If you have suffered financial or personal loss because of an injury someone else caused or inflicted upon you, the personal injury attorneys of Disparti Law Group Accident & Injury Lawyers, P.A. are ready to help you. We help people like you seek restitution through Florida personal injury and wrongful death laws for your costs and losses, including compensation for your pain and suffering.
Personal injury and wrongful death cases are often complicated and time consuming. They require investigative work to determine the circumstances of the harm inflicted and calculate the totality of the injured person’s losses and compensation they should receive.
The Disparti Law Group Accident & Injury Lawyers has more than 30 years of experience successfully pursuing personal injury cases in the Tampa-St. Petersburg area and across Florida. We can help you stand up to insurance companies that refuse to do what is right on their own. We fight for people like you.
Our Free, No Obligation Initial Consultation
Each personal injury case has its own unique set of facts, and every client has their own needs and expectations. We start every case with a free initial consultation in which we seek to understand your objectives and explain the legal alternatives available to you. An attorney will assess the preliminary facts of your case and prepare a plan for an initial investigation.
It is helpful in these meetings if the client brings any documents they have that are connected to their accident, such as police reports, medical receipts or an insurance settlement offer.
If we believe you have a potentially viable legal claim, we will be ready to enter into a retainer agreement with you. This contract will specify the services we will provide and our contingency fee and expenses. A contingency fee is a payment that is only required if we obtain compensation in the lawsuit we pursue on your behalf. If we do not obtain a settlement or court verdict that results in compensation for you, you will not owe a legal fee.
If we cannot pursue a claim for you, we will explain the reason. Once in a while we find that an insurance company’s existing settlement offer is reasonable and we advise prospective clients to accept it. In some cases, we may be able to refer you to another law firm better suited for your needs. Either way, you will owe us nothing for our assessment of your case.
We’ll Investigate Your Accident and Injuries
Once we accept you as a client, we will begin to gather evidence connected to your case. We will help you obtain copies of your medical records. Our firm will have investigators visit the accident scene to seek evidence and begin to interview witnesses.
We may need to go to court to obtain an order for the defendant in a potential lawsuit to turn over evidence to us. In a car accident, for example, we will work to secure access to the defendant’s damaged vehicle. In a slip-and-fall accident or another premises liability case, we may seek a property owner’s maintenance records. In some cases, information from the defendant’s cellphone records, debit or credit card receipts, and/or job or school attendance records may be relevant to our investigation.
In complex cases, such as a multi-car accident or catastrophic commercial truck accident, we may consult with forensic engineers who can reconstruct the crash and explain what happened. These consultants, whom we regularly work with, provide detailed reports of their findings and expert testimony if necessary.
Once we obtain copies of your medical records, we will review them to develop an assessment of your injuries and medical costs. This will include a projection for your recovery and the pain and suffering expected in cases similar to yours. If you have injuries that will require a long-term recovery or injuries that are expected to leave you disabled, we will have financial experts project your expected future expenses involving the disability, including your lost income. This helps us seek appropriate compensation for you.
Our parallel investigations of your accident and injuries will provide a picture of what has happened to you and what it has cost you personally and financially. This is the basis of your claim, or lawsuit: how you were harmed and by whom, and the restitution you deserve.
Filing a Lawsuit to Obtain Compensation for You
At this point, we must decide together whether we have a valid case that can move forward. Not all cases move forward, even where there is clear fault on one side and harm on the other. A claim must be provable and, unfortunately, it must be one that we can be confident will return a verdict that meets your compensation needs while paying our fees and expenses.
If we cannot move forward, we will conclude the case by giving you the case file. You may be able to work with another law firm. If we can move forward, we will begin the paperwork required to file a lawsuit. The lawsuit will describe the facts of the case and the harm you have suffered, our evidence and argument for the defendant’s liability, and the amount of compensation you deserve.
After the lawsuit is served on the defendant, the defense has to respond within a certain time (30 to 45 days, typically). Each side then provides a series of written questions to be answered by the other side (which attorneys take care of for the most part). It is also common for the defense to require the plaintiff to undergo examination by a doctor the defendant chooses. As your attorney, a Disparti Law Group Accident & Injury Lawyers attorney can accompany you to this appointment.
As the lawsuit proceeds, both sides will obtain depositions from each party involved in the suit. This is known as the discovery process. A deposition is a statement under oath, which is provided as answers to a series of questions by the opposing lawyer. Your Disparti Law Group Accident & Injury Lawyers attorney will prepare you for the questions you are likely to be asked in your deposition and will be with you throughout this meeting.
We will begin negotiations with the defendant’s insurer at this point in the lawsuit. In most cases, we can reach an appropriate settlement without going to court. Whether you accept a settlement is your decision, but settling a claim saves time and ensures payment almost immediately. If we receive a settlement offer that we believe merits your consideration, we will relay the offer to you along with our honest opinion about it, and then proceed according to your instructions.
We will prepare your lawsuit as if it will go to trial and, as a court date approaches, we will prepare you as well. Our attorneys will describe what you can expect to see and hear in court and the limited role you will play. We will prepare you to testify, if necessary, by advising you of the questions you are likely to be asked.
At trial, we will present our evidence and our argument for compensation to you, and the defense will put on its case, which will allow us to question their witnesses.
Once both sides have presented evidence and arguments, the judge will advise the jury of the legalities of the case and the verdicts it may return. The jury will consider the case before it and return a verdict.
A jury trial could take a few days to a couple of months, depending on the complexity of the case. If the jury returns a verdict of compensation to you, the money would be disbursed within about 30 days.
Contact Our Experienced Florida Personal Injury Attorneys
The Disparti Law Group Accident & Injury Lawyers uses its 30 years of legal experience to assist people like you who have been unfairly harmed by others. We provide personalized legal services dedicated to obtaining the compensation our clients deserve.
If you have been injured in an accident that was not your fault, you owe it to yourself to explore the legal options available to you. The Disparti Law Group Accident & Injury Lawyers can provide you with a free, no obligation legal consultation with a Chicago personal injury lawyer. We are a Tampa Bay-based firm and work with clients from throughout the state of Florida. Contact us today.
