the parents of the decedent) may have a claim for the loss of the income for which the decedent was supporting during the decedent’s life.

There is a specific jury instruction provided to juries to instruct the jury on the law on the type of damages they may award wrongful death beneficiaries.  It states as follows:

If you find [name of defendant] liable to [name of plaintiff], you must then decide the full amount of money that will reasonably and fairly compensate [name of each survivor] [separately] for each of the following elements of damages proved by the evidence to have resulted from the death of [name of decedent]. 1. The loss of love, affection, companionship, care, protection, and guidance since the death and in the future. 2. The pain, grief, sorrow, anguish, stress, shock, and mental suffering already experienced, and reasonably probable to be experienced in the future. 3. The income and services that have already been lost as a result of the death and that is reasonably probable to be lost in the future. 4. The reasonable expenses of funeral and burial. 5. The reasonable expenses of necessary medical care and services for the injury that resulted in the death.

Emotional distress may be a consequence of losing one’s family member.  While not specifically referenced in the above-referenced jury instruction it would certainly fit within the description of damages set forth in the number 1 and specifically number 2 category listed in the instruction.